The new scramble for Africa (1): The minerals are African; the power is somewhere else

Beneath the red earth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo lie minerals indispensable to the modern industrial world.

Thousands of miles away, Chinese factories refine materials for batteries, and European manufacturers assemble electric vehicles. Governments are rediscovering an uncomfortable truth: the technologies upon which their future prosperity depends begin, quite literally, in the ground. And much of that ground is African.

There is something profoundly unsettling about this. A continent containing some of the world’s poorest communities possesses resources essential to the wealthiest industries. Materials extracted from the African soil help power technological transformations elsewhere, while communities surrounding the deposits frequently remain inadequately served by life’s basics.

The contradiction is familiar. Its geopolitical significance is not. A new scramble for Africa is underway. It is not principally about acquiring territory. It is about controlling the minerals, processing technologies and commercial relationships upon which the next industrial age will depend.

The instruments are mining concessions, equity investments, infrastructure finance, long-term purchasing agreements and diplomatic partnerships. The protagonists include China, the United States, Europe, multinational corporations and increasingly assertive African governments. The prize is not merely mineral wealth. It is industrial power.

Last week, World Bank President Ajay Banga announced plans to increase critical-minerals financing fivefold, from $3.6 billion over the preceding five years to $19 billion between fiscal years 2026 and 2030. The ambition includes developing local industries and enabling producing countries to retain more employment and economic value. The announcement illustrates how thoroughly minerals have moved from the margins of development finance to the centre of global economic strategy.

Copper is essential to electricity. Lithium and graphite underpin important battery technologies. Rare earth elements enable specialised magnets used in electric motors, wind turbines and defence systems. Cobalt remains significant in battery chemistry. Other specialised materials support semiconductors, aerospace equipment and advanced manufacturing. Yet the supply chains sustaining these industries are remarkably concentrated.

The International Energy Agency’s 2026 Global Critical Minerals Outlook reports that China dominates the processing of numerous strategically important materials, accounting for more than 90 per cent of global refining or processing supply in several categories, including graphite, gallium, manganese and rare earths.

Such concentration transforms relatively obscure materials into instruments of geopolitical influence. Disruptions involving small quantities of specialised minerals can threaten industrial activity worth vastly more than the materials themselves.

The IEA estimates that full implementation of certain expanded Chinese rare-earth export restrictions could place approximately $6.5 trillion in annual downstream production outside China at risk. Although those measures have been suspended until November 2026, the underlying vulnerability remains.

Governments that once celebrated globalisation’s promise of frictionless supply chains now speak of strategic autonomy, industrial resilience and economic security. Africa has consequently acquired renewed geopolitical importance.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo accounted for approximately three-quarters of global cobalt mine production in 2025. Zambia and the DRC occupy important positions in the world’s copper economy. Guinea possesses immense bauxite resources; South Africa remains significant in platinum-group metals; Zimbabwe has attracted growing attention for lithium. Elsewhere, deposits of graphite, manganese, uranium and other minerals have become objects of intensified international interest.

But here lies the distinction upon which Africa’s future may depend. The geography of resources is not the geography of value. And the geography of value is not necessarily the geography of power. A mineral deposit confers geological advantage. It does not automatically confer control over the industrial system through which that mineral becomes valuable.

Between extraction and the finished product lie processing, refining, distribution and commercial ownership. Different countries and companies occupy different positions within this chain, earning different returns and accumulating different capabilities.

An African country may receive royalties, taxes, wages and export earnings. Another country may control the refining technology, own the patents or command the customer relationships through which the finished product reaches international markets. The resource-owning country may therefore participate indispensably in production without exercising corresponding influence over the economic system built upon its resources.

This does not mean manufacturing invariably generates greater profits than mining. Extraction can be enormously profitable, while processing facilities sometimes operate on exceptionally thin margins. The IEA reports that benchmark copper-smelting treatment charges fell to zero in 2026, illustrating the commercial pressures facing parts of the processing industry.

The essential distinction is not between raw materials and finished goods. It is between earning income from an activity and accumulating the capabilities that confer lasting economic advantage. Africa’s history makes this painfully familiar.

For generations, African economies supplied commodities to industrial systems organised elsewhere. Cocoa and Cotton are prime examples. International trade generated genuine benefits, but the broader pattern frequently left African countries dependent upon commodity earnings without developing comparable industrial capabilities.

The danger is that the next technological revolution could reproduce this imbalance. Africa could become indispensable to electric vehicles without developing competitive automotive industries; and furnish minerals essential to digital infrastructure while remaining peripheral to the industries that infrastructure enables.

A continent could become strategically indispensable without becoming proportionately prosperous. Consider the Lobito Corridor, connecting mineral-producing regions of Zambia and the DRC to Angola’s Atlantic coast. Improved rail connections could reduce transport costs, expand market access and stimulate regional commerce. Yet the corridor raises a question that should accompany every major investment in African mineral infrastructure: what economic geography is being constructed?

A railway that carries copper efficiently to an export terminal creates value; but a railway that additionally supports industrial clusters could create something more enduring. The difference is not the railway. It is the economic system developed around it.

This brings us to the central problem of the new scramble: unequal bargaining capability. Foreign governments seek secure supplies. Mining companies seek commercially viable deposits. Financiers seek returns. African governments seek revenue, employment, infrastructure and development. These objectives need not be incompatible. But the parties frequently possess vastly unequal information and negotiating capacity.

A government may know that a deposit is valuable without possessing sufficiently reliable geological information to negotiate its development effectively. It may secure attractive royalties while overlooking transfer-pricing risks, environmental liabilities or infrastructure obligations. Conversely, an agreement offering modest immediate revenue may generate substantial long-term benefits through domestic procurement, technical training and productive infrastructure.

The quality of the bargain lies in its consequences, not its political presentation. And the opportunity to negotiate is neither permanent nor uniform. New deposits emerge. Commodity prices fluctuate. Materials once considered indispensable may face substitution, while previously obscure minerals acquire strategic importance.

The IEA, for instance, projects that copper supply from existing and announced projects could fall approximately 25 per cent short of projected primary supply requirements by 2035. Such forecasts create urgency, but they do not guarantee permanent bargaining power for producers.

Africa possesses an opportunity, not an entitlement. International competition could enable governments to negotiate better infrastructure, processing arrangements, technology partnerships and fiscal terms. Yet a country approaching investors without a coherent understanding of its resources and industrial objectives may surrender much of that advantage.

The African Union has recognised the challenge. Its Africa Mining Vision, adopted in 2009, sought to connect mineral development with wider economic transformation. The African Green Minerals Strategy, adopted in 2025, advances local value addition, regional industrialisation and more equitable participation in emerging supply chains.

The ambitions are substantial, but their implementation remains uneven. At the African Forum on Mining in March 2025, the African Union reported that only four member states had completed ratification of the legal framework for the African Minerals Development Centre. The continent’s difficulty lies in converting shared ambitions into functioning institutions and coordinated economic action.

There is also a human dimension that geopolitical calculations too easily obscure. When mining takes place, land is disturbed, and communities sometimes displaced. Informal miners struggle for livelihoods, while surrounding populations often endure environmental costs disproportionate to the benefits they receive.

A project generating impressive exports while leaving its host communities impoverished cannot be considered a developmental success. The ultimate question is what remains after extraction. Will the surrounding economy have become less dependent upon the deposit that originally attracted investment?

These are the tests through which mineral wealth becomes a national inheritance rather than a temporary transaction.

They also explain why the growing assertiveness of African governments deserves scrutiny.

Across the Sahel, governments are challenging established mining arrangements, demanding greater participation and asserting direct control over strategic resources. Elsewhere, countries favour negotiated partnerships, investment incentives and gradual industrial development.

The approaches differ profoundly in their instruments, risks and political circumstances. Neither confrontation nor accommodation guarantees prosperity. Their competing claims raise questions about sovereignty, commercial leverage and the price of economic independence. They deserve examination without romanticism or prejudice.

For the deeper issue is not whether Africa should welcome foreign investment or reject it. It is whether African countries can progress from possessing valuable deposits to shaping the industrial systems those deposits make possible.

History offers a warning, but not a verdict. The nineteenth-century scramble reorganised African territory in the interests of imperial powers. The twentieth century brought political independence alongside persistent commodity dependence.

The twenty-first now presents another moment when African resources occupy a central place in the ambitions of powerful external economies.

The circumstances are fundamentally different. But political sovereignty cannot, by itself, guarantee economic power. A flag establishes a nation’s authority over its destiny. It does not determine who controls the technologies, finance, markets and industrial capabilities through which that destiny is realised.

Dr Hani Okoroafor is the Founder of The Capacity Institute and the originator of the Capacity State Framework, a body of work dedicated to advancing the study and practice of institutional execution capacity. He advises corporate boards and senior executives across Europe, Africa, North America and the Middle East, and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of BusinessDay. Reactions welcome: dr.hani@the-capacity-institute