China, the US and Africa Green Minerals Strategy

 China-Africa Security Radar published on 5 July 2026 a commentary titled "China, the United States, and Africa's Green Minerals Vision" by Paa Kwesi Wolseley Prah.

In 2025, the African Union adopted a continental policy framework called Africa Green Minerals Strategy (AGMS), which aims to turn Africa's critical and green minerals endowment into sustainable, value-adding industrialization that supports a just energy transition and regional supply chain integration.  

China has the processing capacity, investment scale, implementation speed, and institutional flexibility to advance African industrialization--but its commercial incentives run directly against allowing Africa to independently climb the value chain.

The US offers somewhat more transparent financing structures, stronger governance standards, and procedural models that on paper seem to better protect African states from debt traps--but it lacks the industrial ecosystem and the genuine political will to support African manufacturing rather than African extraction for American consumption.   

Kenya-US Critical Minerals Deal Counters China

 Reuters published on 17 June 2026 an article titled "Kenya, US Close in on Critical Minerals Deal, Ruto Says" by John Irish.

Kenya and the United States are about to close a deal on critical minerals that would allow Kenya to process the minerals domestically, a demand that African countries are increasingly making in their negotiations with buyers.  This is also an effort by the Trump administration to compete with China for African critical minerals.  

Chinese Finance and Critical Mineral Access in Africa

 Boston University's Global Development Policy Center published in June 2026 a paper titled "Development Quid Pro Quo: Chinese Finance and Critical Mineral Access in Africa" by Congyi Dai.

The paper explores whether China's development finance agenda is motivated by its global quest for natural resources, facilitating mine acquisitions in Africa.  It uses four data sources to examine whether Chinese development finance is tied to the pursuit of critical minerals.

The paper concludes that minerals needed for clean energy technologies such as copper, cobalt, nickel, and platinum group metals are associated with Chinese loan commitments to recipient countries.  Specifically, uranium is the mineral most strongly linked to Chinese development projects, particularly those including a substantial grant component and highly concessional repayment terms.

China's Critical Minerals Strategy in Africa

 The Africa Center for Strategic Studies published on 9 December 2025 a paper titled "China's Critical Minerals Strategy in Africa" by Paul Nantulya.

China controls over half of global critical minerals production and an estimated 87 percent of its processing and refining capacity.  It also produces nearly 70 percent of rare earth minerals.

China's strategy for dominance in critical minerals includes a tolerance for high-risk projects, generous government support to Chinese companies, diversified access to minerals, financial support of African infrastructure linked to mineral extraction, financing the development of African mineral projects, and strategic stockpiling of critical minerals in China.  

China-US Competition for Africa's Critical Minerals

 The Conversation published on 12 October 2025 a commentary titled "China and the US Are in a Race for Critical Minerals.  African Countries Need to Make the Rules" by James Boafo, Rochelle Spencer, and Senyo Dotsey.

Africa holds about 30 percent of the world's critical minerals sought by the United States and China.  The analysis urges African countries to determine for themselves how to benefit from this global competition.  

China and US Compete for Africa's Critical Minerals

 The Stimson Center published on 28 February 2025 an analysis titled "Competing for Africa's Resources: How the US and China Invest in Critical Minerals" by Sydney Tucker.

China's approach to Africa's critical minerals is characterized by state-backed investments and a focus on securing long-term access to resources.  The US prioritizes private sector involvement and supply chain diversification to reduce reliance on China while pursuing clean energy, national security, and economic goals.  

Chinese Companies Win Contract to Build $2 Billion Railway between Burundi and Tanzania

 The Global Business Council published on 30 January 2025 an article titled "Tanzania and Burundi Award $2B Contract to Chinese Firms to Design and Build Regional Rail."

China Engineering Construction Group and China Railway Design and Consulting Group won the $2.15 billion contract to design and build the 282-kilometer-long railway between Uvinza in Tanzania and a nickel mine between Musongati and Gitenga in Burundi.  The railway will connect to an existing line in Tanzania that continues to the port of Dar es Salaam.  The African Development Bank is financing the project. Nickel is a critical mineral in the manufacture of electric vehicles.  

China's Success in Africa Due Largely to Absence of Competition

 Foreign Policy published on 22 May 2023 a commentary titled "U.S. Apathy Paved the Way for China in Africa" by Howard W. French.

The author argues that the rise of China in Africa has been a result largely of little competition from the West or anyone else.  

US-China Competition for African Minerals

 The South China Morning Post published on 9 April 2023 an article titled "China-US Battle for African Influence Shifts to Green Critical Minerals" by Jevans Nyabiage.

The article discusses China-US competition for critical minerals in countries such as Tanzania, Zambia, DRC, and Zimbabwe.   

China and the Geopolitics of Critical Minerals

 The African Climate Foundation published on 23 September 2022 a report titled "Geopolitics of Critical Minerals in Renewable Energy Supply Chains" by Antonio Andreoni, SOAS University of London, and Simon Roberts, University of Johannesburg.  

In 2019, China was the top producing country of graphite and rare earth elements and third highest producer of copper and lithium.  It had the highest share of any country of processing volume for copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earth elements.  

China's corporate control over total African mine production in 2018 was a modest 6.7 percent.  The British international mining company, Anglo American, exercised the most control at 14.9 percent.  Nevertheless, in 2021, China Molybdenum controlled more than one-tenth of the world's cobalt and Chinese companies strengthened their grip over rare earth elements.  

China, Cobalt, the Congo, and Clean Energy

 The New York Times published on 20 November 2021 an in depth story titled "A Power Struggle Over Cobalt Rattles the Clean Energy Revolution" by Dionne Searcey, Michael Forsythe, and Eric Lipton.

More than two-thirds of the world's cobalt production comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Cobalt is a key component of batteries for electric vehicles.  China and the US are competing for control of the market with China winning for the time being.  China's goal is to control the global supply chain from the metals in the ground to the batteries themselves, no matter where they are made.

China, Congo, Cobalt, and Cars

 Mining.com posted on 8 April 2021 an article titled "World's No. 2 Electric Carmaker Goes Nickel, Cobalt Free."

China's BYD is the world's second largest manufacturer of electric vehicles behind Tesla.  China is trying to control the electric vehicle market.  The batteries for electric vehicles rely heavily on cobalt, which China is also trying to control.  Most of the world's cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

BYD has announced that it is scrapping nickel, cobalt, manganese technology for its batteries and switching to lithium-iron-phosphate batteries.  If other electric car producers follow BYD's decision, this raises interesting questions for the future of cobalt and the importance that China will continue to attach to the DRC.  

Mineral Prices Drop Sharply and Impact Africa

Mining.com published an article on 7 July 2015 titled "China Panic Crushes Mining Stocks" by Frik Els.  The value of base and precious metals fell to multi-year lows following a stronger dollar, turmoil in the Eurozone, and especially the stock market crash in China.  Gold, silver, copper, iron, nickel, tin, zinc, lead, platinum, and palladium were all on the downside.  African countries are major suppliers of most of these metals and have have been impacted negatively.