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Jevans Nyabiage

The United States was out in force in Cape Town this month, throwing down a direct challenge to China at Africa’s biggest mining conference, the Investing in African Mining Indaba.
While Chinese firms showed their technological leadership with automation and green energy solutions, officials from the State Department, the Department of Energy and several US development agencies were among the record number of American diplomats and financiers at the event in South Africa.
Analysts said the US was looking to buy Africa’s critical minerals through financing deals – but it would take more than money to break China’s dominance.
“Africa is becoming embedded in US industrial and national security strategy, rather than traditional development diplomacy,” Brendon Verster, a senior economist at Oxford Economics Africa, said.
He added that the Indaba – a Zulu and Xhosa word for a conference – illustrated that “Africa’s mineral wealth remains central to global strategic competition, but the extent to which African states can shape it remains complex”.
The visit followed several multibillion-dollar initiatives in what is regarded as Washington’s most aggressive push to secure critical mineral supplies and challenge China, which has a near monopoly on the production and processing of critical and rare earth minerals.
At the start of the month, the US launched Project Vault, a US$12 billion initiative designed to break China’s grip on the materials that help to power everything from electric vehicles to fighter jets.
With an aggressive timeline of establishing a strategic critical minerals reserve within the next 18 to 24 months, the project intends to use a US$10 billion Export-Import Bank loan, the largest in its history, and around US$2 billion in private capital to help firms secure 60 essential minerals at stable prices.
The US also launched its Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (Forge) on February 4. The project follows on from a similar initiative launched during Joe Biden’s presidency and aims to establish price floors to protect Western-backed mines from being undercut by Chinese market dominance.
Chris Berry, head of the US-based advisory firm House Mountain Partners, said it took China a generation and about US$1 trillion to become the dominant force in critical metals supply chains.
“Offtake agreements and financial firepower on the part of the US and allies are a good start, but these supply chain dependencies won’t be resolved overnight,” Berry said.
“You’re looking at years before there are truly resilient Western supply chains independent of China – if that’s even possible.”
Berry said that by the end of Donald Trump’s term of office in 2029, certain metals such as gallium could be “China-free” but added that it was “utter folly to think Project Vault will establish true mineral independence in 24 months”.
Furthermore, rather than buying mines, the US is securing supplies through “offtake” deals, in which the price for a commodity is agreed in advance to secure supplies.
For example, an agreement with the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Gecamines for 100,000 tonnes of copper guaranteed future purchases, making African projects bankable without Chinese capital.
Meanwhile, the ceasefire the US brokered between the DR Congo and Rwanda last year included a clause giving American firms the first right of refusal on unassigned mines – giving it the power to block future concessions to China.
The strategy is already yielding results. On February 9, the first shipment of copper and cobalt left for the US via the Lobito Atlantic Railway, following a deal between commodity giant Trafigura and the DR Congo’s state-owned Entreprise Generale du Cobalt (EGC).
The 1,300km (810-mile) railway links the DR Congo with the Angolan port of Lobito on the west coast of Africa and cuts transit time to seven days.
Lobito’s westward Atlantic route provides the infrastructure for Western powers to de-risk their critical mineral supply chains by offering an alternative to the Beijing-backed Tazara railway, which pulls exports eastward to the Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
“We are delighted that the copper shipment will be sent initially to customers in the US, marking the concrete materialisation of the US-DR Congo strategic partnership agreement,” EGC chief executive Eric Kalala said.


Beijing has criticised the American moves, framing it as a threat to global trade stability. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said earlier this month that “China opposes any country setting up exclusive blocs to disrupt the international economic and trade order”.
He said all parties should “follow the principles of the market economy” and work to keep “industrial and supply chains stable and unimpeded.”
W. Gyude Moore, a distinguished fellow at the Energy for Growth Hub, said it remained to be seen whether the US model could beat China’s approach of taking direct ownership of mines.
“One has to remember that financial firepower is not an exclusive American advantage; China can replicate that many times over,” Moore said.
Moore said China’s direct ownership secured access during market downturns, a strategy Forge appeared to be mirroring.
But he added that the Group of Seven’s Build Back Better World and its successor, the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, “were meant to replace China’s Belt and Road Initiative and they didn’t”.
He also said that the depth of China’s role in the supply chain of key minerals made Washington’s goal of establishing a strategic reserve within the next two years “unrealistically optimistic”.
Verster said that while mining was geographically diverse, “China’s dominance in downstream processing affords it disproportionate influence” over supply and pricing as shown by Beijing’s recent use of export controls to give it political leverage.
With extended project timelines and entrenched concentration in processing capacity, Verster said he expected US reliance on imports – particularly from China – to “decline rather than disappear over the remainder of the decade”.
Lauren Johnston, a China-Africa specialist and senior research fellow at the AustChina Institute think tank, said that while China had been lending to African countries for years, the expansion of US financing was shifting the continental dynamic.
However, Johnston warned that competing for the highest bidder risked prioritising the short-term benefits of high prices over long-term industrialisation.
She cited the “Angola model” – where the African country traded oil to China in return for infrastructure that was built using foreign labour. She said that while this ensured a high price, there were significant long-term costs to the local economy, such as a lack of development.
“A compounding problem arises when these funds are not well invested in the public interest or development or when the opportunity to use resources for local industrialisation is bypassed altogether,” Johnston added, suggesting that the US-China competition today might carry a risk of a similar outcome.
To ensure these returns were not squandered, Johnston suggested that African nations launch Norway-style sovereign wealth funds.


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Washington aims to spend billions in Africa to build up a strategic reserve of key minerals, but analysts warn it may not be so simple


Washington aims to spend billions in Africa to build up a strategic reserve of key minerals, but analysts warn it may not be so simple.


Why US money may not be enough to break China’s rare earths dominance

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Washington aims to spend billions in Africa to build up a strategic reserve of key minerals, but analysts warn it may not be so simple

Washington aims to spend billions in Africa to build up a strategic reserve of key minerals, but analysts warn it may not be so simple