10/14/23, 10:53 PM US Seeks to ‘Diversify’ China-Dominated Africa Minerals Supply Chain

CHINA NEWS

US Seeks to ‘Diversify’ China-Dominated Africa Minerals

Supply Chain
October 13, 2023 0:01 AM Kate Bartlett

FILE - A worker moves bags of lithium carbonate at an Albemarle Corp. facility, Oct. 6, 2022,
in Silver Peak, Nev.

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA — Africa is the site of a new battle for influence as
Washington ramps up efforts to build an alternative critical minerals supply chain to avoid
reliance on China. Beijing dominates the processing of critical minerals such as cobalt,
lithium and other resources from the continent that are needed for the transition to clean
energy and electric vehicles.

But at the Green Energy Africa Summit this week in Cape Town, which was held on the
sidelines of Africa Oil Week, few were willing to talk about it directly.

Asked whether the U.S. was playing catch-up with China, one of the panel’s speakers,
Deputy Assistant Secretary in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources
Kimberly Harrington, said simply that Washington was looking to "diversify."

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10/14/23, 10:53 PM US Seeks to ‘Diversify’ China-Dominated Africa Minerals Supply Chain

For his part, fellow panelist Chiza Charles Newton Chiumya, the African Union’s director
for industry, minerals, entrepreneurship and tourism, told VOA he didn’t want to use the
term "competing" to describe the relative approaches of the West and China but agreed
there is "lots of interest" in Africa’s critical minerals.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington was also circumspect when asked whether it sees
itself in competition with the U.S. for the natural resources.

"The tangible outcomes of China-Africa practical cooperation throughout the years are
there for all to see," spokesperson Liu Pengyu wrote in an emailed response.

"Supporting Africa’s development is the common responsibility of the international

community. We welcome stronger interest and investment in Africa from all quarters to
help increase the continent’s capability to achieve self-driven sustainable growth and
move forward towards modernization and prosperity."

Independent analysts, however, had a different take. The Chinese made it a "priority to
corner the market for critical minerals about two decades ago and supported that strategy
with massive public diplomacy and infrastructure investments into Africa — most of
which [came] via long-term debt," said Tony Carroll, adjunct professor in the African
studies program at Johns Hopkins University, told VOA earlier this year.

"The West woke up to this strategy too late and have been scrambling ever since."

Part of that response has been the Minerals Security Partnership set up by U.S. President
Joe Biden’s administration last year as a way of diversifying supply chains. Partners
include Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Japan, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, the
United Kingdom and the European Union.

"We see anywhere from three to six times demand growth for critical minerals across the
world. ... So, I think our sense is that no single government, no single company, can create
resilient supply chains," said Harrington at the Green Energy Africa Summit.

"If the COVID-19 pandemic showed us anything...one of the primary things it showed us is
that if we are too overly reliant on any one source in a supply chain … it creates
vulnerabilities, and so I think our approach overall on this issue is to make sure that we
have diversity," she told VOA during a Q&A after the panel.

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10/14/23, 10:53 PM US Seeks to ‘Diversify’ China-Dominated Africa Minerals Supply Chain

"When it comes to China in general, our secretary of state has been crystal clear, we have
areas in which we cooperate with China, we have areas in which we compete with China,
and that’s not going to change," she said. "This is a complex and consequential
relationship and we see it as such."

The view from Africa

While he didn’t want to use the word "competition" to describe the outside interest in
Africa’s critical minerals, the AU’s Chiumya stressed during the panel discussion that
Africa must benefit from its mineral wealth.

"This is not the first time that Africa is sitting at the frontier of having critical minerals. …
In the past we have lost a chance," he said, referring to the continent’s vast gold and
diamond deposits. "This time around we want to do things different."

"For a long time, our governments have not been able to effectively exploit the mineral
wealth that is there and ended up effectively going into very bad deals" which have not
contributed to the social and economic development of the African people, Chiumya
added.

Democratic Republic of the Congo President Felix Tshisekedi has been among the African
leaders demanding better terms from China for several years. His country produces some
70% of the world's cobalt but remains one of the world's least developed nations.

Tshisekedi complained in January that the Congolese people have not benefited from a
$6.2 billion minerals-for-infrastructure contract with China that was signed by his
predecessor.

Meanwhile in Zimbabwe, which has large lithium deposits, the government has imposed a
ban on exports of raw lithium ore, insisting that it be processed at home. A Chinese
company has since built a large lithium processing plant in the country.

U.S. critical mineral plans

Washington says environmental, social and governance standards are a key consideration
for the U.S. when it comes to its dealings with the continent regarding critical minerals.

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10/14/23, 10:53 PM US Seeks to ‘Diversify’ China-Dominated Africa Minerals Supply Chain

"We want to do our part to ramp up our efforts with like-minded partners in Africa to
promote sustainable clean energy supply chains in mining," said Harrington. She said it is
also important to help countries "do some domestic processing and refining, because it’s
really the value-added, that’s how you create jobs, that’s how you create local capacity."

At the U.S.-Africa Summit in Washington in December, the DRC, the U.S. and Zambia —
another major source of minerals — signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a
supply chain for electric car batteries, in what was widely seen by analysts as a move to
counter China.

Harrington said the MOU had "the overall goal of a lot of an EV (electric vehicle) battery
being processed and refined locally," even if some further refinement might need to be
done in a third country.

Additionally, on the sidelines of last month’s G20 summit, the U.S. and E.U. pledged to
develop the partially existing Lobito Corridor — a railway connecting the DRC’s cobalt belt
to Zambia’s copper belt and on to Angola’s port of Lobito, from where it can be shipped to
international markets.

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