From Congolese cobalt to Zimbabwean lithium and Guinean iron ore, Chinese companies have built commanding positions across Africa’s mineral supply chains. African governments are pushing to capture more value at home, but the contest is not just about processing. In finance and routes to market, Beijing still holds its strongest advantages.

China’s commanding position in Africa’s mineral economy was built over decades through mine ownership and infrastructure finance, fuelled by the Asian giant’s industrial demand. Beijing retains advantages accumulated across the entire supply chain despite a late push by Brussels and Washington and demands from governments of key producing countries for “beneficiation” and legislation to capture greater economic value from raw mined minerals.

For Beijing, a defining early deal came in 2008, when Chinese partners took 68% of the Sicomines infrastructure-for-minerals joint venture in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), linking copper and cobalt development to infrastructure investment. Chinese companies subsequently built extensive positions in Congolese copper and cobalt and became dominant investors in Zimbabwean lithium, while China established an even stronger advantage in processing.

Western governments began constructing alternatives much later. In December 2022, the US signed a memorandum with the DRC and Zambia to support the development of an integrated electric-vehicle battery value chain.

African governments were also pressing for more value to remain on the continent. At the South Africa-China Business Forum in Beijing in September 2024, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa identified mining and “beneficiation of critical minerals” among the areas for deeper cooperation and invited Chinese companies to manufacture more products in South Africa.

China’s deep roots in the DRC

In 2024, infrastructure commitments under the DRC’s Sicomines arrangement were expanded to $7bn. By March 2025, a Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis found that Chinese companies owned or held stakes in 15 of the DRC’s largest copper and cobalt mines.

CMOC Group (HKEX: 3993; SSE: 603993), formerly China Molybdenum, became the clearest example. Its Tenke Fungurume and Kisanfu operations made it the world’s largest cobalt producer, with record output of 117,549 tonnes in 2025. CMOC now owns 80% of Tenke Fungurume and 71.25% of Kisanfu, while its Congolese operations produced about 741,100 tonnes of copper that year, as IntelliNews reported in September 2026.

Kinshasa also began using its market power more aggressively in 2025. After cobalt prices fell to nine-year lows amid oversupply, the DRC suspended exports in February. The ban was replaced by quotas in October, with annual limits of 96,600 tonnes for both 2026 and 2027, including 9,600 tonnes reserved for strategic purposes.

The restrictions helped drive a sharp recovery in prices, but the strategy carried risks. S&P Global analysts Alice Yu and Jomar Camposano warned that excessive tightening could accelerate substitution and demand destruction even as quotas pushed the market towards deficit. CMOC opposed the regime, while commodities trader Glencore (LSE: GLEN) supported restrictions aimed at restoring balance.

The DRC also illustrates the downstream imbalance. The country accounts for roughly three-quarters of global cobalt mine production, while China dominates global cobalt processing, with much Congolese output exported as cobalt hydroxide or other intermediates for further treatment abroad, as IntelliNews reported in September.

Local processing was nevertheless advancing, sometimes with Chinese capital still deeply involved. At Kamoa-Kakula, Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN) and China’s Zijin Mining each hold an indirect 39.6% interest, with the DRC government holding 20%. The complex includes a 500,000-tonne-per-year copper smelter that began commissioning in November 2025 and produced its first copper anodes in December.

Ivanhoe executive co-chairman Robert Friedland called the move a “transformational change” as the operation shifted “from producing copper in concentrate in huge volumes, to producing copper anodes for sale to consumers all over the world”.

Europe and Guinea widen the contest

At the AU-EU summit in Luanda in November 2025, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe would step up critical-raw-materials projects that “strengthen value chains and create value jobs”.

“We do not want to be wholly reliant on a single country,” European Commission Executive Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné told the European Parliament later that month, citing an EU raw-materials partnership with South Africa.

Guinea’s Simandou iron ore project offered a different model of competing interests. Rio Tinto (LSE: RIO; ASX: RIO) chief executive Simon Trott described the project at the start of operations in November 2025 as “an exceptional new source of high-grade iron ore” sought by customers for low-carbon steelmaking.

In early December, the Winning Youth left Guinea’s newly built Morebaya port carrying about 200,000 tonnes of high-grade Simandou ore, marking the start of commercial exports from one of the world’s largest undeveloped deposits after almost three decades of delays.

The roughly $20bn project combines substantial Chinese, Western and African interests. Rio Tinto and a Chinalco-led consortium control the SimFer mining venture, while Winning Consortium Simandou is backed by Singapore-based Winning International Group and China’s Weiqiao Aluminium, with China Baowu Steel Group holding a major interest in the WCS mine and infrastructure projects. The Guinean state holds 15% interests in the mining ventures and shared infrastructure.

Simandou also shows why mine ownership alone gives an incomplete picture. According to the International Energy Agency, China is the leading refiner for 19 of the 20 strategic minerals it tracks, with an average market share of about 70%.

Beneficiation moves up the agenda

In 2026, beneficiation became a more explicit policy priority across the continent.

In February, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema argued that his country should work with whichever partners offered mutually beneficial terms rather than pick sides among China, the US and Europe.

“Africa should not continue exporting raw materials as the main business. The mind frame must change,” he said, adding that value addition should be central to the continent’s mining model.

China has publicly endorsed parts of that agenda on several occasions over the past two years. Meeting DRC President Félix Tshisekedi in Beijing in September 2024, ahead of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Beijing was ready to deepen cooperation in “mineral products processing” and help the DRC “turn its resource advantage into momentum for development”.

The wider FOCAC Beijing Action Plan adopted that week went further, committing China and African governments to promote mineral value addition in Africa through smelting technology, expanded processing capacity and supporting infrastructure. It also said China would support local value chains, manufacturing and the deep processing of critical minerals, presenting beneficiation as part of a broader industrialisation strategy rather than simply a response to Western competition.

Beijing has continued to endorse local processing as part of its African minerals strategy. In August, Chinese Ambassador to Uganda Wu Guangrong and Uganda’s energy and minerals minister agreed to deepen cooperation in “local processing and value addition” and coordination across the entire industrial chain.

Beijing is still financing the process — and partly owns many processors

Much of Africa’s beneficiation drive is being financed or operated by Chinese companies, so local processing may alter China’s role without reducing its influence.

Zimbabwe is heavily Chinese-backed. A 2026 Boston University Global Development Policy Center study lists Arcadia as owned by Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt (SSE: 603799), Bikita by Sinomine Resource Group (SZSE: 002738) and Sabi Star by Chengxin Lithium Group (SZSE: 002240), while Sichuan Yahua Industrial Group (SZSE: 002497) is involved at Kamativi.

Brookings senior fellow Landry Signé argued in June that intensifying competition for critical minerals was giving African governments greater leverage to seek technology transfer, infrastructure and better commercial terms. “The global race for minerals gives Africa unprecedented leverage to demand technology transfer, infrastructure, and fairer terms in exchange for access,” he wrote.

He also cautioned against treating beneficiation as a one-size-fits-all strategy, arguing that countries should focus on stages of the value chain where they hold an advantage and use regional integration to connect extraction, processing and manufacturing.

A September 21 report by the Stockholm Environment Institute and the International Renewable Energy Agency similarly argued that Africa’s mineral wealth would generate broader development benefits only if extraction were linked more closely to local value creation. The report highlighted employment, locally provided services and stronger domestic industry as potential benefits of building more value into African mineral supply chains.

Zimbabwe had already moved in that direction in February, suspending exports of raw minerals, including lithium concentrate. The country exported about 1.13mn tonnes of spodumene concentrate to China in 2025, equivalent to roughly 15% of Chinese lithium concentrate imports.

Huayou subsequently moved Arcadia further downstream into lithium sulphate, and Zimbabwe made its first commercial lithium sulphate export from the mine in 2026. Industry representatives projected annual lithium-sector turnover of about $1bn as additional processing capacity came on stream, IntelliNews reported in August.

Also in February, DRC President Félix Tshisekedi linked the search for competing investors directly to industrialisation. Courting US investment in Washington, he said: “We want industrial projects that create local jobs, transfer technology, and respect environmental and social standards.”

Beijing reinforced its position a month later, when the DRC signed a mining cooperation agreement with China covering geological data sharing, investment protection and local mineral processing. Chinese groups including CMOC, Zijin Mining (HKEX: 2899; SSE: 601899) and Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt retain major positions in Congolese copper and cobalt, as IntelliNews has noted.

By July, African governments were pressing Chinese investors more explicitly on value addition.

“For too long our mining sector was more on extraction and export of raw materials, a system that did not work for us,” Namibian President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah told Chinese investors in Beijing. She urged them to “come and manufacture in Namibia, come and process in Namibia, come and innovate in Namibia”.

During the same visit, Nandi-Ndaitwah told China General Nuclear Power Corporation that Namibia wanted deeper cooperation focused on “value addition, technology transfer, skills development” and sustainable use of the country’s natural resources. CGN operates Namibia’s Husab uranium mine.

The Western counterweight

Western governments were simultaneously trying to build alternative supply chains.

“DFC financing will help establish a western-aligned source of critical minerals,” US Development Finance Corporation chief executive Ben Black told a congressional hearing in July, referring to the Lobito Corridor.

The US Development Finance Corporation is contributing $553mn to financing for the Lobito Atlantic Railway, part of a $753mn package with the Development Bank of Southern Africa. The approximately 1,300-km line connects the Atlantic port of Lobito with the DRC border and is intended to increase transport capacity tenfold.

US trade policy was also reshaping the copper market. A 50% Section 232 tariff that took effect on August 1, 2025, applies to semi-finished copper products and copper-intensive derivatives, while refined cathode and other copper input materials are exempt.

US imports of Congolese copper cathode reached a record 53,290 tonnes in July 2026, accounting for 23.9% of US copper imports that month and exceeding the volume imported from the DRC during all of 2024, IntelliNews reported in September.

The tariff structure reinforced cathode’s appeal. Congolese cathode also gained acceptance among US industrial consumers while trading at discounts to COMEX-approved metal. The trade data identify country of origin rather than individual mines and do not show that the metal was necessarily diverted from China.

In August, S&P Global Market Intelligence said China still retained a substantial head start in African mineral production and processing, while much recent US investment remained focused on projects yet to reach production. It identified access to capital, technology and reliable power as major obstacles to shifting more refining and manufacturing onto the continent.

Andy Home, senior metals columnist at Reuters, likewise noted in September that power supply, infrastructure, logistics, technical capacity and policy can matter more than mineral reserves themselves in determining whether processing projects are commercially viable.

Washington also sharpened its message. “Critical minerals are a top priority for President Trump and Secretary Rubio,” US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Frank Garcia said in Nairobi in September as the US backed Kenya’s push to develop local mineral processing.

The DRC created a DRC-USA Task Force the same month to accelerate projects in mining, energy, transport and domestic processing under the two countries’ strategic minerals partnership, IntelliNews reported on September 16.

Europe followed days later. “We are more than 80% dependent on China for many critical raw materials. 90% for some rare earths,” von der Leyen said, emphasising that the EU would establish a European critical-raw-materials corporation to help secure and stockpile supplies.

China’s advantage is harder to dislodge

African governments are exerting greater pressure for local value addition even as the US and EU expand competing supply-chain initiatives, and Beijing defends positions accumulated over two decades.

The contest is not simply over who owns Africa’s mines. It is over who finances them, who processes their output and which transport and industrial networks connect them to global markets.

Export restrictions, processing mandates and competing infrastructure projects are giving African governments more leverage. China, however, retains advantages accumulated across the entire supply chain.

For now, Africa’s push for greater control is reshaping China’s role rather than displacing it.