![]() ![]() Since Mr Biden hosted more than 40 African leaders in Washington in December, several senior officials including Janet Yellen, the treasury secretary, have visited the continent. The third element is more active diplomacy in Africa. Though DFC only has one direct investment in mining at present (Mr Menell’s TechMet), it is keen to add more. In 2018 the Trump administration doubled the DFC’s (or rather, its predecessor’s) lending cap to $60bn and changed the rules so it can take equity stakes in firms, too. As well as the US Export-Import Bank, which offers trade-financing, there is the International Development Finance Corporation ( DFC). Its output will be sent for processing in Louisiana.Ī second strand in America’s approach involves its development agencies “de-risking” projects as they have done in, say, agriculture or the power sector. Convening the session, Mr Blinken highlighted a graphite mine in Mozambique, whose owner has received a loan from the American government, that ostensibly reduces the risk of conflict in the area by providing jobs to locals. The partnership is not restricted to projects in Africa, but representatives from Congo, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania and Zambia attended a meeting to discuss it in New York last year. This support might include lobbying by diplomats in the country where the mine will be built, finance for the project, or help in attracting private investment to it. But the idea seems to be that member countries will support their own firms, which propose mining projects that will meet high environmental, social and governance ( ESG) standards. The American-led partnership is a work in progress. “We cannot allow China to become an OPEC of one in critical minerals,” says an American official, referring to the oil cartel. It is little comfort that battery-makers are trying to use less cobalt, in part because of concerns about operating in Congo. ![]() ![]() America’s decision to allow a US firm to sell one of Congo’s largest copper-cobalt mines to a Chinese one in 2020 is seen in Washington as an enormous act of stupidity. In Congo, the source of about 70% of global production, Chinese entities owned or had stakes in 15 of 19 cobalt-producing mines as of 2020. Though China is less dominant in mining, where its firms compete with multinational majors, Western governments are concerned that, without additional supply, firms will struggle to feed new downstream processing facilities that officials are keen to see built in friendly countries.Īmerica views cobalt, which is used in batteries, as a cautionary tale. “China has had free rein for 15 years while the rest of the world was sleeping,” says Brian Menell, chief executive of TechMet, a minerals firm. ![]() China refines 68% of the world’s nickel, 40% of copper, 59% of lithium and 73% of cobalt, according to a report in July by the Brookings Institution, an American think-tank. The second problem, at least for the West, is China’s outsized influence on supply chains. Demand for rare-earth elements-metals in the esoteric parts of the periodic table used in everything from wind-turbine magnets to fighter jets-may be seven times higher by the end of the next decade. The International Energy Agency, an official forecaster, reckons that makers of clean-energy technologies will need 40 times more lithium, 25 times more graphite and about 20 times more nickel and cobalt by 2040 than in 2020. The first is a global shortfall in the minerals that will be needed if the world is to meet its climate goals. American officials see Africa as helping to solve two problems. ![]()
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