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Summary
Background
The escalating China-US trade war has entered a decisive phase, with strategic minerals and green technologies emerging as central battlegrounds in the evolving geopolitical contest. Both Beijing and Washington have turned to resource diplomacy, securing access to lithium, cobalt, rare earths and graphite to power their green transitions and protect national supply chains. President Trump has announced that the US has made a deal with China to relax restrictions on critical raw materials trade. While this might temporarily ease the economic tensions, it remains unclear if it will end the trade war.
Along with the recent US-Ukraine deal that links Ukraine’s critical mineral resources to its post-war reconstruction, and the US-brokered DR Congo-Rwanda agreement modeled on Ukraine’s reconstruction framework, the China-US trade war highlights President Trump’s broader geo-economic strategy to reconfigure global supply chains for critical minerals and secure sustainable access to essential industrial inputs for the US. At its core, this strategy aims to sever reliance on China for critical intermediate inputs and manufacturing capacity while expanding the American global export footprint. The impact is already palpable, with newly imposed tariffs targeting over USD 400 billion worth of annual Chinese exports to the US, rattling Beijing and sending shockwaves through African countries that rely heavily on Chinese mining investments and commodity exports. Despite recent progress in talks in London aimed at upholding the Geneva framework, the trade relationship between the two countries remains volatile and diplomatically fragile.
The US has been a crucial market for China since the early 1990s. In 2024, it constituted 12% of China’s total exports – valued at USD 3.58 trillion – and contributed 30% of China’s overall trade surplus, which stood at USD 1 trillion. Against this backdrop, constrained access to the US market poses a significant threat to China’s manufacturing- and export-led growth model. This model relies, in part, on raw material imports from sub-Saharan Africa, particularly critical minerals central to green energy and digital technologies.
According to a recent International Energy Agency (IEA) report, sub-Saharan Africa has a strong profile in these minerals. The DR Congo (DRC) and Guinea possess the largest cobalt (66.5%) and bauxite (28.9%) reserves in the world, respectively. Zambia ranks among the top global producers of copper (3.3%), while Zimbabwe is emerging as a key source of lithium (9%). South Africa leads in reserves of manganese (49.3%), platinum-group metals (53.3%) and nickel (0.8%), while Mozambique is one of the world’s leading producers of graphite (2.1%).
China’s penetration and dominance in these countries is unquestionable, particularly in the DRC, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, where it sources critical raw materials for its upstream global green technology (greentech) supply chains. For instance, in 2024, 29% of China’s exports to the US comprised consumer electronics and electrical equipment, highlighting the crucial role that these countries play in sustaining the China-US trade flow of greentech inputs and manufactured electronics.
However, the tide may be shifting, offering the DRC, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique a rare opportunity to leverage their critical mineral reserves and reposition themselves not only as direct sources of green energy inputs to the US, but as competitive, low-cost, clean-tech manufacturing hubs and markets for global investors. With global demand for these inputs projected to surge by nearly 600% by 2050, such a repositioning could accelerate domestic green industrialisation while integrating these countries and the broader African continent into the strategic core of the emerging, global clean-tech ecosystem.
With global demand for green energy inputs set to rise by nearly 600% by 2050, the DRC, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique must forge diversified green industrial partnerships and reposition themselves not just as suppliers of critical minerals, but as strategic hubs and markets for low-cost clean-tech manufacturing.
Trump’s recent visit to the Arabian Gulf further underscores his strategic realignment to isolate China from the US trade equation. A key objective was to open new markets for American goods while reinforcing supply chains for critical minerals and advanced technologies. During the visit, he actively promoted US-manufactured products, resulting in significant sales agreements involving aircraft, military equipment and energy components, which expanded the US commercial footprint in the Gulf Arab states. At the same time, strategic sourcing agreements were established with Gulf-based firms to supply critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements (REEs), sourced both from the Gulf and Africa, for export to the US.
In another significant diplomatic development, the DRC and Rwanda have reportedly signed a Ukraine-style agreement initially proposed to the US by the DRC earlier this year. The deal offers American access to the DRC’s vast mineral reserves, particularly cobalt, in exchange for support in resolving the protracted conflict in eastern Congo. President Trump is widely expected to view this agreement not only as a strategic extension of his critical minerals diplomacy but also as a calculated move to challenge and diminish China’s entrenched dominance in the DRC’s cobalt mining sector. How Beijing will respond remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: A new front is opening in the great power race for control over critical mineral supply chains, with the DRC emerging as a battlefield and as Africa’s most strategic test case.
The DR Congo is fast emerging as a new frontline in the great power race for critical minerals and as Africa’s most strategic test case.
China’s test to walk the talk and Africa’s chance to anchor green industrialisation
In the event that this trade war continues, China is poised to recalibrate its foreign investment strategy to cushion the likely slowdown in its industrial capacity. While this strategic shift presents both risks and opportunities for Africa, the implications demand proactive policy responses from African governments.
On the downside, Africa may experience a further decline in raw material exports to China, which have historically been the backbone of Africa-China trade. Additionally, China might scale back its traditional ‘Angola model’ of mining investments and resource-backed, hard infrastructure financing.
In contrast, China’s reorientation might open avenues for building green mineral value chains in Africa, including domestic lithium-ion battery production, solar panel assembly and green hydrogen initiatives, with a focus on serving local markets. Moreover, given Africa’s persistent food insecurity due to climate change and China’s growing demand for agricultural products such as tobacco, citrus peel, edible fruits, melons, nuts, sesame and mutton, China may divert more of its outbound investment toward agricultural mechanisation and smart farming technologies.
These dynamics coincide with China’s evolving priorities and role in shaping Africa’s industrial landscape through localised, demand-driven investment, as emphasised in the 2024 Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) ministerial conference. During this meeting, China signalled a strategic shift from hard infrastructure financing in Africa to digital infrastructure, green energy and people-centred development. It also expressed a commitment to diversify its African import basket, with greater emphasis on value-added agricultural products. Perhaps now is the ideal time for China to fulfil its FOCAC 2024 commitments and demonstrate to the world that it genuinely supports Africa’s development initiatives.
Perhaps now is the time for China to fulfil its FOCAC 2024 commitments and demonstrate to the world that it genuinely supports Africa’s development initiatives.
How Africa must act
To capitalise on this shift, African governments must adopt unified, forward-looking policies. The African Union (AU) and African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat can convene trade ministers and foreign affairs officials to craft joint engagement strategies and negotiation frameworks. They should collaborate and negotiate as a bloc to secure more favourable international partnerships that prioritise local value addition. These agreements must align mineral diplomacy with the AfCFTA, the African Green Minerals Strategy, the Africa Mining Vision and green manufacturing targets.
This alignment will establish larger, more attractive green product and technology markets, fostering cross-border infrastructure and industrial development. Strategic investment policies in special economic zones (SEZs) focused on green manufacturing (including agro-processing), smart agriculture, clean technology, research and development (R&D) and skills development could attract Chinese investors seeking stable, predictable, policy-coherent environments.
Prioritising innovations such as solar mini-grids, electric mobility platforms, solar- and wind-powered irrigation systems and low-carbon cement production would not only align with China’s green ambitions but also attract partnerships with global greentech leaders, helping Africa industrialise more sustainably while reducing dependence on external value chains. These initiatives are also key in tackling Africa’s trade deficit with China, which has steadily increased from USD 2.31 billion in 2000 to USD 82.68 billion in 2023.
To mitigate the risks of investor dependency, African governments must proactively begin to leverage their ‘newfound’ geostrategic importance to diversify their investor portfolios beyond China and the US by applying the same strategic policy frameworks to a broader set of both emerging and traditional European (the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany) investors.
The 2023 Africa Attractiveness Report highlights the growing significance of India, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Canada and Switzerland as emerging investors on the continent. India, in particular, has rapidly expanded its footprint, with capital investments totalling USD 22.2 billion in 2023, second only to France, three times that of the US and nearly nine times that of China. The UAE, Canada and Switzerland have also registered capital investments amounting to USD 49.9 billion, USD 5.1 billion and USD 2.2 billion, respectively. Continued governance reforms are essential to sustain and scale this momentum and to attract more investment from countries – especially those across the Global North – with heightened sensitivity to corruption and transparency standards.
Across all the investors, the green industrialisation strategy must be applied in ways that do not reproduce historically exploitative relations, where investors engage with minimal obligations for local value addition and/or technology transfer. The way to achieve this will be to pursue green industrialisation backed by intentional policy and smart diplomacy that shifts Africa’s status from source to hub, and from extraction to innovation.
The endgame cannot simply be better terms of trade and investment. It should amount to trade and investment deals with just transition safeguards and obligations to share technology, co-own intellectual property and transfer knowledge. This will create a competitive greentech base that supports local value addition, manufacturing and R&D. Just transition safeguards encompass procedural and distributive initiatives designed to share benefits locally and transfer ownership and decision-making power to the communities most affected by such deals. Namibia’s 2023 ban on raw lithium exports and Zimbabwe’s requirement for in-country refining exemplify local processing mandates that could be emulated. However, investors seeking to advance value-addition initiatives in Africa continue to grapple with persistent infrastructure deficits and policy inconsistencies.
The continent’s greentech transition presents a strategic opportunity to address some of these barriers. For example, the development of solar plants and wind farms can mitigate energy supply constraints, thereby supporting downstream beneficiation and industrial upgrading efforts.
In conclusion, by engaging all its investment partners through transparent, value-added, innovation-oriented investment frameworks, African governments can create a competitive, multi-polar investment landscape – one that enhances bargaining power, accelerates technology transfer and supports sustainable, green industrial transformation.
Source: APRI