If the “Cold War” of the 20th century pitted the USA and the USSR against each other and their respective allies, including Zaire on the USA side, a new Cold War is raging between Uncle Sam’s country and China. Once again, the Congo is one of the battlefields, around its “strategic” or “critical” minerals, cobalt, copper, gold, coltan and lithium, considered essential to the success of the energy transition and the decarbonization of the global economy.
A few years ago, the USA lost interest in Africa from an economic point of view. Meanwhile, China has taken advantage of this to conquer almost without competition – thanks to its immense financial, technical and human capacities – the majority of Africa’s mining assets, particularly the copper and cobalt mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Of course, China has also taken advantage of an understandable desire on the part of African states to turn to commercial partners other than the West, by offering them attractive “mines for infrastructure” deals. It should be noted that China rarely honored this deal in the end, as the renegotiation of the Sicomines contract showed.
In the DRC in 2024, the vast majority of mining companies are owned by Chinese private and/or state capital, mainly in copper and cobalt. The producers and their subcontractors, as well as the buyers of these Congolese minerals, are almost entirely Chinese-owned. The best-known illustration of the handover between the USA and China was the purchase in 2016 by the Chinese state-owned company CMOC of the shares of the American group Freeport McMoran in the Congolese asset TFM.
Since then, Chinese domination of the Congolese mining sector has been evident, supported and defended, if necessary, by the Chinese embassy. Congolese mining companies with Chinese capital have even set up their own association, alongside the FEC Chamber of Mines, believing that the latter no longer sufficiently defends its members vis-à-vis the country’s authorities.
In the face of this omnipotence, and after allowing China to gain a considerable lead, the United States decided a few years ago to get back into the game in the DRC, and elsewhere in Africa. At first sight, no American mining company has any investment projects in the DRC, due to persistent weaknesses in the rule of law and corruption. Only a few American funds are interested in Congolese mining assets. On the other hand, American industry (and not just GAFAM or Tesla) is increasingly seeking to source African minerals without going through the stage of Chinese semi-finished products, on which it has become too dependent. The European Union is following the same trend.
For its part, the Congo, not least to avoid offending its strategic and monetary ally the USA, is also looking for partners other than Chinese companies to invest in. Indeed, the mining sector has not seen any new major investors since CMOC.
The USA and China have embarked on policies of mutual sanctions and restrictions (on semi-conductors, rare earths, etc.). The American president has already warned that he will heavily increase tariffs on Chinese products, notably electric vehicles.
Another recent example of this geostrategic war is the development, supported by the USA and the EU, of the “Lobito Corridor”, enabling minerals to be exported from Zambia and south-eastern DRC to the Atlantic Ocean, closer to the USA and Europe.
It is now up to the DRC to seize the opportunity of this new geostrategic war to take up positions favorable to its socio-economic development.
