China’s control over Africa’s minerals provokes US catch-up

The US is doing its utmost to catch up with China in a part of the world that has become central to the green transformation: the “copper belt” in Africa.

Both Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are rich in minerals that are critical in the production of batteries and other renewable energy components.

The two states have become the latest areas of conflict over advantages between Washington and Beijing.

As part of its stated ambition to challenge China’s hegemony, the Biden administration found an opportunity to revive a century-old railway linking major African mines to an Atlantic port. The US is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in this project, called the “Lobito Corridor”.

China established a railway in the late 1970s, heading east from the copper belt area to the port of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Subsequently, a Chinese state-owned company rebuilt Angola’s main railway at an estimated cost of $2 billion.

Over the past decade, President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative has seen China invest about $1 trillion in infrastructure projects in developing countries.

The United States has not come close to keeping pace with those investments.

However, that may now change with the “Lobito Corridor” project, a major project in U.S. President Joe Biden’s plan, and the Group of Seven’s plan to invest $600 billion in similar projects over the next five years.

But China has not only dominated infrastructure projects; Chinese companies controlled most of the Congo’s copper production, and the United States invested little in Zambia’s mining sector.