In 2025, over 20 million electric vehicles were sold worldwide – more than one in four of all new cars bought that year. As sales rise, the demand for lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper and other critical minerals used to power their batteries is skyrocketing. The use of these metals in smartphones, computers and green energy sectors is increasing global competition for critical minerals further – with an estimated 30 per cent of reserves lying in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The abundance of these resources across the continent could offer African economies a windfall and a significant boost to their economic bargaining power. Efforts to seize this opportunity are already underway and were advanced last year when South Africa became the first African country to hold the G20 presidency. But as competition for Africa’s minerals increases, western governments, institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and NGOs believe the continent requires their principled intervention.
Without it, they fear, the continent’s critical resource boom will descend into a new ‘scramble for Africa’, played out between unscrupulous regional elites, exploitative western companies and bad actors from China and Russia. Such expectations are as unhelpful as they are outdated. As more African economies demonstrate their ability to manage their mineral wealth, can the West learn to engage with them as equals?
Controlling competition
Historically, African actors have had an upper hand in the global economy on a few occasions, prompting international competition. During the period of the Atlantic slave trade, African rulers skillfully played European trading companies against each other, refusing exclusive deals and preferring to benefit from competition among buyers to push up prices.
This continued into the 19th century after the slave trade ended, with African farmers shifting to the production of palm oil and other commodities in demand in industrializing Europe. Through the 1860s and 1870s, competition among Britain, France, Germany and the United States drove up the prices that African farmers and merchants could demand.
Frustration at this led 13 European countries and the US to convene at the Berlin Conference in 1884 in order ‘to regulate the conditions most favourable to the development of trade’ and to ‘obviate the misunderstanding and disputes’ that might arise between competing European powers. At the conference, they divided the continent among themselves.
Those same powers argued that European rule was necessary to improve the lives of Africans and protect them from enslavement by their own leaders. This rationalization revealed an assumption that Europeans would have to act as civilized moral guardians. This assumption overlooked the reality that the Berlin Conference was primarily designed to serve European economic interests by eliminating the very competition that had empowered African farmers and merchants.
It was resource exploitation dressed up as moral concern. Echoes of this paternalist logic persist today when western governments and NGOs voice concerns about Africa’s resource wealth, implying their oversight is needed to protect Africans from their rulers.
Responding to China
This dynamic of African countries’ growing bargaining power is now playing out in the context of Chinese investment in the continent and rising competition for critical minerals access. Over the past two decades, Beijing’s engagement in Africa has challenged the continent’s relationships with former colonial powers and the US. In 2023, the US invested $7.4 billion in energy and infrastructure projects in Africa while China’s total economic engagement across the continent, including in Zambia, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Mali and Nigeria, exceeded $21 billion.
This competition has increased infrastructure investment across Africa. In 2024, the US invested in the Lobito Railway Corridor, a transnational rail line that will ultimately connect Zambia, the DRC and Angola, while China invested in a Tanzania–Zambia railway.
Since President Donald Trump’s return to office last year, efforts to increase US access to Africa’s critical mineral market have intensified. In February, Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, hosted dozens of countries, including G7 members, to discuss forming a ‘strategic mineral alliance’ that would strengthen non-Chinese supply chains.
For years, the NGO and think-tank sector has warned of Chinese dominance on the continent, highlighting the environmental impact of its mining investments and the potential for ‘debt entrapment’ by Belt and Road Initiative loans. Last year, for example, the Atlantic Council workshop to discuss ‘the detrimental environmental effects of Chinese mining operations in West Africa’ pointed to the ‘policy gaps, weak institutions, and lack of regulatory enforcement’ that Chinese companies have exploited.
Doubting Africa
Implicit in this response is the assumption that western intervention is necessary to protect Africans from China’s economic incentives and the corruption of their own leaders. For instance, the negative western media coverage of Ibrahim Traoré, president of Burkina Faso, who took power in a 2022 coup, overlooks that he has since carried out many of the ‘resource sovereignty’ initiatives said to be beyond the capabilities of African leaders.
Once in power, he began to nationalize Burkina Faso’s vast mineral wealth, taking ownership of two gold mines from western firms he claimed were exploiting the country, introducing a new mining code that raised the government stake in all mines from 10 per cent to 15 per cent and approving a new gold refinery to protect onshore production.
This gold is then sold to the highest bidder, which is often China, Russia or Turkey. Burkina Faso’s government claims to have raised significant revenue from these initiatives and re-invested this in the country’s infrastructure and security. There are plenty of reasons to criticize Traoré’s rule, but it is notable that in NGO discussions of resource management in Africa, Traoré’s initiatives are often omitted.
Concerns about transparency and exploitation are not unwarranted. Last year, South Africa set up a G20 Critical Mineral Framework to address these risks and encourage mineral-rich nations to ensure contracts include capacity building, responsible mining and knowledge and technology exchange.
But framing the problem in terms of competition between the US and China says little about how African countries view the entry of China into the market. There are increasing examples of how resource-rich African economies are managing Chinese investment in ways that serve their national interest.
