Extraction / Resources & Sovereignty
In mid-January 2026, the Democratic Republic of the Congo delivered to Washington a vetted shortlist of 44 state-owned mining projects spanning copper, cobalt, lithium, manganese, coltan, gold, tin, wolframite and hydrocarbons. The list, prepared under the terms of the US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement signed on December 4, 2025, includes Gecamines’ Mutoshi copper-cobalt project and a germanium-processing venture, Kisenge’s manganese, gold and cassiterite licences, Sokimo’s four gold permits, Cominiere’s lithium licences, and Sakima’s coltan, gold and wolframite assets. On February 3, 2026, at the Critical Minerals Ministerial in Washington, Deputy Secretary of State Landau witnessed the signing of an MoU between Glencore and the US-backed Orion Critical Mineral Consortium for a potential acquisition of 40% of Mutanda Mining and Kamoto Copper Company, two of the DRC’s largest producing assets. The Orion Consortium was launched in 2025 by Orion Resource Partners and the US International Development Finance Corporation. This is not an exploration agreement. It is a transfer framework for operational mines and state-owned assets from Chinese-adjacent control to American-backed ownership.
The geopolitical context gives the shortlist its weight. Chinese firms currently control approximately 80% of the DRC’s mining output. CMOC operates Tenke Fungurume, the world’s second-largest cobalt source, after acquiring it from Freeport-McMoRan. The 2007 Sicomines deal granted Chinese miners tax breaks running to 2040 in exchange for $9 billion in promised infrastructure investment, of which approximately $6 billion materialised. The DRC holds over 70% of known global cobalt reserves, significant copper resources (3.3 million tonnes produced in 2024), and emerging lithium, coltan and germanium deposits. The Ministry of Mines estimates that more than 90% of the country’s mining potential remains untapped, with an estimated value exceeding $25 trillion. For Washington, the DRC is the single most consequential jurisdiction in the global critical minerals competition. For Kinshasa, the American interest represents the first credible counterweight to Chinese dominance in its mining sector in nearly two decades.
The shortlist is embedded within a broader diplomatic architecture. The US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement was signed alongside the Washington Accords, a US-brokered peace framework between the DRC and Rwanda aimed at ending the M23 conflict in eastern Congo. The mineral partnership and the peace process are explicitly linked: the US will help oversee regional security in return for privileged access to critical mineral supply chains. The DRC-Rwanda peace agreement was signed in Washington on June 27, 2025. The mineral shortlist followed in January 2026. The sequencing is deliberate. Kinshasa is offering mineral access as the commercial dimension of a security arrangement, leveraging its geological endowment to extract security commitments that it could not obtain through diplomacy alone.
The complications are immediate and documented. Several of the 44 shortlisted assets sit in politically fraught zones or carry permitting disputes. The Rubaya mine, which supplies approximately 15% of global coltan, is located in territory held by M23 and the AFC armed group. Its inclusion on the shortlist signals that Kinshasa wants stronger US action on M23, but investment is unlikely while the armed group holds territory. The State Department has acknowledged the difficulty: US officials described the process of “de-risking” DRC mineral assets as ongoing, with several deals stalling because of security conditions, governance concerns and legal disputes. The Glencore-Orion MoU for Mutanda and KCC is the most advanced transaction, but its completion depends on due diligence, regulatory approvals across multiple jurisdictions, and the resolution of existing contractual arrangements with Chinese and Swiss-origin shareholders.
The constitutional challenge filed in January 2026 by Congolese lawyers and human rights defenders adds a domestic dimension. The petitioners argue that the Strategic Partnership Agreement was negotiated without parliamentary oversight, in conditions of opacity, and that it risks transferring sovereign assets to foreign interests without adequate national benefit. The Oakland Institute has described the accord as one that “appears poised to benefit corporate and financial interests eager to access the country’s vast mineral wealth” while “promises of peace and security remain hollow.” Whether the constitutional challenge succeeds or not, it introduces a domestic political variable that could slow implementation.
For the broader continent, the DRC shortlist is the most concrete test case of a bargaining strategy that several African governments are attempting simultaneously: leveraging critical mineral endowments to extract concessions from competing global powers. The multipolar article in this series documented how the number and intensity of competing external offers create negotiating space that African governments can exploit. The DRC is exploiting it more directly than any other country. It is offering the US a vetted menu of 44 assets, linked to a security partnership, with the explicit objective of diluting Chinese control over its mining sector. The question is whether the bargaining produces outcomes that benefit the DRC beyond the mineral transaction itself.
The precedents are mixed. The 2007 Sicomines deal with China was also presented as a minerals-for-infrastructure exchange. Of $9 billion promised, approximately $6 billion materialised. The infrastructure built, including roads and hospitals, has been criticised for quality and maintenance. Chinese firms gained long-term tax concessions and operational control over major assets. The structural risk for the DRC is that the American deal replicates the pattern in different colours: privileged access for a new set of foreign investors, with limited industrial capacity, processing infrastructure or manufacturing value added retained in-country. The DRC’s cobalt export ban, imposed in early 2026, is partly a response to this dynamic: Kinshasa is trying to force downstream processing on Congolese soil rather than exporting raw material for refining elsewhere.
The Lobito Corridor, documented extensively in this series, is the physical infrastructure link that connects the DRC mineral shortlist to US strategic objectives. The $553 million DFC loan for the Angolan section, the AFC-led $5 billion construction programme, and the first shipment of Kamoa-Kakula anodes via Lobito in Q1 2026 all form part of the same architecture: an American-financed export corridor for Central African minerals that does not pass through Chinese logistics networks. The Orion Consortium’s potential acquisition of Mutanda and KCC would place US-backed capital inside producing assets whose output could flow through the Lobito Corridor to Atlantic markets. The supply chain, from mine to rail to port to refinery, is being assembled as an integrated system.
Other African countries are reading the DRC’s strategy and calibrating their own positions. Zambia, which targets 3 million tonnes of annual copper production by 2031, is simultaneously negotiating with US, Chinese and Gulf investors. Angola is positioning the Lobito Corridor and the Southern Corridor (Namibe-Mocamedes) as twin Atlantic exit points. Guinea’s Simandou iron ore project involves Chinese consortium partners (WCS, backed by Baowu Steel) alongside Rio Tinto. Pensana’s rare earth project in Angola is financed by US EXIM and linked to the eVAC facility in South Carolina. Each country is playing the same game at different scales: using mineral endowments as leverage in a competition where the US, China, the EU and Gulf states are all making offers.
The structural question is whether this competition produces genuine industrial diversification for African economies or whether it reproduces the extractive model under new ownership. The DRC’s shortlist offers mines to American investors. It does not offer processing plants, battery factories or EV manufacturing facilities. The value chain remains structured so that raw materials leave the continent and processed products return. The cobalt export ban is an attempt to break this pattern, but its effectiveness depends on whether the DRC can attract the refining investment that would make in-country processing commercially viable. At current processing costs and infrastructure constraints, most refiners prefer to ship concentrate to China, where 90% of cobalt refining capacity exists, rather than build new capacity in the DRC.
For investors and operators, the DRC shortlist creates both opportunity and uncertainty. The opportunity is clear: 44 projects across critical minerals in the world’s most resource-rich jurisdiction, with US government backing and DFC co-investment. The uncertainty is equally clear: constitutional challenges, security conditions in eastern DRC, the complexity of unwinding Chinese contractual positions, governance concerns that the State Department itself acknowledges, and the risk that the peace process falters. The minerals are there. The geological endowment is established. The competing interest from the world’s two largest economies is real. What determines the outcome is whether the institutional, security and legal conditions allow the transactions to close, and whether the terms of those transactions leave enough value in the DRC to justify the sovereign assets being offered.