How cobalt, lithium, and quiet capital are redrawing Africa’s global alliances
In a remote stretch of Zambia’s Copperbelt, a new kind of prospector is drilling—not with pickaxes and payloaders, but with algorithms. KoBold Metals, a California-based startup backed by venture capital from Breakthrough Energy Ventures (whose limited partners include Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos), is deploying artificial intelligence to hunt for cobalt, lithium, and nickel. Their goal: securing the metals that will power the 21st-century economy.
Africa holds the keys to the global energy transition. It is home to roughly 80% of the world’s known cobalt reserves, along with vast quantities of lithium, graphite, manganese, and rare earths essential for electric vehicles, semiconductors, and renewable energy infrastructure. As major economies scramble to future-proof their supply chains, a quiet scramble is underway for control over the continent’s subterranean wealth.
The participants are not just governments. Private capital—particularly from Silicon Valley, Gulf sovereigns, and quietly aligned family offices—is playing an increasingly outsized role in what is becoming a geoeconomic chessboard.
From Wildcatters to Data Miners
KoBold’s presence in Zambia and Angola is emblematic of the new approach. Rather than acquiring legacy mines, the company uses geophysical modeling and machine learning to identify previously overlooked mineral systems. It is a high-stakes bet on both technological edge and long-term control of high-leverage inputs.
The company’s backers are not interested in the commodity game—they are hedging against geopolitical risk. “Supply chains are the new oil,” said a senior adviser at one of the fund’s LPs. “If you control the inputs to batteries, chips, and grids, you control the tempo of the next economy.”
Others are following suit. Elon Musk’s Tesla has signed offtake agreements with Congolese cobalt suppliers, while Glencore, a legacy player in African mining, is quietly restructuring partnerships to accommodate both Western financiers and Chinese stakeholders. Meanwhile, Gulf sovereign wealth funds—particularly from Abu Dhabi and Riyadh—have begun targeting greenfield projects with an eye toward long-term diversification away from hydrocarbons.
The Chinese Edge
Beijing is, as ever, already there. Chinese firms control or co-finance over 70% of cobalt production in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), process over 85% of the world’s rare earths, and have spent two decades building the logistical and political infrastructure to support it. Their model—state-backed, vertically integrated, and largely indifferent to Western ESG rhetoric—has proven resilient.
What is changing is the counter-effort. The Biden administration’s diplomatic overtures in Africa, including a rare presidential visit to Angola in late 2024, signal a recalibrated U.S. approach. The goal is not to displace China, but to reduce critical dependencies. A senior White House official described the strategy as “risk diffusion, not decoupling.”
This has translated into investment guarantees, development finance, and quiet encouragement of U.S.-aligned firms to invest—albeit with more palatable governance frameworks.
Africa’s Asymmetric Leverage
African states, meanwhile, are no longer passive participants. From Namibia to Zimbabwe, governments are pushing for value-add processing, local equity stakes, and mineral-backed monetary proposals.
The African Development Bank has floated the idea of a pan-African currency unit (the African Unit of Account, or AUA), backed in part by rare earth assets—a move designed to insulate the continent from dollar volatility and increase negotiating power in international trade. While still nascent, such initiatives signal a shift in posture: resource nationalism dressed in financial innovation.
The key players understand the moment. “This is a once-in-a-century window for Africa,” said a Ghana-based sovereign advisory executive. “If we get this right, we’re not just suppliers of raw materials—we’re architects of the next economy.”
A Quiet but Expanding War
For now, the competition remains quiet—no headlines, no speeches, just acquisitions, partnerships, and data.
But behind the scenes, a subtle realignment is underway. Family offices in Geneva are syndicating deals with private equity arms of Gulf states. Former diplomats are brokering agreements between Canadian juniors and regional governors in Malawi. AI startups with no prior mining experience are becoming stakeholders in billion-dollar energy corridors.
This is not the colonial extractivism of old—but nor is it neutral. Control of rare earths, cobalt, and lithium determines who builds the next generation of vehicles, devices, and data centers. And whoever builds those, builds the future.
In that light, Africa is not just a supplier of minerals. It is the stage upon which the architecture of post-carbon geopolitics is being written—one deal, one drill site, one quiet billionaire at a time.
