The Mineral Palimpsest of Africa’s Green Transition

There are times in history when the global economy appears to mutter beneath its own breath. These are moments when the real story is not proclaimed but insinuated, when the story is written not on a page but in the palimpsest beneath it. Africa’s mineral heartlands are currently engaged in exactly such a ‘sotto voce’ reconfiguration.

It has become almost banal to observe that the green transition is ‘mineral-intensive’. What is far less banal (and has become increasingly less deniable) is that the architecture of decarbonisation now rests upon endowments that Africa has long supplied to the entire world, but rarely controlled. The continent, accustomed to occupying the footnotes of resource history, is beginning to write within the margins again.

Take, for instance, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Gécamines, an institution that has, for decades now, survived by that uncanny liminal space between statehood and concession. Its recently circulated commercial alignment with Mercuria represents something subtle: finally, a reclaiming of narrative authority over a value chain long mediated through foreign arbiters.

What is outwardly contractual is inwardly tectonic. The DRC has not simply renegotiated terms; it has reasserted ownership over its own mineral discourse.

And then, with a gesture almost too ‘hush-hush’ for the markets’ liking, Kinshasa imposed new export conditions on cobalt. Analysts grumbled about the familiar liturgy, opacity, risk premia, and disruption. Yet what came beneath the predictable theatre was a quiet hypothesis: if the global electrification project depends on Congolese cobalt, it follows that Congolese preferences ought no longer to be treated as a rounding error.

Indeed, the DRC, which supplied around 78% of mined cobalt last year, recently introduced a quota regime capping exports at 96,600 tonnes annually from 2026, with a transitional allocation of 18,125 tonnes for Q4 2025. That quota is less than half of what the country reportedly produced in 2024, roughly a staggering 220,000 tonnes.

Elsewhere on the continent, the intellectual mood is shifting with equal subtlety. Zambia’s policymakers, long schooled in the grim numbers behind debt restructurings, are now reading copper prices with a different pair of glasses altogether, less as a macroeconomic barometer than as a strategic instrument. In 2024, Zambia’s copper output rose by around 12% to about 820,670 metric tons, up from 732,580 tons in 2023, despite drought-induced power shortages.

Other mineral-rich African states, be it in graphite, manganese or other critical inputs, appear to be repositioning themselves. Namibia, often treated as a cartographic afterthought, is said to be crafting graphite beneficiation with the tacit understanding that the next decade will generously reward those who control the processing.

Even Botswana, whose diamond governance has been held up as a model of pragmatic sobriety, has begun entertaining the possibility of a broader mineral renaissance.

Individually, these developments may appear disjointed. But collectively, they point toward an emerging continental posture: Africa is no longer content to be the ‘inert substrate’ upon which the green transition is constructed. It seeks, instead, to be one of its quiet architects.

This is somewhat inconvenient for the Global North, which has grown accustomed to the idea of clean energy as an autocratic inevitability rather than a negotiation. Battery chemistries and supply-chain blueprints may be drafted in Berlin, Shenzhen, and Silicon Valley, but their feasibility is ultimately adjudicated in Kolwezi, Ndola, and Karibib. The dissonance between aspiration and materiality, a theme absent from most climate discourse, is finally reasserting itself.

None of this implies that Africa is on the cusp of a post-extractive idyll. A major part of the continent’s mineral politics remains vulnerable to the usual spectres: price cyclicality, governance fragilities, and the ever-present temptation of extractive short-termism.

The cobalt boom of the late 2010s evaporated with a familiar abruptness; lithium’s present softness is a warning disguised as a commodity chart. The resource curse, as economists remind us with regularity, is less a curse than a discipline, one that demands constant vigilance.

Yet something in the current tone feels different. The discourse emanating from Lusaka, Kinshasa, and Windhoek is preoccupied with industrial ecosystems, mid-stream capture, and, intriguingly, the intellectual property of processing itself.

This is the vocabulary of states that are tired of being annexed to global value chains without being admitted into their design rooms. It is also the vocabulary of states that recognise, more acutely than their development partners, that mineral leverage, if misused, is evanescent.

There is, too, a faint philosophical undertone to the moment. Africa has spent much of the modern era being read by others, its data tabulated, its risks modelled, its resources priced elsewhere. What we are witnessing is not merely a shift in mineral governance but a shift in the basics: the continent is redefining the grammar through which its resources are interpreted.

And so, beyond the headlines, a new mineral order is formulating itself, not loudly, but with the precise confidence of a continent increasingly aware of its indispensability. The world would be mistaken to treat Africa’s cobalt, copper, and graphite as mere inputs to the green transition. They are, in fact, the builders of a larger sentence that the continent is finally writing for itself.

The views and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Warwick Economics Summit.

Reference List

1. African Development Bank Group. CRITICAL MINERAL INSIGHTS 11: Natural Graphite. Oct. 2025. https://www.afdb.org/en/documents/critical-mineral-insights-11-natural-graphite. Accessed 6 Dec. 2025.

   
   

2. Cobalt Institute. Cobalt Market Report 2024. Developed by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, May 2025. https://www.cobaltinstitute.org/reports/market-report-2024. Accessed 6 Dec. 2025.

   
   

3. Discovery Alert. “Mercuria Congo Partnership Transforms Critical Minerals Supply Chain.” Dec. 2025. https://www.discoveryalert.com/mercurea-congo-partnership-critical-minerals. Accessed 6 Dec. 2025.

   
   

4. Fastmarkets. “Cobalt Export Quotas: DRC Sets Limits to Rebalance Global Supply.” 25 Sept. 2025. https://www.fastmarkets.com/news/cobalt-export-quotas-drc-2025. Accessed 6 Dec. 2025.

   
   

5. Gécamines and Mercuria. “Gécamines and Mercuria Launch Copper-Cobalt Joint Venture in DRC with Backing from U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC).” PR Newswire, 5 Dec. 2025. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gecamines-mercuria-copper-cobalt-jv-drc-dfc-301822746.html. Accessed 6 Dec. 2025.

   
   

6. Kabuswe, Paul C. (Minister of Mines and Minerals Development). “Media Statement on the Performance of the Mining Sector in 2024.” Ministry of Mines and Minerals Development, Republic of Zambia, Jan. 2025. https://www.mmmd.gov.zm/media-statement-mining-sector-2024. Accessed 6 Dec. 2025.

   
   

7. Ministry of Industrialisation & Trade. Mineral Beneficiation Strategy for Namibia 2021. Government of the Republic of Namibia, Feb. 2021. https://www.mti.gov.na/mineral-beneficiation-strategy-2021.pdf. Accessed 6 Dec. 2025.

   
   

8. Mfula, Chris, and Felix Njini. “Zambia Copper Output Up 12% Last Year as Key Mines Recover.” Reuters, 22 Jan. 2025. https://www.reuters.com/business/zambia-copper-output-up-12-2025-01-22/. Accessed 6 Dec. 2025.

   
   

9. S&P Global Market Intelligence. “DRC Cobalt Export Quotas to Support Cobalt Prices, Though Challenges Loom.” 16 Oct. 2025. https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/drc-cobalt-export-quotas-to-support-cobalt-prices-though-challenges-loom-74256010. Accessed 6 Dec. 2025.

   
   

10. U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. “DFC Strategy on Critical Minerals and Supply Chains.” DFC, 2024. https://www.dfc.gov/critical-minerals-strategy. Accessed 6 Dec. 2025.