What happened
Competition for Africa's critical minerals — cobalt and copper in the DRC and Zambia, lithium in Zimbabwe and Mali, manganese in Gabon, rare earths and graphite across the continent — has intensified through 2026, with Chinese, Gulf, US and European actors all pursuing offtake agreements, mine equity and processing infrastructure. Reuters and Bloomberg-tracked deal activity shows a marked increase in state-backed financing packages tied to mineral access, alongside growing Western and Gulf efforts to build alternative supply chains outside Chinese-controlled processing.
Alongside the formal deal-making, artisanal and informal mining sectors — and the smuggling and armed-group taxation networks that surround them — remain deeply entrenched in eastern DRC, parts of the Sahel and the Great Lakes region, complicating any simple narrative of state-to-state resource competition.
Why it matters
Critical minerals sit at the intersection of geopolitical competition, conflict financing and governance risk. Mining corridors are increasingly contested not only commercially but militarily — M23's operations in eastern DRC's mineral-rich territories are the clearest example — meaning that investment decisions in this sector cannot be separated from conflict analysis. At the same time, the scale of financing now flowing into the sector means governance failures — opaque contracts, weak environmental and community-consent processes, corruption in licensing — carry larger reputational and legal consequences than in the past.
How the threat is evolving
The competitive dynamic is shifting from pure extraction deals towards control of processing and midstream infrastructure, which raises the stakes of any single corridor being disrupted. Armed groups and criminal networks are adapting in parallel, developing more sophisticated mineral-laundering routes through neighbouring states to obscure origin, a pattern the UN Group of Experts on the DRC has documented repeatedly in relation to gold, tin, tantalum and tungsten. Meanwhile, several governments — Zimbabwe, Mali, DRC, Namibia — have moved to tighten local beneficiation requirements and renegotiate existing contracts, adding regulatory volatility to the security picture.
- M23 and other armed groups' continued control over mineral-rich territory and trade routes in North and South Kivu.
- Rising frequency of contract renegotiation and export-ban threats in Zimbabwe, Mali, Namibia and the DRC.
- Growth in Gulf state-backed mining and refining investment as an alternative to Chinese-dominated supply chains.
- UN Group of Experts findings on mineral-laundering routes through neighbouring states.
- Expanding artisanal mining sector with limited formalisation, particularly in cobalt and gold supply chains.
Security implications
Physical security around mine sites, logistics corridors and processing facilities in contested regions needs to account for both criminal risk (theft, illegal mining incursion, community unrest over benefit-sharing) and, in the most acute cases, armed-group control or extortion of the site or its supply routes. Convoy security for mineral exports through eastern DRC and parts of the Sahel remains a distinct and serious risk category, often underestimated relative to headline geopolitical coverage of the sector.
Business implications
Investors and offtake partners face compounding risks: conflict-mineral compliance exposure (OECD due diligence guidance and downstream regulatory requirements such as the EU's conflict minerals regulation), contract sanctity risk as governments revisit historical deals, and reputational exposure where community consent or environmental standards are weak. Due diligence at deal stage should explicitly map the security actors controlling or adjacent to the resource, not just the formal counterparty and licensing status.
NGO/humanitarian implications
Mining-linked displacement, environmental harm and community-benefit disputes generate recurring humanitarian and human-rights caseloads, particularly in eastern DRC and parts of West Africa's gold belt. Agencies working in these areas should expect their programming to intersect with mining-company community relations, and should maintain clear independence to avoid being perceived as aligned with either company or armed-group interests over access to affected communities.
- Map the armed and criminal actors present along mineral export corridors before committing capital or programming.
- Verify conflict-mineral compliance claims independently rather than relying on counterparty certification alone.
- Track UN Group of Experts and OpenSanctions-style reporting on mineral-laundering networks relevant to the operating footprint.
- Build community-consent and grievance-mechanism review into any minerals-adjacent due diligence.
What to monitor next
Watch DRC-Rwanda diplomatic engagement over eastern Congo, which directly affects M23's territorial control of mineral corridors; track new state-backed financing announcements from China, the Gulf and Western development finance institutions; and monitor contract renegotiation moves in Zimbabwe, Mali and the DRC as an indicator of rising regulatory risk.