The United States held its inaugural Critical Minerals Ministerial Summit in early February, as President Trump seeks to secure stronger access to vital commodities in Africa and counter the influence of China on the continent. Attendees of the summit – which included seven African countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Zambia, and Guinea – were invited to “form a trading bloc among allies and partners,” one that “guarantees American access to American industrial might while also expanding production across the entire zone”.
Prior to the summit, President Trump announced the creation of “Project Vault”, a critical mineral stockpiling plan worth almost $12bn. The summit then saw the launch of the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement “FORGE”, which was announced by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a means of better coordinating international cooperation on critical minerals supply chains.
The FORGE initiative involves the creation of price floors for critical minerals in order “to uphold pricing integrity” – giving US and global manufacturers privileged access to critical minerals at stable prices, while incentivising African nations to participate by offering them greater protection against low prices. US Vice-President JD Vance said that prices would be kept stable through the use of tariffs to counter the “foreign supply” of minerals flooding global markets.
Christoper Vandome, senior research fellow at the Chatham House think-tank in London, wrote that “the US is the first nation to rightly make minerals supply a national foreign policy priority and understand that disrupting the status quo requires a significant amount of cash.”
While he suggests the recent summit and launch of the FORGE initiative is a strong step towards enhanced US-Africa cooperation on critical minerals, Vandome notes that “equally important to success will be the creation of the bureaucracies, departments, and agencies that can create a web of vested interests around implementation of Trump’s policy.
“Such interests become very hard to undo by successor administrations and therefore give investors confidence that government policies will last as long as it takes to develop a mine and begin to produce.”
Taking on Beijing
Since the start of the second Trump administration last year, the United States has made it a clear priority to combat the influence of Beijing both in Africa and around the world. Control over critical minerals – of which Africa is home to approximately 30% of the world’s proven reserves – has emerged as a key battleground.
As part of this competition for influence, the US has heavily financed the Lobito Corridor – a major transcontinental rail route to link Angola’s port of Lobito to Katanga province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia’s Copperbelt – with the aim of making it easier to export the region’s commodities to the US and other global markets. The US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) approved a new $553m loan for part of the project in December 2025.
Ben Black, CEO of the DFC, said in December that “the signing of our loan agreement for the Lobito Atlantic Railway in Angola further characterises President Trump’s commitment to forging strong partnerships and alliances in Africa.”
Minerals for security
The importance the US places on Africa’s critical minerals can also be seen in President Trump’s efforts to mediate the conflict between the DRC and Rwanda, which has seen clashes in the DRC’s resource-rich eastern regions. This has in turn led to the emergence of a “minerals-for-security” framework between the US and
DRC, with Washington DC pledging increased security support and infrastructure investment in return for access to critical minerals.
Last year, the two countries signed a “strategic partnership,” which sought to ensure that “mineral resources are managed responsibly for the long-term benefit of the Congolese people as well as the people of the United States of America”.
At the start of February, Orion Critical Mineral Consortium, a US-government backed mining investment fund, announced plans to buy a 40% stake in Glencore’s copper and cobalt projects in the DRC. The deal values Mutanda Mining and the Kamoto Copper Company at roughly $9bn. Orion has said its stake would enable it to secure critical minerals “for the US and its partners”.
To the same end, Washington DC is continuing to push for a US takeover of the DRC-based mining company Chemaf. It appears that the company is close to being acquired by Virtus Minerals, a US-based consortium run by former members of the US military and intelligence services, after a Chinese firm had previously come close to purchasing the Congolese company.
There have been further moves into the DRC on the part of US private sector players. In September last year California-based mineral exploration company KoBold Metals, backed by American billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, struck a deal with the DRC that secured exploration permits and included commitments to digitise the DRC’s geological data. In May 2025 KoBold also agreed a $1bn deal with Australian firm AVZ Minerals to acquire part of the DRC’s Manono lithium deposit, although there are ongoing legal disputes as to the ownership of mining permits.
Tresor Chovu, advisory board member at the Critical Minerals Fund, an Africa-focused investor in the sector, tells African Business that this increased engagement is creating opportunities for the DRC and other African governments. “Governments in Africa have been looking to expand mining exploration projects but, if you look at the trends for the last ten to 15 years, exploration money has been scarce,” he explains. “There have not been major early-stage exploration projects; most mining companies have simply maximised their existing mines and explored around existing production sites. This has been problematic for Africa.”
He is optimistic that the increased geopolitical importance the US is placing on critical minerals could put the continent in a stronger position to maximise the value of their country’s critical minerals reserves. “We see this as offering the potential for more investments in exploration and for more investment in African mining in general,” he says.
China ramps up efforts
These US moves come at a time when China’s biggest mining company, Zijin Mining, is also continuing to expand in Africa and around the world. At the end of January it agreed to purchase Canada’s Allied Gold for $4bn as part of its plans to expand into West Africa and the Horn, where Allied Gold has a strong portfolio. Zijin Mining has also recently acquired other firms such as Zangge Mining, Argentina’s Lithea and Neo Lithium, as well as the Akyem Gold Mine in Ghana.
Chovu says that “the big companies such as Zijin are trying to get bigger and bigger in order to dominate the market,” which has in turn raised the pressing need for a US response.
In January, two of the world’s biggest mining companies, Rio Tinto and Glencore, announced there were in talks over a $260bn merger that would have created the largest mining company in the world. However, the deal collapsed in early February after Rio Tinto said it had “determined that it could not reach an agreement that would deliver value to its shareholders,” while Glencore argued the proposed deal “significantly undervalued Glencore’s underlying relative contribution to the combined group”.
While the deal would have put a Western-aligned firm in a strong position to counter the influence of Chinese miners on the African continent, the Trump administration is hoping that its flurry of diplomacy and investment will be sufficient to overcome Beijing’s current dominance over critical minerals supply chains.