Attendees at next week’s Mining Indaba in Cape Town, Africa’s largest mining conference that gets underway on Monday, say they’re expecting a new sense of urgency from U.S. and European stakeholders who are keen to find ways of breaking China’s grip on critical resources like cobalt and lithium.

Tony Caroll, a Mining Indaba organizer and director of Acorus Capital, summarized the mood in a sharply-worded column published this week in South Africa’s Daily Maverick newspaper: “With the Biden administration and the EU now investing political capital in the success of domestic green energy firms, Africa has never been so economically essential to the West.”