Today is a public holiday in South Africa – Human Rights Day. There’s a certain irony in spending the day focusing on China’s President Xi Jinping’s visit to Vladimir Putin, knee-deep in a human rights disaster.
What one makes of the Ukraine crisis increasingly maps on where one lives. This is made clear by a remarkable new set of polling data recently published by the European Council on Foreign Relations ...
Category: Critical Minerals
Sino-Canadian Copper Mining Venture in the DRC Generates $434 Million in Profit
Canadian mining giant Ivanhoe released its 2022 full-year earnings on Monday that revealed the company made a robust profit of $434 million from the Kamoa-Kakula copper mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which it jointly operates with Chinese mining major Zijin Mining Group.
Huge Lithium Deposit in Found in Iran
The Iranian authorities say they found the world’s second-largest deposit of lithium in the mountainous province of Hamedan. At an estimated 8.5 million tons, the Hamedan lithium haul would be second only to Chile’s estimated 9.2 million ton deposit. It could ...
China-Argentina Call Reveals Closer Ties
China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang held a phone conversation with his Argentine counterpart Santiago Cafiero, the newest sign of the two countries’ increasing closeness. Argentina is a champion of closer cooperation between China and Latin America and plans to ...
Scholz Looks to South America to Reduce Germany’s Dependence on Chinese Critical Resources
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has spent the past few days crisscrossing South America in a bid to find alternative sources of critical minerals, notably lithium, that his country's powerful auto industry now relies predominantly on China to supply. Over the weekend, ...
Africa’s Largest Mining Conference Set Against Backdrop of Rising Competition Between China and the West
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 ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Xi Bets on Global South in Moscow
U.S. Bid to Challenge China’s Dominance of the Battery Metal Supply Chain in Africa Faces Two Key Hurdles
Widely perceived as a major and concrete U.S. move to counter China in the supply chain of critical minerals in Africa, the U.S.-DR Congo-Zambia MoU signed last December in Washington, D.C., will confront significant challenges, mainly for the DRC and Zambia. Both ...
China’s Ambassador to the DR Congo to Leave
Chinese ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo stopped by the Defense Ministry in Kinshasa this week to say goodbye to Minister Gilbert Kabanda. Zhu also left a parting gift of $27 million of security assistance ...
Is the DRC Making Progress in Reshaping Its Controversial Chinese Deals? Maybe.
The Democratic Republic of Congo could be closer to overhauling two controversial Chinese deals. Finance Minister Nicolas Kazadi told Reuters the government is in active talks with Sicomines, a joint venture between the DRC’s state mining company Gécamines, and Sinohydro and China Railway Group, who were supposed to ...
China, Like the U.S., Wants to Onshore More of Its Critical Resource Mining
China appears to share many of the concerns over the security of its supply chains for critical minerals that now dominate conversations in North American, European and some Asian capitals. Wang Guanghua, China's minister for natural resources, explained in a lengthy ...
Can Zimbabwe Emulate Indonesia’s Tough Approach to Chinese Miners?
The Chinese mining company Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt is chafing under pressure from the Zimbabwean government to convert its lithium mining operation in the country into a plant producing battery-grade lithium within five years. The company at present, only has plans to build a ...