Sunday 9 February 2025
Stuttgart, July 2024. Germany narrowly avoided elimination in the quarter-finals, scoring almost in the final minute of the match to equalise. Spain deserved to win but was pushed back in the closing moments by the drive of the Germans, the host nation of the competition. Everyone believes Spain will win: they play the best football and have the tournament’s rising star, Lamine Yamal. Yet Germany, leveraging its experience and tradition, manages to put Spain in its place in the dying minutes. During extra time, both teams test each other until the fateful moment arrives. A cross from the left is headed into the German net by Mikel Merino. Minute 119. Knocked out in the final minute, Germany bids farewell to a tournament Spain will ultimately win.
This is Germany’s most visible defeat as they sought victory in their home Euros after a string of lean years. Since winning the World Cup in 2014, the team has faced disappointment after disappointment in major men’s football tournaments. Merino celebrates, and in the background, like a premonition, the tournament sponsor can be seen: a brand unknown in Europe but poised to bring Germany to its knees over something far more significant than a football match. BYD, a Chinese electric vehicle company, will spark a debate in Germany and across Europe in the months to come. The continent will deliberate on how to block the entry of Chinese electric cars into the European market without jeopardising relations with Beijing. Like a silent movie star facing the arrival of talkies, Europe defends its industrial crown jewel—the combustion engine—against the imminent rise of electric cars, increasingly dominated by Chinese firms.
China began winning the battle for electric vehicles years ago, far from Germany, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Electric vehicles require minerals that are abundant in this African nation. During the commodities supercycle between 2000 and 2015, a symbiotic relationship emerged: China urbanised and industrialised, consuming natural resources sourced from around the world. African nations, key suppliers of these resources, saw higher export prices and, in some cases, double-digit economic growth. No country was more crucial to the electric vehicle supply chain than Congo. A major producer and exporter of cobalt and copper, it became the foundation on which battery companies—and eventually, competitive electric vehicles—were built.
From mines to consumers, China developed a vertically integrated ecosystem, enabling it to dominate this burgeoning industry. China now leads the world in refining cobalt, lithium, and copper, and is second in nickel processing. China produced 75% of the world’s refined cobalt in 2021. Its largest company was Huayou Cobalt, which has a market share of 22%. In mining, Congo leads in cobalt production (accounting for over 70% of global supply) and ranks second in copper. It is more important to electric batteries than Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Russia are to oil. Pretty much every device in your house contains metals from the DRC. These minerals are critical not only for electric vehicles but also for the broader energy transition, which demands conductive materials for turbines, solar panels, and electricity storage batteries. As with coltan for mobile phones, the DRC plays a pivotal role in billion-dollar industries yet captures only a fraction of the profits.
Congo’s mineral wealth has become a curse for it.
After a continental war ended in 2003, the country’s eastern region transformed into a battlefield for dozens of militias, many financed by mineral sales. Among these groups, M23 stands out. The group is extremely violent, it has displaced millions of civilians, tortured and abducted civilians and has carried out a campaign of mass rape in the East Kivu region. Esmeralda Alabre, a spokesperson for the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF), the UN’s health and reproductive agency in Goma, has said M23 is a “catastrophe” for the region’s women and girls.
According to UN reports and the US State department, M23 is backed by neighboring Rwanda, which benefits from smuggling Congolese minerals. From the heart of Africa, these minerals flow into global markets, passing through a network of refining and processing hubs before becoming consumer goods in the West and elsewhere. This pattern has persisted since the days of the Congo Free State, when Belgium's King Leopold II exploited Congolese resources. From rubber (automobiles) to coltan (smartphones), uranium (the Hiroshima bomb), copper (Vietnam War bullets), and now cobalt (electric vehicles), Congo’s minerals have fuelled the ambitions of wealthy nations—and those striving to join them. “For the Congolese people, colonial exploitation never ended,” Jeremy Corbyn wrote for Al Jazeera. Siddharth Kara called it a colony to the world.
For Congolese civilians, this has translated into mass displacement at the in its bid to close the gap with China, Europe has recently signed agreements with African nations for critical mineral supplies, including the DRC and Rwanda. Addressing concerns over Rwanda’s role in mineral smuggling, an EU spokesperson told Geeska: “The partnership with Rwanda has as one of its main goals to support the sustainable and responsible sourcing, production, and processing of raw materials. The goal is to increase traceability and transparency and to reinforce the fight against illegal trafficking of minerals.”
The spokesperson added: “The MoU with Rwanda foresees support to Rwanda’s engagement with the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI)—the EU is supporting this with €2.5 million from 2023 to 2027—to increase due diligence and traceability.”
However, a December 2024 UN report highlighted Rwanda’s continued involvement in mineral smuggling and the challenges in verifying the origins of coltan from the Great Lakes region: “At least 150 tons of coltan were fraudulently exported to Rwanda and mixed with Rwandan production, leading to the largest contamination of mineral supply chains in the Great Lakes region to date.”
After taking control of the Rubaya mine in Congo, M23 rebels doubled miners’ wages and implemented a high-volume, low-margin business model. Combined with transport fees, controlling the Rubaya region generates approximately $300,000 per month for the group. Together, Congo and Rwanda account for 63% of the world’s coltan production. Yet, paradoxically, in 2022, Rwanda exported ten times more coltan than Congo, despite Congo producing twice as much. Rwanda earned $63 million from these exports, while Congo earned just $5 million—a drop in the ocean compared to the $277 billion global smartphone market, which relies on coltan for batteries. It should come as no mystery then why the DRC has filed charges against Apple’s French and Belgian subsidiaries accusing the firm of relying on supply chains which use conflict minerals.
Congo faces a similar situation with cobalt, a mineral critical for electric vehicle batteries. With 70% of global cobalt production and half the world’s reserves, Congo is at the heart of this strategic resource race. Western narratives about Congo echo those of the colonial era: then, the mission was to “save” the Congolese from Arab slavers; now, it’s to “rescue” them from exploitative Chinese capitalists. Beyond this narrative, in 2023, 20% of Congo’s cobalt production was controlled by Glencore according to its own reports, which is an Anglo-Swiss company listed on the London Stock Exchange. Other key players include the state-owned Gecamines and Chinese firms like CMOC, whose largest shareholder, CATL, is a global leader in battery manufacturing.
Intense competition among these players has driven prices down. CMOC has ramped up production from 15,000 to 100,000 tons annually, flooding the market. Cobalt prices have plummeted from $90 per kilogram in 2018 to just $20 today. While Glencore and CMOC compete, Congo’s profits shrink. Like coltan, Congo’s role is limited to supplying raw materials, capturing only a sliver of the value chain—about $200 million. In contrast, downstream markets such as battery manufacturing and electric vehicle production, dominated by China, the US, Germany, Canada, and the UK, are worth $238 billion. And the game is just beginning: as electric vehicle adoption accelerates, these numbers will skyrocket.
The global shift to green energy is riddled with contradictions. China, for instance, leads the world in producing solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles while remaining the largest consumer of coal. Meanwhile, Germany and the west more broadly face a crossroads. To achieve an affordable energy transition, they must rely on Chinese products, risking their economic supremacy. Refusing to do so would delay the transition and exacerbate the climate crisis. Increasingly, western institutions are pursuing a middle ground: building supply chains that bypass China. Initiatives such as the EU’s Global Gateway, Washington’s Lobito Corridor, and mining ventures in Africa backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos exemplify this strategy. Peter Pham, a former US diplomat based in Africa and likely to return to the Trump administration, also has a favourable view of other US partners, like the UAE, creating new supply chains. “They dilute the Chinese and they provide an alternative supply chain,” he told the Financial Times. “If they can pull it off, I’m all for it.” Yet, as Euro 2024 sponsorships foreshadowed, promoting the arrival of Chinese electric cars in Europe, it may already be too late.
Without explicitly stating it, global powers seem to assume that Africa will remain an underdeveloped region, its primary role being to supply raw materials for solar panels, batteries, data centres, and artificial intelligence—somewhere else. Summits abound—China-Africa, South Korea-Africa, Spain-Africa, Italy-Africa—but with little benefit to the continent itself. As Chidi Odinkalu, a professor at Tufts University, observed: “Rather than benefiting from having a seat at so many tables, Africa continues to find itself on the menu.” Given the untapped potential of Congo’s cobalt and the myriad external agendas from east and west, one must ask: does Africa have its own strategy for the Congo? And can it afford not to?