EV Revolution
Washington is trying to use the Lobito Railway in Congo to break China’s hold on critical metals in Africa, writes Nicholas Niarchos in his new book, The Elements of Power.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of Africa’s wealthiest countries even as its people are some of the world’s poorest. It is rich in cobalt, lithium and copper, key materials for the energy transition. Copper is used in electrical wires, and cobalt and lithium are key components in the batteries that keep electric vehicles and cell phones powered. China controls most of the mines and most of the processing factories for these critical minerals, but a big question was how to get the minerals out.
Beijing’s dominance was a fact that weighed heavily on the Biden administration: U.S. envoys had long spoken about investment in Africa, but little had come. And what little U.S. investment there was barely seemed serious. In 2021, The New York Times ran a piece titled “Who Are Congo’s Cobalt Entrepreneurs?,” naming figures such as Akon, the Senegalese-American R&B singer; Jide Zeitlin, a disgraced fashion-industry CEO; and Dikembe Mutombo, a Congolese American basketball player. Of them, only Erik Prince, the mercenary CEO of Blackwater, appears to have built anything that appears to be a sustainable business in Congo — a program to train guards at Chinese mines and support the government in its fight against a rebellion in the country’s restive East.
