Amid growing global competition for strategic minerals, the US is relying on Africa to reduce the dominance of China over resources used for electric batteries, U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said.
“We don’t want to be overly reliant on any one country or any one company for global supply chains for critical minerals,” Adeyemo told Reuters during a visit to a platinum mine in Marikana, South Africa, owned by Sibanye-Stillwater.
The US Inflation Reduction Act- designed to promote investments in clean energy- assigns a central place to strategic metals used in energy transition industries such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, and graphite.
“Africa is going to play a huge role,” Adeyemo told the agency, adding that the US and its G7 partners are speeding up to bridge the gap with China.
Chinese companies expanded their assets in critical metals in Africa as China expands its market share in electric vehicles.
Chinese assets include cobalt mines in the DRC and Zambia as well as Lithium assets in Zimbabwe.
The African Development Bank chief has this week warned of the detrimental impact suffered by some African economies due to linking loan payment to such critical metals.
We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.
You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in .
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
This website uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages.
Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.
Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!
About The Author
More Stories
Remembering Alan Barrett: A Builder of the African Internet
From Email to Case Study: What We Learned About Connecting Refugee Communities in Just One Year
Local Infrastructure, Lower Costs: How Peering Is Moving the Needle on Internet Affordability