Revolutionary Infrastructure Development Transforms African Mining Logistics The AFC to invite bids to build key Zambian copper railway link represents a fundamental shift in how critical minerals reach global markets from the heart of Africa. This ambitious infrastructure project connects Zambia’s copper-rich Copperbelt region directly to the Atlantic Ocean through Angola’s strategic port facilities, creating an unprecedented logistics corridor that promises to reshape the economics of African mineral exports. The Lobito Corridor extends approximately 1,300 kilometers from Angola’s deep-water port facilities through challenging terrain into Zambia’s mining heartland. This transformative infrastructure development addresses decades of transport limitations that have constrained African mining…
Author: TJ Markle
The DLA has extended the deadline for offers several times, moving it from the original date of 29 August to 15 October. The US Department of Defense has called off a tender for cobalt procurement, underscoring the ongoing challenges Western nations encounter in securing critical minerals. In mid-August, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) initially sought offers to procure up to 7,500 tonnes (t) of cobalt over the next five years, under a contract valued at $500m, marking the US Government’s first effort to acquire the metal since 1990, reported Bloomberg. The DLA has extended the deadline for offers several times,…
Last week, China rolled out sweeping new export controls, expanding earlier measures that targeted Rare Earth Elements (REEs) to now include the technologies used in their extraction and refining – an apparent bid to kneecap nascent Western efforts to develop alternatives. While much Western attention has focused on extraction, China’s true dominance – and leverage – lies in refining. For years, Beijing has controlled the global processing of rare earths, giving it a critical chokepoint in the supply chain. Australia’s experience offers a model for how to respond. The world’s largest non-Chinese REE supplier is the Australian company Lynas Rare…
Beijing has shocked Washington with export restrictions on minerals used in most electronics China is dramatically tightening its control over the rare earth minerals crucial to making high-tech products, in what US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called “a global supply chain power grab”. Beijing’s latest flexing of international economic muscle comes just weeks before Xi Jinping is due to meet Donald Trump in South Korea. The US president has hit back by threatening 100% tariffs on all products from China but it’s clear Beijing’s “chokehold on rare minerals” will be its “key bargaining chip” in the upcoming trade talks with…
India’s behavior in regard to critical minerals can be best understood as strategic hedging. Beijing is signaling geoeconomic control over a chokepoint industry by deciding to resume the supply of rare-earth magnets to India on the condition of a written “no-diversion” pledge. This is more than just a contractual detail. The action encapsulates two factors influencing New Delhi’s decisions: the diffusion of great-power competition into contracts, standards, and midstream processing instead of territorial disputes, and asymmetric interdependence in critical materials. At the same time, Kabul’s request for Indian investment in Afghanistan’s mineral industry provides a long-term hedge that is both operationally and politically ambiguous.…
Australia may have spotted a lucrative hole in the market for rare-earth metals, which are crucial for the defence industry and for manufacturing products necessary for the development of artificial intelligence (AI), such as semiconductors. Last week, China, which has a stranglehold on the supply of these critical minerals, tightened its export controls over its rare-earth metals. It now restricts exports of 12 of the 17 rare-earth metals on the periodic table. Seventy percent of rare earths are mined in China, and 90 percent are processed there. The United States is among many nations that urgently require these materials, and analysts have…
Last week, China’s Ministry of Commerce published a document that went by the name of “announcement No. 62 of 2025”. But this wasn’t just any bureaucratic missive. It has rocked the fragile tariffs truce with the US. The announcement detailed sweeping new curbs on its rare earth exports, in a move that tightens Beijing’s grip on the global supply of the critical minerals – and reminded Donald Trump just how much leverage China holds in the trade war. China has a near-monopoly in the processing of rare earths – crucial for the production of everything from smartphones to fighter jets. Under the…
Its dual dependence on America’s digital services and Beijing’s critical mineral processing industry leaves it highly vulnerable. Tech wars between west and east are nothing new. During the cold war, the US and its allies competed fiercely with the Soviet Union in space exploration and weapons systems. More recently, competition between the US and China has been heating up. Ironically, this time Europe stands to be the biggest loser. The US and its allies founded the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls in 1949 to prevent the eastern bloc gaining access to western technology that might enhance its military and…
Sanctions are often praised as moral weapons—the civilized alternative to armed conflict. They promise to punish aggressors without the bloodshed of war. But when those measures reach deep into the supply chains that sustain national defense, they risk weakening the very foundations of sovereignty they claim to protect. In an age of technological interdependence, no great power can remain secure without control over the materials that keep its industries alive. Sovereignty today is not only territorial; it is industrial. Titanium makes that case unmistakably. Stronger than steel yet remarkably light, it is essential to nearly every modern defense platform. Fighter…
In what has been an unprecedented rally, investors are celebrating another major milestone in the precious metals market, with silver pushing above $50 an ounce to new record highs. For many analysts, silver’s achievement was inevitable as the market has been firing on all cylinders, driven by robust industrial consumption and renewed investment demand. At the same time, analysts note that gold’s run to $4,000 an ounce has helped pull silver prices higher as investors look for value in the precious metals sector. “The USD 50 level has acted as a magnet for months, especially given gold’s record-breaking pace,” said…