U.S. strategy toward African critical minerals is changing rapidly. The United States’ Millennium Challenge Corporation has agreed to expand the use of a $491 million agriculture-focused compact with Zambia to also support infrastructure linked to critical minerals. Originally framed around farm-to-market connectivity, the program will now help finance supporting infrastructure along the Lobito Corridor, linking Zambia’s agricultural and mining regions more directly to Atlantic export routes.
The Copperbelt of northern Zambia and southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the world’s most important mining regions. It contains globally significant reserves of copper, cobalt, manganese, germanium, gallium and other critical minerals central to the energy transition, advanced manufacturing and defense supply chains. The DRC alone supplies more than 70 percent of globally mined cobalt, while Zambia and the DRC are major copper producers.
China has long held a dominant position in the Copperbelt. Chinese firms control major copper-cobalt assets in the DRC and Zambia, while China retains overwhelming dominance in refining, battery materials processing and downstream battery manufacturing. Beijing is also renewing its infrastructure position through a roughly $1.4 billion plan to rehabilitate Tazara, the Chinese-built railway completed in 1975 that links Zambia to Dar es Salaam and Indian Ocean export routes.
The Lobito Corridor is the clearest Western counterweight. Backed by the United States through the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment and by the European Union through Global Gateway, the corridor aims to connect the Angolan port of Lobito to the DRC and Zambia, including a proposed new rail section into the Zambian Copperbelt. This would give Copperbelt minerals a westward route to the Atlantic and reduce dependence on China-linked logistics and processing networks.
The new MCC agreement signals that U.S. critical minerals policy is becoming more infrastructure-focused, more commercially pragmatic and more openly geostrategic. It reflects the increased competition over the whole process from mines to corridors, processing systems and partnerships that are all vital for future supply chain control.
America in Transition & The Geopolitics of the American President