Washington tries to prise the Kivu away from China’s grip
On 13 February 2026, the Swiss trade minister announced plans to transfer 49 percent of a Congolese public company, Sakima, to the American consortium KoBold Metals. This was not a routine mining investment, nor was it just about the fate of one company or one concession. It was a piece of a much larger move: the direct entry of the United States into the strategic minerals battle in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in other words into the material heart of its competition with China. The reserve at the centre of the deal lies in Manono, in Katanga, one of the most coveted zones in Central Africa because of its lithium and other critical resources. The presence of White House envoys at the economic summit connected to the project confirmed the political weight of the operation. This was not an ordinary business mission. It was an openly supported geopolitical choice by Washington.
The stakes are immense. The Democratic Republic of Congo is the world’s leading producer of cobalt and one of the most important countries also for copper, coltan, tin, tantalum, tungsten, lithium and other minerals essential to contemporary industry. Batteries, electronics, semiconductors, electric vehicles, digital infrastructure and advanced military systems all depend, in one way or another, on what lies beneath Congolese soil. Whoever controls these flows does not merely dominate a market. They influence a decisive section of the global industrial chain. That is why Congo has become one of the harshest laboratories of twenty first century economic warfare.
China built the system, the United States is trying to enter it
The United States says it wants to secure supply chains and prevent Beijing from exercising a monopoly over the most sensitive resources and the main transit nodes in this strategic region. This also refers to the so called Lobito Corridor, the rail and logistics route linking African mining zones to the Atlantic through Zambia and Angola, which Washington sees as essential to reduce dependence on routes and systems controlled or influenced by China. It is a late but determined response to a now obvious fact: Beijing has consolidated a dominant position in Congo and, more broadly, in the wider African critical minerals system.
The problem for Washington is that China did not simply buy mines. It built an ecosystem. It invested in extraction, logistics, infrastructure, refining and political relationships with local elites. It created supply chains, not just contracts. According to the figures recalled in the original article, roughly 80 percent of global refining capacity and 85 percent of processing capacity for critical minerals are in Chinese hands, while a decisive share of Congolese copper and cobalt production is directed towards Chinese markets or Chinese industrial interests. This is where the depth of the Western problem becomes clear. Even when the ore is dug out in Africa, real power often remains in Asia because that is where raw material is turned into industrial value.
In recent years the United States has begun to react. The Biden administration, and later that of Donald Trump, gradually recognised that China’s grip on the value chain had become a strategic risk. This is not only a commercial issue. It is a question of industrial sovereignty. That is why the February 2026 deal involving KoBold Metals must be read as part of a broader economic offensive. KoBold, backed by major investors such as Bill Gates, has also secured exploration rights in other Congolese zones, while parallel moves have been launched in the lithium sector. At the same time, after American restrictions introduced in December 2025 hit Chinese manganese and strategic mineral industries, Congo began to look to Washington like a possible field of rebalancing.
Manono lithium and the Lobito Corridor
Manono’s importance is no accident. Lithium is one of the most sought after minerals of the energy transition, and Congo could become one of the key nodes on this front as well. By mid 2025, when the United States imposed restrictions on Chinese imports of rare earths and other strategic materials, American industry was exposed to the fragility of a long term dependence. It was at precisely that moment that the deterioration in relations between Washington and Beijing helped reopen the Congolese dossier. The point was no longer simply to watch China’s expansion. It was to push back.
The American idea is twofold: to enter directly into mining capital and concessions, and at the same time to create routes that move the minerals towards Western markets. In that sense, the Lobito Corridor is not merely a railway or a logistics project. It is a geopolitical infrastructure. It is meant to break China’s hold over flows, provide an alternative to established circuits and connect African mines to an industrial sphere more favourable to the United States and its allies.
But this is also where Washington’s first major limitation appears. Entering a mine is one thing. Controlling the value chain is another. The United States can buy stakes, finance exploration and support friendly governments, but it still has to build a transformation, logistics and political stabilisation network comparable to the one China has accumulated through years of systematic presence. It is arriving late, and in geopolitics arriving late often means spending far more to obtain far less.
Kivu, where minerals meet war
The other side of the story is Kivu. Congolese minerals are not found in a neutral space. They are located in a region devastated by conflict, trafficking, outside interference and ethnic and political rivalries that have lasted for decades. The war, which has already caused millions of deaths and displaced people, continues, and in recent months the situation has worsened. The March 23 Movement, widely described as supported by Rwanda, has intensified pressure in the east of the country. Further north, the Allied Democratic Forces remain active, long associated with Islamist militancy. In such a landscape, speaking about mining investments without speaking about security means ignoring the very core of the problem.
Access to the subsoil does not depend only on concessions signed in Kinshasa. It depends on territorial control, transport routes, borders, armed groups, local militias, relations with Rwanda and Uganda, and the Congolese state’s ability to exercise real sovereignty in the eastern provinces. This is where economic competition turns into a military matter. To extract, transport and sell regularly, one must first neutralise or contain the war economy that thrives around the mines.
Some of the observers cited in the original text suggest that Western and especially American efforts to consolidate alternative access to minerals will inevitably collide with this reality. In theory, stabilising Kivu and fighting armed groups should restore legality. In practice, every security measure in that region immediately enters into contact with local power networks, cross border trafficking and international interests. This is the most delicate point of all: the risk that security becomes the politically acceptable name for militarisation designed to protect mineral extraction.
Rwanda, M23 and the grey zone of trafficking
The Rwanda question inevitably returns. Several analysts noted that part of the mineral chain passes through cross border networks that feed exports difficult to trace and sometimes outside official Congolese channels. M23, insofar as it controls or influences parts of the territory, also affects the economic geography of the region. It is not simply a military variable. It is an actor that directly or indirectly interacts with the structure of trafficking.
For some observers, if the agreements between Congo and the United States move forward and if Washington succeeds in attracting more investors, it will inevitably have to confront the issue of parallel circuits draining value away from Kinshasa’s control. But that is exactly what makes the contest explosive. Because truly intervening would mean touching entrenched interests, regional balances, political complicities and corruption networks sedimented over years. Signing a memorandum or announcing a strategic partnership is not enough. One must enter into a war economy built precisely on the confusion between legality, smuggling, armed protection and political mediation.
The memory of Congo and the return of great power politics
There is also a historical dimension that the original article evokes with force. Congo is no stranger to outside powers intruding into its internal affairs. During the Cold War, it was one of the most contested spaces on the continent. The case of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister, assassinated in 1961, remains the symbol of a Congolese independence immediately crippled by foreign interference. Today the protagonists have changed, the language is different, and the vocabulary is that of energy transition and sustainable investment. Yet the substance retains a disturbing continuity: Congo remains the place where foreign interests compete for the subsoil in the name of objectives larger than the country itself.
There should therefore be no illusions. The American entry is not born from a new altruistic concern for Congolese development. It stems from the strategic need to reduce dependence on China. This is power politics. China built an industrial advantage by securing access to raw materials. Washington is now trying to strip away the material basis of that advantage. Congo, once again, risks being more object than subject of the contest.
The real war behind the energy transition
The most important lesson of this story may be this: the so called energy transition is not a peaceful, linear or technocratic process. It is a global industrial war. Batteries, electric vehicles, smart grids, digital technologies and even part of the weapon systems of the future depend on materials extracted in unstable and contested areas. Behind the virtuous narrative of ecological conversion lies a brutal race for resources in which capital, diplomacy, intelligence, logistics and military force intersect.
Congo is the place where this truth appears in almost textbook form. There one sees that the subsoil is not merely wealth. It is a device of power. And one also understands that the contest between Washington and Beijing is not simply about who buys more mines, but about who can better organise the entire architecture from pit to factory, from territorial security to refining, from transport to technological transformation.
The biggest loser remains Kinshasa
The bitterest paradox is that in the middle of this gigantic struggle Congo remains the main loser. Its riches attract investors, envoys, diplomatic missions and foreign governments, but they still do not produce either full sovereignty or broadly shared prosperity. Institutions remain fragile, war continues in the east, profits disappear into opaque networks and the country struggles to transform the value of its subsoil into balanced development.
This is the true geopolitical and geoeconomic point. We are not witnessing the birth of a new Africa finally acting as a protagonist. We are witnessing the adaptation of an old logic of partition to the needs of the twenty first century. The actors change, the language changes, the financial and industrial vehicles change. But the substance remains ancient: whoever controls the minerals wants to control the future. And Congo, once again, risks paying the price of being too rich to be left in peace.
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