What does the critical minerals boom mean for Africa? | Greenomics podcast

Sarah Nelson:

Hello and welcome back to Greenomics, a podcast from Oxford Economics where we delve into the complex relationships between climate, nature and our global economy. I’m Sarah Nelson, and today we’ll be discussing how the global green transition is driving demand for Africa’s critical minerals and what this means for the continent’s geopolitics. Joining me to discuss this is Francois Conrad, lead economist at Oxford Economics, based in Casablanca, Morocco. Francois has recently published a research brief as part of Oxford Economics Green Leap series on the geopolitics and economics of critical minerals mining in Africa. Welcome, Francois. Thanks for coming on the show.

Francois Conrad:

So good to be on. Thanks.

Sarah Nelson:

So ever listeners will know that we previously put out an episode on Critical Minerals way back in August 2023. But for those of us whose memories are, less than perfect, can you please explain what we mean by critical minerals?

Francois Conrad:

So critical minerals in this sense, refers to minerals that are critical for the green energy transition, minerals that we use to generate electricity by renewable means. And for battery storage, especially. This is at the moment, this is probably the biggest, use case for these minerals. So, the International Energy Agency, when it studies these things, it’s got a list of 37 critical minerals, some of them are minerals that we’ve been using since ancient times, like lead and tin, others, more obscure ones that you might not have heard of, like dysprosium or yttrium. But in the context of what’s going on in Africa, the ones that we look at the most and that are relevant to political and economic considerations, mostly cobalt, lithium, coltan, nickel and copper and manganese.

Sarah Nelson:

Thank you. So, I understand that you, recently spoke to a critical mineral’s expert from the International Energy Agency to get an overview of the market pressures and opportunities, and some of the sort of other factors in the market. So, let’s cut to that interview now.

Francois Conrad:

We joined by Shobhan Dear who is a critical minerals analyst at the International Energy Agency. And we are pleased to be speaking to Shobhan because the IEA has just finished, just published rather its global critical Minerals outlook for 2025. So, I guess, Shobhan, a good first question is to be a general as a general one. What, key or interesting findings in the new edition of the Global Critical Minerals outlook?

Shobhan Dhir:

Thanks very much. So, in this outlook, we, we look at all the recent market developments over the last year for the key energy focus minerals, copper, lithium, nickel, graphite, and rare earths. But we also expanded this to look at 20 energy related strategic, minerals, which also, cover high tech defence, aerospace, and other sectors.

And we looked at many of the trends, what’s been happening mining, refining. We also have supply and demand outlooks for our focus minerals. And we looked at for key deep dive. So, policies for diversification, emerging battery supply chain, issues and supply side innovation and yeah, these broader strategic minerals and what they mean. So just going to give a few key findings, which I think are particularly interesting, but I would advise if people are interested to check out the report. So, when we look at 2024, demand for the key energy minerals grew very strongly and lithium demand rose by nearly 30%, exceeding, you know, the 10% annual growth rate in 20 tens. And the demand for nickel, cobalt, graphite that was around 6 to 8%. And this is mainly been driven by the energy applications such as electric vehicles, storage, renewables and grid networks. So really strong growth.

But as many people probably be aware, the prices for most of these minerals, particularly the battery metals, has been falling still. And this has really been because supply has been outpacing demand for all of the key battery metals, lithium, nickel and cobalt. And I’d highlight lithium has been a particularly interesting one where, the supplies come online extremely quickly. We’ve got new sources from Argentina and Zimbabwe which have scaled up very, very fast. So, I think this is a key, you know, area where it’s easier to lock down with pressure. And, you know, there’s been a lot of growth from the minerals and the other supply from many of the minerals in China, Indonesia, for nickel on the DRC. So this is, you know, quite interesting. The DRC is becoming a real strong player in copper. Last year overtook Peru as the second largest copper producer. Now, it’s really cementing that. So, these are just some of the demand supply trends and, investment has been slowing, you know, as it goes hand in hand with the prices is the price the lower than that doesn’t give this signal to invest. Copper is obviously the exception to that, but, particularly across the battery metals. And then the other key area we’re really concerned about is that the concentration of, geographical concentration of supply across almost all minerals has been really increasing. So, when we look from 2020 to 2024 for both mining and refining, the average share of the top three producers has increased. And, from refining, this is a particular concern because in 2020, that top three share was on average around 82%, and it’s now 86% in 2024. So, despite there being efforts in the policy space, to diversify these mineral supply chains, it’s all heading in the other direction. So, this is a real concern. It’s the same for mining, though mining, is less concentrated. But majority are getting more concentrated. Particularly, yeah, across the board. But lithium is the exception because of this, these emerging producers in like Argentina and Zimbabwe and I would highlight for nickel and cobalt, the refining side has been particularly stark where, refining supplies is really increasing concentration. And of course, all energy minerals, 90% of supply growth came from the top single supplier alone in refining. So, it’s Indonesia for nickel and that’s China for cobalt graphite. And so, this is a real key concern. And then on the top of the and why this is a concern is, as many people be aware that, despite the markets appearing well supplied at the global scale right now, export restrictions are proliferating. And, of the 20 energy related strategic minerals we covered, more than half are now subject to some form of export controls. So, this really means that despite it appearing to be a well-supplied market and a global bounce level, these restrictions means, and this level of concentration really increases the vulnerability to supply shock. So, if any the reason the supply from the large producing country is disrupted, whether that be a technical failure, whether or, trade restrictions or disruptions, that really means there is a real challenge to supply. And when we take out the largest supplier, most of these balances, for the rest of the world, are in stock deficit. So that’s why we are particularly concerned about this trend towards much, much higher geographical concentration. So, these are some of the key highlights I’d like to, leave at the moment. But I’m looking forward to speaking, a bit more deeply on certain minerals and whatever you may want to ask.

Francois Conrad:

And that’s great. So, you mentioned lithium and copper. Give us some  good colour on what’s so how those markets are looking now at the moment. What can you tell us about cobalt. So, you mentioned China. But globally what’s what is it. It’s a silver cobalt.

Shobhan Dhir:

So, just before I jump into cobalt, I will say a couple extra things on, on copper and lithium that, that I would like to highlight.

So, though lithium year is really supply is coming online very quickly. We still see a major deficit in the future just because demand surges. So, by 2035 that’s a 40% supply deficit based on the project pipeline that we have high confidence in. And that’s based on, most conservative scenario based on today’s policy settings for how demand will increase. So that’s a major deficit. But because supply has been coming on so quickly and this is a new source of supply, we less worry about lithium. But copper I really want to emphasise is the one we are particularly concerned about. So, on the copper side we see based on the project pipeline, a 30%, supply deficit by 2035. And the problem with copper is there is really no new big resources coming online. It’s really a really, tough environment to get new supply online because, of the declining all grades, because of, of, rising capital costs, increasing project complexities, falling rate of resource discoveries and, and much longer lead time. So, this the copper story is really challenging to fill this gap. So that’s why I’d like to highlight and copper with the most out of all minerals. It’s one we’re most concerned on on the supply side, whether there would be sufficient supply to of demand. And there’s a range of measures on the supply and demand side that are needed. And scaling up recycling is crucial for the copper copper story.

So, moving to cobalt cobalt is, quite an interesting one right now. Copper prices, mean cobalt prices fell to decade low due to the oversupplied markets. And that’s been driven by increased output by DLC. And also, now Indonesia DLC imposed a temporary export ban. And that did boost prices. For some time. But this really this major movement of Indonesia’s, rapidly increasing cobalt output is a really interesting, aspect when we look at the battery chemistries and demand side, in EVs particularly, they’re moving to less and less cobalt intensive chemistries. And this is the challenge for the cobalt demand. And this is, you know, given to high and high nickel contents. LVP has surged in market share from just 10% of the electric car market to almost half the electric car market in 2024, and the AC contains no cobalt. So, this major sergent LFB is also challenging cobalt and demand side. So, but it’s still from EV batteries going ahead. That’s set to be the largest, source of demand by the late 2020. So it’s still currently consumer electronic batteries. But this is in consumer electronics. But this is set to change. So, this this is kind of the story with cobalt and DLC loses market share to Indonesia based on the current pipeline over time. Based on the picture we have right now. But it seems like over supplies that persist. But the mined output, starts to decline post 2030, despite Indonesia’s growing production. So, there are some concerns in the future. Again, it’s extremely highly constrained supply DLC from the mining side, China on the refining side. So, this has the same risks as I was mentioning earlier, but I hope that’s of interest. And, let me know if there’s anything else.

Francois Conrad:

Yeah. Shobhan, just one last question in so that’s really interesting about the changing technology in batteries, and the impact on cobalt demand. Are there any other comparable shifts in technology that, busy or promising to change the outlook, for demand for some of these minerals?

Shobhan Dhir:

Yeah. I think there’s, a couple, I will come back to the battery chemistry side because this has such, a major impact on so many different key critical minerals and, there’s many changes happening in this space. So, I’ve just mentioned the major sergent LSP, and this is really set to continue, but something that is changing very quickly that we, becoming increasingly concerned about is the growing importance of manganese. So, manganese on for across almost all battery chemistry is becoming increasingly important. Important for your traditional NMC nickel-based chemistries. But now LSP has a variant LMP with manganese, which gives it a higher energy density. So, manganese important there. And then you also look at sodium ion. And then there’s also which where the leading cathodes are based on manganese. And then also manganese rich cathode chemistries and those of course are using lots of manganese or manganese sulphate and refined manganese are becoming increasingly important. And when we look at the supply, it’s 95% of manganese sulphate is produced in China. And there’s only two of the refineries operating in the moment, and the rest of the world. So that’s an extreme concentration. And then based on the, the actual supply outlook, you see that, there’s a deficit is set to only be about half of demand would be met by, supply in 2035 based on the current project pipeline for manganese sulphate. So we really growing area concern on the mining side, manganese is plentiful. And you have South Africa, Gabon being major, major sources of, of manganese, of the leading sources of mined manganese. But it’s really about the refining side. And that’s a key, key concern going forward.

So, this is where we’re seeing this shifting very quickly shifting picture on, bunch of chemistries. Can have some effects that also mentioned solid state. And I did mention the sediment. I’ll come back to that solid state batteries, which are anticipated to have an effect and be coming into the market, late in the decade. But this opens up even more supply chains, lithium, sulphur and other things. So, this we have other concerns. Sodium ion if that really proliferates? And it is already in EVs in China and in storage applications. And the Gigafactory pipeline is quite impressive. So demand already so demand obviously contains no lithium. So this really could change some of the and reduce some of the lithium pressures, on demand. And but nickel manganese are key parts of the leading sediments, cathode. So I think this is those are going to be very important still going forward.

And then finally just to touch on and on battery, the back side, copper obviously this key challenge with the supply deficit and aluminium is it’s obvious substitution. However aluminium only has 60% of the conductivity. It’s copper and it can’t replace all copper applications and subsea cabling, high power cabling and also some, some areas such as in battery anode current collectors for lithium ion batteries you cannot replace with aluminium. So, there are applications. It cannot, but there are many applications where aluminium can. But yeah. As the of this low connectivity, it is a lower cost. But it has five times the emissions intensity. So, this is it comes at another penalty to substitute aluminium. So, this we are seeing it happen in transmission lines. In some grids, applications. And that growing. But despite this and it is needed to close this copper supply gap. But we see that many measures are needed on the supply side with much more investment on the mining supplies side, in scaling of recycling, especially end of life legacy, legacy copper that’s in unused buildings, etc. and then also some substitution as well as many other measures. So, these are just some of the ways that I think technologies are changing. But, you know, with the rise of data centres and AI data centres, they’re even more copper intensive. So, there’s these other, growing areas where copper’s importance is extremely high. So, I’ll just leave you with those and let me know if there’s anything else.

Francois Conrad:

No. That’s fantastic. Yeah, very exhaustive. Many meaty, tour of what’s going on in critical minerals. So, thanks, Shobhan, for joining us. And then again, of all those listeners to take a look at the website to the new Critical Minerals Outlook and a very user-friendly tool there with which you can look at, demand forecasts.

Sarah Nelson:

Well, that was a great interview. Really a deep dive with Shiobhan. Big thank you to Shiobhan, for taking us through that. Do you have any sort of initial reflections on that chat to share with us? Francois.

Francois Conrad:

Yeah. So afterwards I, I was really impressed by the well, the big theme, the most relevant to Africa is about, copper scarcity and how of all the minerals, the one where the IEA has not seen supply increase to catch up with, with the demand increase is copper. Now, this is usually relevant to, to, the DRC, to Zambia, to Botswana, to Namibia as well. We’ll discuss a bit later. And then also the fact that aluminium is, an inferior substitute, but a substitute to copper, is also relevant to, Guinea, which is a very big producer of bauxite. So those are the two things that I, thought were really interesting. And also the concentration of cobalt and manganese processing, not mining, but processing in China, is relevant to initiatives that, we’re going to discuss now by African governments to try and increase beneficiation, domestic basically to boost, value added at home. And then just to kind of move away from the problem that Africa’s always had, of exporting its minerals in the raw, unrefined form and not having enough value domestically.

Sarah Nelson:

So was there anything, that you covered in your Green Leaf RB that didn’t come up in that interview in terms of sort of where, critical minerals in Africa

Francois Conrad:

Yes. So, he did mention the, the, the, the broad strokes of it, but I think some of the specific percentages, nonetheless, worth bringing into this conversation. So, cobalt, the DRC is the world’s leading producer. But it’s not, like, with like, 51% or less, it’s 76% of world cobalt production was from the DRC in 2024. So the Katanga basin is, is a there’s a mineral rich basin in, in the Congo that sort of stretches into Zambia. And it’s a really staggeringly rich deposit of copper, nickel and cobalt. And a lot of the politics of, of the DRC is what is Zambia as well as what’s happening between, the DRC and Rwanda to a degree, is concerned with who gets to mine and exports, the minerals in this Katanga basin. So, I mentioned cobalt. Then there’s copper.

The DRC is Zambia produced 14% and 3% of the world’s mined copper in 2024. And as the year, as Shobhan mentioned, where the DRC over to Peru, as the world’s second biggest producer of copper. The biggest is Chile, and unlike Chile and Peru, where the quality of the ores is going down and, and some of the mines are getting mined out, there’s still plenty of potential in DRC, plenty of investment, happening in resources in the basin. And then manganese, I wanted to mention. So, South Africa accounted for 33% of global production and Gabon 21%. And then coltan. Coltan is, is, of the critical minerals, the one that most acts as a conflict mineral in the politics of Africa. So, in 2024, the DRC and Rwanda together produced 59% of the world’s tantalum, which we get out of content. And then on lithium, Zimbabwe is well behind Australia and Chile and China, but it still has 9% of world production, but it accounts for, new deposits that came online. The Shobhan mentioned as taking up some of the or bringing supply into to meet demand. And there’s a very big unused lithium deposit in the DRC. Huge, 150 million tonnes. It’s one of the last, one of the biggest untapped deposits of lithium left in the world. And this is becoming relevant to politics now, quite recently, since the beginning of the year, it’s part of a discussion taking place between the Congolese and the US.

Sarah Nelson:

So, it sounds like the kind of I mean, it’s some of these are massive shares, but all of the ones that you mentioned are significant shares, from different countries in Africa. And it sounds like those, set to rise. How are leaders in these African countries are responding to this boom and demand and, and potential boom in sort of market supply?

Francois Conrad:

Well, so they there’s a there’s a very clear, awareness on the part of African politicians that, you know, this is, this is a historic opportunity to make the most of the green transition and the, the thirst that the world has for Africa’s critical minerals. So, the recent news is that on Friday, May 30th, the president of Gabon announced that from the 1st of January 2029, he won’t allow exports of raw manganese anymore. So, the those that share of manganese production 21% of all production has to be refined in Gabon. So, this is a this is a big step forward. It is in line with the, the protectionism. That Shobhan mentioned as, as supply risk, shock, risk of supply shocks. But I mean, it’s, you know, as long as that the investment is done and he’s given the companies now a three year lead time to get it in place. There’s no reason to expect a supply shock. And to the contrary, and to the benefit of Gabon, you’re going to see more value added at home. And a beneficial current account effect.

I mentioned the Congo. So there we don’t know exactly what’s happening, but President Tshisekedi’s government is in negotiations with Washington on some sort of sweeping deal in terms of which mineral rights will change hands and the US will then bring its diplomatic and beyond diplomatic, there’s the implication of military, potential at least to bear on the conflict in the eastern DRC and sort of seal a deal between the DRC and Rwanda and this rebel group fighting in the eastern DRC, in exchange for some mineral rights.

Now, in the context of this negotiation, there’s already been news that an American company, kobold, which is backed by Bill gates and, Jeff Bezos, has bought rights to this massive lithium deposit that I mentioned from an Australian firm. That was earlier in May, last month. So, this is this is happening. So, you might see, more on this deal, which has already opened Tshisekedi up to accusations by his political adversaries at home that he’s sitting out, the Congo’s mineral rights to stay in power. So, I think these are these are interesting, policy developments, a very exciting and promising infrastructure development is the Labiso corridor, which is a, a railway that’s existed for for a good number of decades from the copper belt to Labiso, which is, Auburn, Angola’s Atlantic coast. But it recently got a revamp, which is still ongoing. And as part of this revamp, the Liberta corridor is going to get some feeder lines in the copper belt, in the DRC as well as in Zambia. And roads are going to be, improved and so on. To allow miners in the Katanga basin to, export the ores from the Labiso. Now, you’ve already seen investments from First Quantum, Barrick, China Nonferrous, Vedanta and Jica me in the assets in the copper belts. That are they you know that they now looking forward to exporting through the Labiso then there’s another project, just to the south that probably received some impetus from the libido corridor. Was the Trans Kalahari Railway, similar project to connect copper assets in western Botswana to Namibia, and then also there’s now talk of some old copper assets in Namibia, being connected to. So, everyone’s aware of, the, the supplies squeeze and copper that Shiobhan mentioned. And the results is that some copper assets that were mothballed, are now getting attention again.

Sarah Nelson:

So, I mean, it sounds I mean, that sounds very promising in terms of increasing the kind of, capacity for more of the processing, perhaps, and, and more, to be and in Africa and, and more of the mines to be exploited with the Liberto corridor and the trans Kalahari and Railway. My question, I guess, is a lot of it sounds from what you said, like a lot of that investment is coming from offshore. And I think it was the Gabon where you said there was protection and protectionist kind of policy announced, you know, yesterday or on Friday or something. And if it’s foreign direct investment coming in to support these mines, how likely is it that, the local economies can capture the value or is it just going to be, you know, channelled back to wherever the investors are based in?

Francois Conrad:

It’s a fair question. So, you know, the investment always implies that the returns go to the investor. You know, that’s a that’s, capital investment works. But, we’ve seeing more and more governments being wise, and prudent in the way that they writes local content and local employment requirements into investment contracts in the mining sector. So even if the profits, are still going to go offshore at some point, the domestic value added, through the current account, through the effect on the balance of payments is really, you know, means there’s less stress on, on reserves. So that’s a positive. The employment created is always the main thing I want to say. Like, every African government is absolutely obsessed with creating jobs. So, creating more jobs, steady, well-paid industrial jobs in the secondary sector, is a win. And then as I say, that the downstream from these projects, there’s a lot of smaller firms, that then get business out of it. So, the one that I forgot to mention was a copper and cobalt refinery. That’s it’s not definitely happening, but, the money’s been raised for a feasibility study into a copper and cobalt refinery in the DRC. And now, as Shobhan mentioned, cobalt refining is extremely concentrated in China. Which is a risk. So this sort of thing, that beneficiation, is protectionist, that by if it dilutes the concentration of, of refining capacity in a couple of top refiners, then that’s positive for the market as a whole. You know, it, it sort of distributes risk and makes the supply shell shock less likely.

Sarah Nelson:

Yeah. I guess people like yourself and like Shobhan, but I’m pretty worried about that concentration and what that might mean in terms of risks for the grain transition. So, yeah, that’s really interesting about hearing about that new or proposed refinery. And yeah, and I guess, going back to the question of sort of where the value stays in Africa and you’re saying in the employment and the downstream impacts and everything is a bit of a separate question from where, where the returns where the returns on investment go. Which makes sense.

I think, would be remiss to, leave out the kind of potential, negatives or, conflicts around critical minerals. I think you actually referred to one of the minerals as a conflict mineral. Did you or something like that. So, the geopolitics of this at a global level is obviously not smooth sailing, but also in Africa. So what’s the interplay between the critical minerals rush that we’re seeing and some of this sort of fractured politics? In some of the countries that you’ve mentioned.

Francois Conrad:

Yeah. So, the critical minerals haven’t been conflict minerals, to date in the same way as, as gold. But the exception is coltan. So coltan is, the ore from which we get tantalum, which is, in demand for processors. So, any small processor in a cell phone or a laptop computer. Tantalum is one of the best minerals to use in those. And the insurgency in the eastern DRC is driven, at least to a degree, by the presence there of coltan. So, what happens is this rebel movement, the M23, which has links to Rwanda and which the Rwandans back has now, asserted control over a coltan mine in the eastern DRC. And it set up a whole parallel government and it’s the coltan ore leaves the area then, across the Rwandan border and is sold through Rwanda. And the middlemen making money out of it, are the Rwandan or, you know, friends of Rwandans, and the rebel movement, the M23, makes $80,000 a month, from the mine, so reckons the UN. So that’s a conflict mineral in the sense that of the 59% of, world production accounted for by the DRC and Rwanda together, you know, the, Congolese, you know, most of that should be Congolese and they should have the control over the production of it. So, for now, thankfully, there isn’t more of that. But you can see, there are there are other ways in which, mineral politics, motivates, you know, conflict in Africa and always has. So, you can there is a risk that the same sort of thing can happen again in fragile states, even the DRC, that, there might be armed competition for, cobalt, copper and nickel assets in the same way that you’ve already seen in the case of coltan. So that’s how the minerals are driving conflict. And then, in the longer term, you can see how, political, rhetoric or other political dialogue in a country can become about, ‘no, I promise to do more with our mineral assets than the previous government’. So, you already see this with, with 100 carbons, where any oil and gas producer, every time there’s an election, a lot of the, the speeches are about the incumbent isn’t doing enough for the people with the people’s mineral wealth. So that’s going to become as the, as demand for, for critical minerals studies hard, is going to become a talking point with more different kinds of mineral to.

Sarah Nelson:

And what about, you know, I know that there’s been coverage and you talked about it in your RB about the kind of potential human rights abuses or exploitations in some of these mines.

Francois Conrad:

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, so child labour is a big problem, in the DRC especially, but in other places too. So, the problem is such that there are markets or buyers who end up preferring, Moroccan cobalt, which is more expensive because it doesn’t, isn’t associated with, with nickel and copper, cobalt that you get out of a nickel deposit is usually easier to extract and cheaper for that reason. But the people some buyers pay the premium for the Moroccan cobalt because there concerns about child labour. So, child labour is a big one and another one is pollution. So, they especially in Zambia and especially related to copper production, there have been a lot of issues with, acid spillage into rivers. Like a big one happened in February of this year, where, you know, the local communities then try to put pressure on the government, to act against the miner, which is Chinese in this case, to be more careful and to clean up the spill. So that’s something that, influences the, the minerals market in Africa for critical minerals is the issue of child labour and pollution, especially because, you know, the whole, green energy transition. There’s, there’s a narrative around it that we’re doing this to, to be kinder to the planet. Now, of course, if you are mining in a way that’s, environmentally irresponsible, then it takes away a lot of the rationale for doing any of this in the first place. As Shobhan mentioned in the context of, substituting aluminium, which is dirtier to produce substituting that for copper.

Sarah Nelson:

Yeah. Lots of, challenges there, I guess. And that adding to some of the political questions that you talked about, it must be, I guess most of, listeners and most of my clients certainly on the consulting side here, Oxford Economics, are businesses. And a lot of the people who we speak to are looking at kind of some of their corporate reporting requirements and, and this sounds like this might be a component, that they would worry about the critical minerals mining. So, what do you think all of this that we’ve discussed today mean for the business world?

Francois Conrad:

Yes. So, for the business world in all areas, the conformity to SDG principles, is becoming a much more constant concern, you know, and there’s a lot more attention being given to it in, in strategies at the corporate level. And then that that starts feeding through to the national level, you know, so everyone wants it to be a roadmap, so that everyone’s on the same page. And this is positive. It’s going slowly, perhaps, but, the, direction of travel is clear, that there is a lot more happening in terms of, national, national critical minerals strategies, where, Canada and Australia are, leaders. In elaborating, critical minerals strategies that that emphasise the ESG element to it and, and the responsible sourcing side of it. To ensure that, the source countries aren’t, exploited, from an environmental or a labour point of view. So, that is, that’s very positive. There’s the Minerals Security Partnership, is an interesting and encouraging initiative with so Canada and Australia, as well as the US, the UK and the EU, and India and some other countries are part of this, partnership that discusses ways in which national level minerals strategies can be drafted to be, more respectful of source countries, in the way that that things get mined. So that is that’s very encouraging. And the two ways in which you hope that that will, evolve further is to bring in China, which is still outside of all these initiatives. And secondly, to be more prescriptive to take a leaf from the Kimberley Process on diamonds, which is, by the way, often cited as an example to follow in these critical minerals strategies discussions.

Sarah Nelson:

Could you just briefly summarise it?

Francois Conrad:

Yeah. So the Kimberley Process was, something that, participants in the diamond industry agreed on at a time when, when the effects of people buying blood diamonds were at their worst in West Africa, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and in Central Africa and in the eastern Congo. The link between demand for diamonds and brutal conflict was, just too obvious to ignore. And then the participants got together and agreed on this process that certifies a diamond at the point we were you go to a jeweller to buy a diamond. You can find out exactly where this stone came from. So, there’s talk of replicating this for critical minerals so that the buyer, can know which part of the world’s this mineral came from. Because buyers, extremely aware of, their liability, you know, the attention that stakeholders, civil society or their investors or their bankers or their insurers, attaching to the source of the inputs, now, Apple’s already been useful this way. Congolese families have sued Apple for, where its coltan comes from and said, no, this coltan is mined in a way that uses child labour and pollutes and so on. It didn’t go way because the link between the mining entity and Apple was impossible to establish, you see. So, a real certificate of origin system that, that establishes a chain of responsibility at each transaction, from the mine to where you, the end users see the mineral, would solve this issue.

Sarah Nelson:

So that sounds like, the next big thing, I guess, on the sort of business sector side of this. And I guess that will permeate through the whole supply chain. But right back to the mines. So, we should look out for that. But it’s been really interesting hearing you say all this, because lots of the dates you’ve been referring to have been, you know, a week ago or a month ago. So very fast moving transition.

Francois Conrad:

The discussion between the Congolese and the Americans, the last news I had of that was that they’re going to finalise a deal by the end of June. So that’s really something to look out for, like how they’re going to approach this. What it’s going to mean? And then not to look away from the negatives. You are they immediately you’re going to see people say, no, this is a return of colonialism. This is a return of, resource extractive logic on the part of the West. So that’s a interesting one to watch going forward. End of June I’d say.

Sarah Nelson:

End of June. All right. Well, I was just going to ask, where listeners can find more information. I know that this RB is part of the Green Leap series. If you want to say a little bit more about that, and if you’re planning to, to sort of, update any of this analysis, in the coming weeks.

Francois Conrad:

Yeah. So the Green Leap series, the research briefing that we’re talking about today, is part of the Green Leap series. So, under that, we put recent research briefings and also Economic focus reports, which are also EFC, our reports, which we look at, an aspect of an economy. So, everything that we, we do in those products that has to do with, the green transition or climate change, we put out, the Greenleap banner. So, I think if any interested reader can, can start with going to the link, under this podcast and then, and then look for the research briefing and then, get in touch if they want to find out more.

Sarah Nelson:

Sounds good. Well, thank you so much, Francois, for joining me on Greenomics and talking us through this fascinating topic. It’s been a really great discussion.

Francois Conrad:

That was a pleasure to talk.

Sarah Nelson:

So we will link to the International Energy Agency New Critical Minerals Outlook, which was put out a couple of weeks ago, as well as Francoise Research Brief on the African Context and the rest of the Green Leap series, so that listeners can read more from the show notes. That’s it for today on green Omics from Oxford Economics. Thanks for joining us.