Rare earth metals: US startup discovers large-scale copper deposit in Zambia • FRANCE 24 English

So those are our top stories well it’s time now for our science segment and uh we’re joined uh by Julia today Julia Seer hi Julia uh to discuss the discovery of a significant copper deposit in Zambia by an American startup cobal and it’s supported by a coalition of billionaires including Bill Gates and

Jeff Bezos a discovery made with the help of artificial intelligence which is set to have geopolitical implications uh and we’ll discuss all of this now Julia off you go uh well let’s go back to this Californian startup indeed it’s called Cobalt and they announced onx the discovery of this huge copper deposit

Indeed in Zambia it’s expected to be the same size and quality as kakula which is a huge copper mine uh over the Border in the DRC now zomia is the second largest uh producer of cobalt in Africa after the DRC but it’s actually quite rare to

Find such large scale copper uh mine now the deposit is located in the north of the country as you’re going to see here on the the map and uh for several years now the United States has actually been massively reinvesting in those mines one of the reasons why is because uh well

There’s a global race to secure the supply of so-called rare earth materials which have become essential for the energy transition so to create all of those green infrastructures that the US but also Europe want to implement and also to create those batteries for electric vehicles uh and I’d say a more

Largely of course for all other technological devices now the other reason the US is reinvesting in these mines is also because most of the mines in Zambia and the DRC are already owned by Chinese companies and operated by Chinese companies so the US wants to to regain control and reduce the dependence

Now the startup says it’s used artificial intelligence to try to create these sort of Google maps of the Earth’s crust to try to uh help them find those deposits of uh copper but they’re also looking at of course for lithium Cobalt and nickel because there are uh altogether 17 rare Earths that are

Becoming indispensable today to create all of those Technologies just to give you an example Angela a smartphone is going to require dozens of materials from around the world so tantalum from the DRC lithium for instance from Bolivia uh Australian Gold and Chinese rare Earths and they are called Chinese

Rare Earths because the Chinese really do dominate that Global Market don’t they I’m calling them Chinese Rare Earth because indeed in 2021 60% of the world’s Rare Earth production was indeed uh controlled by the Chinese and of course that’s worrying other countries because uh they’re now at a disadvantage

Especially considering the fact that in 2023 China announced export restrictions on for instance graphite graphite is very interesting as well just like lithium for electric vehicles for those batteries and here you have three problems for one as I said the rare Earths are un unevenly distributed in

The world and on the backdrop of that of course you have geopolitical tensions the second problem is that you have three steps you have to find the rare earth you have to extract it and you have to refine it and those two last steps once again these are Chinese uh

Technologies for the extraction and the refining now the third problem is the carbon footprint of those last two steps which is actually pretty important uh and here it actually challenges the primary reason you were extracting which was to create green infrastructure so here scientists are working on new

Techniques trying to make the extraction a little bit more selective so trying to get from Earth exactly what you need to then make the refining process much easier and less polluting wow thank you very much Julia Julia Seager there with that science segment and that brings us

To the end of today’s program do stay with us there’s more on the top of the hour

A significant copper deposit has been discovered in Zambia by a US startup. KoBold Metals is supported by a coalition of billionaires including Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, as well as the venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz. The discovery, made with the help of artificial intelligence, is certain to have geopolitical implications. FRANCE 24’s Julia Sieger tells us more.

Read more about this story in our article: https://f24.my/A6tX.y

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14 comments

  3. Copper, Nickel, lithium and cobalt are NOT Rare Earth materials. Maybe the reason Europe is behind is the "Science Segment" on TV lacks basic science knowledge

  4. Mmmm Copper Republic's got a nice ring to it huh? (Prethinking how were gonna record this American [resource] "liberation" in history)

  5. Here we come to steal Africa earth materials. If like Africa told them to invest theie country. Hiw much Africans ppl are getting outta this..

  8. America has lots of deposits of various rare earths (copper is not a rare earth, BTW), but the processing and refining of these minerals is very polluting and doing that processing within U.S. environmental regulations is not easy. But there are some mines and processing facilities opening in the U.S.

  10. I liked the way she greenwashed the extraction methods at the end to make the viewer more at ease at the end. Well done.

  14. Rare earth metal, are not rare. Let me repeat that rare earth metals are not rare. Don't be fooled by it's name. China tried to "Black Mail" America by withholding "rare earth metals" and warn they would walk away from America. America said "Ok, walk away"…..

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