{"id":932627,"date":"2026-05-02T09:44:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T09:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/932627\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T09:44:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T09:44:24","slug":"europe-wants-africas-minerals-africa-should-make-it-pay-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/932627\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe wants Africa\u2019s minerals. Africa should make it pay \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels has a favourite word when it talks about Africa: partnership. It appears in every communiqu\u00e9, every summit declaration, every Global Gateway press release. It is invoked so often that it has begun to lose meaning.<\/p>\n

Because beneath the rhetoric, the reality is straightforward: Europe wants Africa\u2019s minerals, and it is not yet offering a deal that matches what African governments are asking in return.<\/p>\n

As the EU scrambles to secure the raw materials<\/a> needed for its green and digital transitions \u2013 cobalt from the DRC, copper from Zambia, manganese from Gabon, rare earths across the continent \u2013 it is behaving less like a partner than like a procurement office with a foreign policy budget. African governments have started saying so. Publicly.<\/p>\n

The delivery problem<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the EU launched Global Gateway in 2021<\/a>, it framed it as Europe\u2019s answer to China\u2019s infrastructure push: up to \u20ac30bn by 2027, mobilised across public and private finance, to deliver projects rooted in transparency and mutual benefit.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Four years on, the gap between promise and delivery is increasingly difficult to ignore. <\/p>\n

Funding has been slow to materialise, conditionalities remain complex, and much of the model still depends on private capital that follows commercial logic rather than development or industrial priorities. <\/p>\n

For many African finance ministers, Global Gateway looks less like a new paradigm than like export finance repackaged in the language of solidarity.<\/p>\n

The contrast with China is not subtle. <\/p>\n

Beijing has built ports, railways and processing facilities, not always perfectly, not always on favourable terms, but visibly and at scale. <\/p>\n

Europe\u2019s offer, by comparison, rests on standards and values. But standards without infrastructure are a hard sell.<\/p>\n

The minerals contradiction<\/strong><\/p>\n

This matters because Europe\u2019s own policy framework depends on African supply. <\/p>\n

Under the Critical Raw Materials Act<\/a>, the EU has set binding targets for extraction, processing and recycling by 2030. Meeting them will require stable access to external supply chains\u2026many of them in Africa.<\/p>\n

At the same time, African governments are no longer willing to play the role Europe seems to assume. Across the continent, resource-rich countries are pursuing explicit industrial strategies aimed at capturing more value domestically.<\/p>\n

Zambia\u2019s president, Hakainde Hichilema, has made the country\u2019s position plain<\/a>: it will not remain a raw copper exporter. <\/p>\n

Namibia is betting on green hydrogen<\/a>, not upstream supply. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Democratic Republic of Congo has repeatedly signalled that exporting unprocessed cobalt is no longer the endgame.<\/p>\n

These are not bargaining positions. They are long-term strategies shaped by decades of watching resource wealth leave with limited domestic return. They also give African governments leverage \u2014 and alternatives. <\/p>\n

Europe can engage with that shift, or compete with partners that already are.<\/p>\n

What partnership would actually mean<\/strong><\/p>\n

The EU is not without assets. It offers a large and predictable market, regulatory stability, technological expertise, and the prospect of long-term offtake agreements that can achor investment. These are meaningful advantages.<\/p>\n

But turning them into a genuine partnership requires choices Brussels has so far avoided.<\/p>\n

First, it means backing industrialisation, not just extraction \u2013 including co-investment and co-ownership in processing capacity on African soil.<\/p>\n

Second, it means fixing market access. Trade arrangements, including under existing agreements, must allow African value-added products to enter Europe without prohibitive barriers.<\/p>\n

Third, it means sharing control. Initiatives like Global Gateway cannot remain European-designed frameworks to which African partners are invited; they need to evolve toward joint decision-making.<\/p>\n

Finally, it means confronting a basic inconsistency. <\/p>\n

The EU cannot demand urgent supply while maintaining procedures and conditionalities that take years to navigate. If speed matters, the offer has to change. If the conditions are non-negotiable, then the timelines are.<\/p>\n

Europe\u2019s window is closing<\/strong><\/p>\n

African governments are not standing still. <\/p>\n

The African Continental Free Trade Area<\/a> is laying the groundwork for regional industrial policy. Gulf states are actively competing for investment partnerships. And in a more fragmented geopolitical landscape, options are multiplying rather than shrinking.<\/p>\n

Europe still has a window to position itself as a preferred partner. But the urgency lies in Brussels, not in Lusaka, Windhoek or Kinshasa.<\/p>\n

Africa has the resources. It has the strategy. Increasingly, it has the alternatives.<\/p>\n

What it is waiting to see is whether Europe can match its rhetoric with an offer that reflects that reality.<\/p>\n

So far, it has not. And if that does not change, Europe will not lose Africa\u2019s goodwill \u2013 it will lose access.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brussels has a favourite word when it talks about Africa: partnership. It appears in every communiqu\u00e9, every summit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":932628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[217083,2000,299,5187,221891,260819,226411,221889,260817,226409,221890,260818,226410],"class_list":{"0":"post-932627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-typedefinedterm","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european","12":"tag-identifier26","13":"tag-identifier4332","14":"tag-identifier4401","15":"tag-nameafrica","16":"tag-namecritical-raw-materials","17":"tag-nameeu-and-the-world","18":"tag-termcodeafrica","19":"tag-termcodecritical-raw-materials","20":"tag-termcodeeu-and-the-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116504342109419049","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=932627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}