For more than a decade, Chinese companies have spent billions of dollars buying up American and European mining companies in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s cobalt belt – the world’s richest source of a mineral that has become essential to the transition to cleaner energy. This good momentum, however, may not last: a court has ordered one of the largest of them to temporarily cede control of one of its mines.
70% of world production
It takes between 5 and 15 kilos of cobalt to manufacture the battery of a single electric vehicle, even if Tesla and other manufacturers are currently looking to do without this material. Cobalt boosts the charge rate and has a stabilizing effect, which prolongs battery life and prevents cathode corrosion, a phenomenon that can cause fire.
Congo achieved 70% of global cobalt production last year and Chinese investors control the same proportion of production.
Demand is growing rapidly, and the United States fears being left behind. The Biden government sent a team to Kinshasa, the capital, earlier this year to meet with Congolese leaders to find a way to secure access to the silver-gray metal in the United States. Daleep Singh, a deputy national security adviser, denounced the “opacity” Chinese mining contracts and the exploitation of the country’s resources by generations of investors.
Congo is pushing for a bigger share of the market and is beginning to oppose the development of China’s economic presence in Africa. [Début mars], [le tribunal de commerce de Lubumbashi] removed management of the Tenke Fungurume mine in the vast province of Lualaba from China Molybdenum, a company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, [pour la confier à un administrateur provisoire] during six months. Gécamines, a Congolese public company [qui détient 20 % des parts de la mine]had accused him of under-reporting reserves in order to save millions of royalty dollars.
China Molybdenum, which bought the mine for $2.6 billion [2,4 milliards d’euros] to FreportMcMoRan Inc in 2016, offered an out-of-court settlement and hopes to see the quest
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The Wall Street Journal (New York)It’s the business bible. But to be handled with care: on the one hand, high quality investigations and reports; on the other, editorial pages so partisan that they too often fall into the most flagrant bad faith.
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