Africa’s strategic value moves beyond resources
Critical minerals, infrastructure and strategic competition are making Africa indispensable for global powers.
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- Africa is gaining sway and playing China off the U.S. and EU
- Gulf nations are joining global powers to invest in the continent
- African states seek more local processing, manufacturing and infrastructure
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Every industrial revolution has been shaped by its own fuels, technologies and trade routes, generating a distinctive geopolitical and geoeconomic landscape. The fourth industrial revolution is no exception. Critical minerals now underpin batteries, digital infrastructure, aerospace systems and advanced weaponry, while ports, railways and energy networks determine whether and how those resources can reach global markets. This combination, at a moment when the United States and the European Union seek to reduce excessive dependence on supply chains dominated by China, is raising the strategic value of several African economies.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Zambia, for example, dominate discussions about cobalt and copper; Zimbabwe and Namibia possess significant lithium resources; Morocco and Egypt combine advantages in industry, logistics and minerals, including phosphates and battery materials, with privileged access to European markets; while Angola, Nigeria, Senegal and Ivory Coast derive influence from energy resources, Atlantic access or their growing role as regional commercial hubs.
These opportunities are shaping a dual dynamic of competition and cooperation between the U.S. and the EU. While Washington and Brussels are increasingly aligned in their efforts to de-risk supply chains and reduce strategic dependence on China, American and European companies and institutions continue to compete for contracts, investment opportunities and political influence across Africa.
Setting the scene
In Africa, as elsewhere, China’s success in its “going out” strategy was underpinned by a high degree of state coordination. Beijing was able to align finance, infrastructure, diplomacy and corporate activity, while assuming political and commercial risks that Western investors have often been reluctant to take. Neither the U.S. nor the EU can fully replicate this model, given their more fragmented decision-making, democratic scrutiny and greater reliance on private capital.
Yet the international environment of 2026 differs markedly from that of the early 2000s. China’s rise, intensifying geopolitical competition and the growing strategic importance of critical supply chains have created new incentives for Washington and Brussels to overcome some of these constraints and develop more coordinated, strategically focused and competitive approaches to Africa.
The EU’s principal instruments for advancing its de-risking strategy are within the framework of the Global Gateway and the European Investment Bank alongside development institutions and private sector actors like Italian energy giant Eni. Washington, in turn, has enduring diplomatic and security influence and can deploy the Development Finance Corporation, Export-Import Bank of the United States and Millennium Challenge Corporation alongside American companies.
While the two approaches are not identical – the EU still places greater emphasis on sustainability, governance and development policy, and the U.S. tends to give greater weight to strategic security, speed and commercially bankable projects – they are, in many aspects, convergent. Both have to respond to changing African priorities; for example, the African Union’s Green Minerals Strategy explicitly calls for adding value at source locations, local processing and regional industrialization. This reflects the continent’s growing dissatisfaction with a model in which Africa exports primary commodities leaving most of the value to be added elsewhere.
The making of a new map
Concepts such as geopolitics and spheres of influence, which briefly receded from the center of international affairs in the early 2000s, have regained prominence. Other frameworks, such as global governance and multilateral institutions, increasingly seem detached from practical reality. In this changing landscape, transportation and logistics connectivity has emerged as a critical strategic issue.
The Lobito Corridor provides perhaps one of the clearest examples in the African context. Connecting the copper belts of the DRC and Zambia to Angola’s Atlantic coast, it brings together African governments and institutions with American and European engagement. The corridor is intended not only to transport copper and cobalt, but also to create an alternative export route to global markets while potentially stimulating agriculture, energy, logistics and industrial activity along the corridor. The EU has committed more than 2 billion euros through Global Gateway to investments linked to the corridor and its surrounding economies.
Africa moves beyond just resource extraction
The corridor’s pull extends into other domains. The government of Zambia, for example, announced in June that it will expand the scope of a $491 million program of the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation. Originally focused on agriculture, it will now support infrastructure in the Copperbelt and North-Western provinces, linking agricultural development to the critical-minerals economy and the Lobito Corridor.
Another shift is the rising importance of integrated transport networks that combine roads, railways, seaports and inland waterways to move goods and people. One important example is the Praia-Dakar-Abidjan Multimodal Corridor, a project launched by the African Development Bank and the Economic Community of West African States through New Partnership for African Development programs. It aims to link Atlantic ports and major West African cities. While this is an African-led initiative, the corridor is one of the routes previously identified in the Global Gateway Africa-EU investment strategy.
Beyond minerals
The growing importance that geopolitical actors and investors attach to factors beyond resources themselves, such as infrastructure, energy security and regulatory frameworks, is a feature of these emerging dynamics that signals a shift from previous forms of engagement with the African continent.
African countries capable of combining resource extraction with reliable infrastructure will capture more investment than those offering geology but lacking an enabling environment. Beyond minerals, this same logic applies to energy refining. African producers have historically exported crude oil while importing refined products, creating a structural vulnerability that has become increasingly difficult to justify as African populations and economies expand and consume more fuels.
Aerospace and defense may be the next domain in which this evolving pattern of engagement becomes visible.
Teresa Nogueira Pinto
The expansion of refining capacity, like the development of strategic-resource infrastructure more broadly, is being driven by the mobilization of joint efforts and capital. These initiatives bring together African governments and investors, Western governments and companies, and capital from Middle Eastern countries. Nigeria’s 700,000-barrel-per-day Dangote refinery, the largest single-train refinery in the world, is set to expand its capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day by 2029 with support from U.S. companies providing technological and industrial support. In Angola, Italian energy giant Eni has been a technological and operational partner in the country’s refining transition.
Aerospace and defense may be the next domain in which this evolving pattern of engagement becomes visible. Airbus expects African air traffic to triple over the next two decades, creating demand for more than 1,500 additional aircraft and potentially supporting a broader regional aerospace ecosystem.
Read more by African Affairs expert Teresa Nogueira Pinto
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In the aerospace industry, Morocco has been moving up the value chain. The country already hosts around 150 aerospace companies employing 25,000 people, with the sector’s exports reaching approximately $2.8 billion in 2024. French aerospace and defense company Safran announced a 200 million-euro investment in an Airbus engine assembly line in Casablanca alongside a 120 million-euro investment in a Moroccan maintenance, repair and overhaul facility.
Other African countries, too, are well positioned to attract investments in non-mineral sectors. Rwanda, for instance, is developing capabilities in digital services, satellite applications and ground-station infrastructure.
Scenarios
Most likely: A diversified and competitive African economic landscape
Neither the West nor China achieves dominance in Africa. China remains deeply embedded in the continent’s infrastructure, mining and manufacturing, while Gulf states continue to expand their role in ports, logistics, energy and finance.
The U.S. and EU, in turn, increase their presence by further engaging in critical minerals and strategic corridors. African governments adopt a more pragmatic, case-by-case approach, using competition among external partners to maximize financing, technology transfer and market access. Despite or even due to fragmentation, this scenario can over time favor more resilient markets and trade systems as countries return to bilateral, regional or sector-specific agreements rather than relying exclusively on universal frameworks such as the World Trade Organization.
Less likely: A continent divided into competing spheres of influence
Intensifying U.S.-China rivalry, combined with geopolitical competition involving Gulf states, Russia and European powers, could encourage individual African governments to align more consistently with particular external partners. Strategic corridors could become more rigid geopolitical arteries rather than open commercial infrastructure, with different foreign nations controlling specific ports, mines, energy systems and trade routes.
In this scenario, competition could reinforce rather than overcome Africa’s fragmentation. Eastern and Central Africa could become still more splintered if there is a deterioration of the security outlook in countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya or Nigeria, pressuring conflicting sides to align with foreign powers in exchange for support.
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