PRETORIA, February 9. /TASS/. The United States is entering into pre-mining, or offtake, agreements with companies in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and other African countries to supply copper and cobalt in order to compete with China in the industry, Reuters reported, citing experts.
"This is the US deploying financial firepower rather than industrial presence," Vincent Rouget, analyst at Control Risks, said. "With offtake and trading channels, Washington can redirect Congolese copper to American buyers without taking on the political or operational risks of running mines in the DRC," he added.
US authorities are primarily focused on mineral extraction in Zambia, Guinea, and the DRC, Reuters noted. Unlike Beijing, Washington does not deploy its own workers to Africa or conduct mining operations directly, relying instead on offtake contracts with local mining companies. The agency cited the example of the American company KoBold Metals, which acquired more than 3,000 square kilometers of copper and lithium deposits in the DRC but is not mining there due to bureaucracy.
However, Chinese companies still control many of the largest copper and cobalt deposits in the DRC, the world's leading supplier of the latter, according to the agency. Chinese organizations operate directly at deposits and are ahead of the US in their speed of market entry.