De-risking minerals: Can Europe and Africa align?

As Europe endeavours to reduce its reliance on China for critical raw materials and the technologies they enable, efforts to boost European investment in mining and value addition in African countries are getting increased attention. However, a number of factors pose challenges to Europe realising these projects.

The public discussion marks the launch of recent ECFR policy brief, Material world: How Europe can compete with China in the race for Africa’s critical minerals, which explores the strategic partnerships the EU has signed with African countries to facilitate Europe’s access to critical minerals and considerations needed when aligning public policy ambitions to reality on the ground. The conversation aims to assess the challenges Europeans and Africans face around mining and value addition projects in African countries. It will reflect on Europe’s efforts to participate in mining and processing of critical minerals in African countries, taking into account Europe’s objective to de-risk from China as well as global market dynamics.