Beyond Extraction:
Africa's Bid for Processing

The DRC and Zambia together sit at the centre of the global energy transition's most critical supply question. Despite the DRC accounting for roughly two-thirds of global mined cobalt, nearly all of it has historically left the country with minimal processing. Copper production tells a similar story: significant ore reserves, some refining, but most cathode production occurring outside the region.

In December 2022, the US, DRC, and Zambia signed an MOU to develop an integrated EV battery value chain spanning extraction through manufacturing and assembly. The Congolese Battery Council (CCB), established in 2022, has since been tasked with facilitating Special Economic Zones for battery precursor manufacturing — with the African Export-Import Bank as a financing partner. On the ground, Congolese firm Buenassa, backed by initial government funding, is constructing a hydrometallurgical plant in Lualaba province targeting 30,000 tonnes of copper cathode and 5,000 tonnes of cobalt sulphate annually by 2027. Eurasian Resources Group broke ground in October 2023 on a metallurgical plant in the DRC aiming for copper and cobalt output from 2025.

The Lobito Corridor — the rail and port project linking the Copperbelt to Angola's Atlantic coast — is a significant enabling factor. The US International Development Finance Corporation has committed substantial funding to modernise the corridor's rail and port facilities, with projections suggesting annual transport capacity could increase by an order of magnitude and costs fall by up to 30 percent relative to current routes. This directly addresses one of the processing sector's structural problems: landlocked producers dependent on expensive, circuitous export routes cannot easily compete with coastal refiners on delivered cost.

The geopolitical dimension is impossible to separate from the commercial one. China's CMOC Group remains the world's top cobalt producer, achieving record output at Tenke Fungurume and Kisanfu in 2024 and tracking higher in 2025. Chinese dominance in downstream refining — the stage at which raw ore becomes battery-grade material — is the specific bottleneck that the US and EU are funding African processing capacity to break. DRC's decision in early 2025 to impose cobalt export controls shifted the market from oversupply to balance, driving prices from lows near $21,500/t to $48,570/t by October 2025.

Guinea's position in the global bauxite market is structurally dominant and structurally contradictory. The country controls approximately 73 percent of global seaborne bauxite exports, yet it operates just one functional alumina refinery — Rusal's Friguia facility, with capacity of roughly 600,000 tonnes annually. In Q3 2025, Guinea exported 39.41 million tonnes of bauxite against a mere 78,000 tonnes of alumina. That 505:1 ratio captures the scale of value left on the table.

The military government under Mamadi Doumbouya has chosen enforcement as its primary instrument. In October and November 2024, authorities suspended bauxite exports from Emirates Global Aluminium's subsidiary Guinea Alumina Corporation (GAC), citing failure to deliver on a committed domestic refinery. The suspension immediately triggered a record high in Shanghai's alumina futures contract — 5,055 yuan/tonne. By August 2025, GAC's mining concession was formally revoked and the company had exited Guinea entirely. The concession was transferred to the newly established state-owned Nimba Mining Company.

The EGA exit carries two distinct messages for the investment community. First, Guinea will act on processing mandates, even at the cost of short-term production disruption. Second, negotiated equity participation — GAC's June 2024 term sheet offered government a 15 percent stake in the refinery and two board seats — is not, by itself, sufficient to secure tenure. What matters is physical execution.

Refinery activity is nonetheless advancing. SPIC-Boffa is under active construction as of late 2025. Advanced negotiations with Chinalco and France's Alteo are ongoing, the latter in partnership with UNIDO for workforce development. The challenge is execution capacity: Guinea lacks the engineering workforce, power infrastructure, and project management depth to deliver multiple large industrial facilities simultaneously. Alumina currently trades at approximately $346/t against Guinean bauxite at roughly $67.5/t delivered to China — the economics of processing are unambiguous. The institutional prerequisites are what constrain the timeline.

Morocco offers the clearest available evidence that African downstream processing at industrial scale is achievable — and commercially compelling. OCP Group has, over two decades under Mostafa Terrab's leadership, transformed from a state mining entity exporting rock into what is now the world's largest producer of phosphate-based fertilisers. The company mines 50 million tonnes of phosphate rock annually, processes the majority into phosphoric acid, DAP, MAP, and TSP at the Jorf Lasfar industrial complex, and exports the finished product globally. Revenue of $9.8 billion in 2024 and $5.7 billion in H1 2025 (up 21 percent year-on-year) reflect the financial return from that transition.

The value arithmetic is stark. Moroccan bauxite exports raw rock at roughly $65–67 per tonne. Alumina trades near $346/t. Finished phosphate fertiliser averaged $589/t on international markets in H1 2025. Phosphoric acid, the intermediate product, commands around $900/t. OCP's deliberate strategy of reducing raw rock exports in favour of processing more domestically — evidenced by Morocco's rock exports falling below Jordan's from 2022 — is precisely the kind of industrial policy that the DRC-Zambia and Guinea cases are still attempting to build.

China's 2024 phosphate export restrictions, designed to protect domestic supply, created a structural opening for OCP that the company moved swiftly to fill. OCP issued $2 billion in international bonds in 2024 and a further $1.75 billion dual-tranche offering in April 2025 — the latter reportedly oversubscribed more than fourfold. A $1.2 billion Phase 2 capacity expansion is underway, targeting total fertilizer production of 3.8 million tonnes per year. The SP2M programme aims to add 9 million tonnes of total fertilizer capacity by 2028.

OCP's ambitions are now extending beyond fertilisers. Its Specialty Products & Solutions business is developing phosphate applications for LFP batteries, fluorine, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals — positioning the company at the intersection of food security and energy transition supply chains. In June 2025, Morocco inaugurated its first lithium-ion battery materials manufacturing plant, adding a second industrial track to an already diversified downstream portfolio. The strategic principle — capture value domestically before it leaves the country — is the same one Guinea is attempting by coercion and the DRC-Zambia corridor by bilateral negotiation. Morocco demonstrates that with the right institutional architecture, it compounds over time.