In the DRC, Chinese and American companies race for lithium
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Guillaume Jan (Manono (Democratic Republic of Congo), special correspondent)Published yesterday at 8:00 pm (Paris)
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In the southeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the city of Manono sits atop the world's largest reserves of this mineral essential to the energy transition. A Chinese group signed the first contract there in 2022, followed this year by a California-based company.
The sun had been up for less than an hour, and already a multitude of artisanal miners – known locally as "diggers" – were already hard at work in the maze of pits at the Kitololo quarry. Wearing rubber boots or simple sandals, armed with shovels and crowbars, hundreds of men, women and sometimes children tirelessly search underground for traces of coltan and cassiterite.
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"The quarry expands every month," said Floribert (who did not wish to give his last name), 21, one of the miners. "Last year, there were fields here, we grew rice and sweet potatoes. But people prefer to dig, since we get paid immediately for the ore we collect and roughly sift. On good days, we can earn more than 35,000 Congolese francs [about €10]."
One kilometer away, at the foot of the majestic Manono Cathedral in the center of this city of about 180,000 people, Father Moïse Kiluba, a staunch defender of his parishioners' rights, assessed the situation: "Minerals make a lot of people dream. There is strong demand for coltan and cassiterite, essential components of the digital revolution that has come with the widespread use of mobile phones. And more and more, people are talking about our lithium deposits, which are drawing the attention of the world's major powers. First China, and now the United States."
A glimmer of hope
Located in the southeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Manono was a major mining center in the 20th century. It fell into deep decline starting in 1982, when Belgian managers running the tin operations left, abandoning their opulent homes, processing plants and several massive slag heaps. The once-model city's infrastructure gradually deteriorated, poverty took hold and residents clung to the coltan and cassiterite they could still glean from the old tin-rich quarries.
A miner shows a handful of earth and rock containing cassiterite and coltan, in Manono, DRC, on May 20, 2025. GWENN DUBOURTHOUMIEU
Then, a glimmer of hope reemerged in 2020 when Australian company AVZ Minerals revealed that the city was built atop more than 44 million metric tons of lithium concentrated at 1.65% (16.5 kilograms of ore per metric ton of earth) – the largest known hard-rock lithium reserve in the world. Just as this vital battery component for solar panels, computers, smartphones and electric cars was cementing its essential role in the energy transition, Manono was back on the global negotiating table.
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China was the first to show interest through the Zijin Mining Group (already present in the DRC, notably at Kamoa-Kakula, the country's largest copper mine, near Kolwezi). Since 2022, the company has signed an operating contract; created a subsidiary called Manono Lithium dedicated to extracting this new "white gold"; started work to refurbish the road leading to the major city of Lubumbashi, 600 kilometers south; and opened another road that will reach Lake Tanganyika at the border with Tanzania, 300 kilometers east. The Chinese company also restored the first turbine at the Mpiana Mwanga hydroelectric plant, which had been idle since 1998, and has begun building a massive industrial complex for extraction.
"We plan to begin operations in June 2026," announced Jian Heyuan, the CEO, from his office set up in a shipping container at the back of the lot where the future administrative and executive buildings will stand. "We will then open the first Congolese lithium extraction project."
A promising deposit
But the US has already been positioning itself to gain access to this promising deposit. After attempting to secure mineral rights in Greenland and then Ukraine during the first months of his new presidential term, Donald Trump suddenly turned his attention to Africa and the "deals" he could strike there. His ambition is clear: to reestablish an American presence in a part of the world where China has rapidly taken hold over the past three decades, in order to secure access to strategic minerals for the US to remain competitive in the energy transition economy.
In Malata, a former workers' area for Géomines and then Zaïre Etain, residents dig even beneath their own homes in search of cassiterite and coltan. As extraction continues, some houses have partially collapsed, putting the families living there at risk. Manono, May 20, 2025. GWENN DUBOURTHOUMIEU
On June 27, Trump scored his first diplomatic success by securing a peace agreement between the DRC and Rwanda. For Washington, the terms of the treaty essentially amounted to access to Congolese natural resources, in exchange for diplomatic and security support aimed at ending the 30-year conflict.
This was a first step toward reopening the way for American investment in the now-strategic field of mineral access, as the Manono deposit is one of the main sites targeted by Americans in the DRC (along with the Rubaya coltan mine in North Kivu and the Lobito Corridor, a long railway designed to facilitate mineral exports through Angola's Atlantic coast – in the opposite direction from China).
In May, California-based mining company KoBold Metals announced that it was ready to invest more than $1 billion (about €865 million) to develop lithium extraction in Manono. On July 17, it confirmed this initial commitment by signing a memorandum of understanding to start lithium mining there and, more broadly, to launch a large-scale exploration program in the DRC, using artificial intelligence to identify the best deposits.
At the Manono Mining Office, a dusty room with boarded-up windows, the local representative of the Ministry of Mines, Jean Kimbasenga, tried to remain philosophical. "For now, we're waiting for industrial operations to arrive," said the cheerful man in his 40s, wearing a cowboy hat. "Until they do, unemployment will continue to run rampant."
Corruption and cronyism
Three hundred meters away, at the foot of the cathedral, Father Kiluba was less optimistic. He admitted to being skeptical about government policies, which, he said, "still do not meet the people's expectations, starting with basic infrastructure such as schools, medical care, water, electricity and roads." He also condemned the corruption and cronyism of the country's leaders who, in his view, "clearly favored" the arrival of Zijin Mining. He cited a 2022 report by the General Inspectorate of Finance that condemned the "sell-off" of DRC assets in this transaction. The public institution estimated the loss to the Congolese state at more than $120 million.
Workers from Manono Lithium work on the construction site of an electrical transformer that will power the lithium processing plant under construction in Manono, May 22, 2025. GWENN DUBOURTHOUMIEU
In the courtyard of the local radio station Trait d'Union, journalist Dieumerci Kabila (not related to former president Joseph Kabila) was also concerned: "Manono risks being negatively affected by industrial mining. The jobs now being offered by Manono Lithium pay less than the Congolese minimum wage, which is 14,500 francs per day. And the specifications listing the companies' social and environmental commitments to local communities have still not been released, even though they should have been made public over a year ago, according to the mining code. Politicians are seizing all the benefits from mining, while civil society is being shut out."
The race for Congolese lithium is now playing out in a context reminiscent of the 19th-century gold rush, with one key difference: Two superpowers are now vying for control of the world's most strategic minerals.
