Lithium: Where the US company KoBold Metals is running into problems in the DRC
US company KoBold Metals, backed by several billionaires including Bill Gates, plans to map lithium deposits in the DRC. However, a dispute over licenses is complicating the project.
As part of the US commodities partnership with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), one company in particular is set to focus on lithium: KoBold Metals has signed an agreement with the Congolese government and plans to
invest $1 billion. The company intends to use artificial intelligence to explore lithium deposits in Tanganyika province and participate in their extraction. The region around Manono holds
400 million tons of lithium – the world’s largest hard-rock reserves. Lithium occurs in larger quantities in other forms in South America.
The agreement with KoBold is part of the partnership between the DRC and the US, which aims to push back against Chinese companies in the DRC. KoBold is setting up its first offices, and geologists are now arriving, sources close to the company in Manono told Table.Briefings. That is raising eyebrows, because the core of KoBold’s licenses in the southern Manono area is the subject of two arbitration proceedings between the Australian mining company AVZ and the Congolese government.
The dispute between AVZ and the DRC began in 2023. AVZ had originally held a 60% stake in the Manono joint venture with the state-owned company Cominière. In 2023, the Congolese government controversially stripped AVZ of its shares and transferred them to Cominière, which is now cooperating with KoBold. AVZ subsequently appealed to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). The Chinese battery manufacturer CATH Energy Technologies is financing AVZ in the legal dispute with $20 million and, in return, is claiming the lithium to be mined in the future. As a result of the dispute, AVZ was delisted from the Australian stock exchange.
One resources expert views the contract between KoBold and the DRC critically in light of the dispute over AVZ. “The revocation of the license was illegal. AVZ must be compensated,” Jimmy Munguriek, country director of the NGO Resource Matters, told Table.Briefings. He also said the agreement between KoBold and the state violates the Mining Act as there was no public tender, which is required when granting licenses.
KoBold and AVZ announced in May 2025 that KoBold would purchase the disputed AVZ shares to settle the dispute. Both companies said they wanted to contribute to “peace and security” in the region. So far, however, that has remained only an announcement. The companies did not respond to inquiries from Table.Briefings. German geologist Klaus Eckhof explored the deposits in Manono for AVZ about 10 years ago. AVZ had invested around $300 million, Eckhof told Table.Briefings, adding that KoBold had only offered $250 million for the AVZ shares. “It’s a bad time because the price of lithium has fallen by 80% since then,” Eckhof said. He explores gold, lithium and tin deposits in the DRC and brokers the lucrative licenses to mining companies. Resource Matters criticizes the process as being, at times, opaque and points to Eckhof’s “close ties” to politicians.
According to forecasts, the global lithium industry could more than quadruple within 10 years. Market Research Future
predicts it will grow from $35.3 billion in 2025 to $131 billion by 2035. Lithium is used in batteries for electric cars and electronic devices. In 2024, Germany
imported 2,800 tons of lithium carbonate worth $40.5 million, primarily from Chile. In Africa, Zimbabwe is the largest lithium producer. As recently as February, the country announced an
export ban aimed at increasing local value creation.
Namibia is also rapidly emerging as a hub for lithium exploration.
In the DRC, lithium mining is still in its infancy. The license for the northern deposits in the Manono region is now held by the Chinese company Jinxiang Lithium, which owns a 61% stake in a joint venture with Cominière. Production is scheduled to begin in June. Jean Louis Assani, director of the NGO SADRI, expressed broader concerns about the partnership with the US in an interview with Table.Briefings, claiming that President Félix Tshisekedi negotiated it unilaterally with the Trump administration. “Trump is also a businessperson. Perhaps he has his own interests,” Assani speculated. Corruption, moreover, is endemic in the mining industry, he said.
Assani fears the population could be manipulated in the dispute over mining rights in Manono and that militias could be financed – as happened in the resource-rich region in the 2010s. “We call the area around Manono, Pweto and Mitwaba the Triangle of Death,” Assani said.
KoBold is backed by Breakthrough Energy, which was founded by Bill Gates and is supported by Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson. In its most recent funding round, KoBold
raised $192.5 million. The company is exploring copper deposits in Zambia and recently signed a contract with Burundi to explore raw materials there. It also plans to digitize raw material data from the Congolese colonial era at the Belgian Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, but is facing resistance from the museum. “You can’t leave that to private companies,” museum director Bart Ouvry
told Reuters. The European Union also has ambitions to digitize the data in Tervuren and plans to provide €45 million in funding for geosciences in Africa as part of the PanAfGeo+ program. The DRC is set to
receive €17.8 million from that fund.
