--- title: Africa's Mineral Makeover description: Soaring demand for resources is reshaping Africa’s ambitions—and place in the global order. canonical: https://time.com/collections/davos-2026/7339212/africa-zambia-copper-mining-critical-minerals-green-energy-transition/ article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-01-15T12:01:44.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-03T01:03:55.762Z article:section: World og:title: Africa's Mineral Makeover og:description: Soaring demand for resources is reshaping Africa’s ambitions—and place in the global order. og:url: https://time.com/collections/davos-2026/7339212/africa-zambia-copper-mining-critical-minerals-green-energy-transition/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78f408ec1c580668/6998ccdbe2d64beb5cc5ffcd/africa-minerals-03.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Africa's Mineral Makeover og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Africa's Mineral Makeover twitter:description: Soaring demand for resources is reshaping Africa’s ambitions—and place in the global order. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78f408ec1c580668/6998ccdbe2d64beb5cc5ffcd/africa-minerals-03.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Jan 15, 2026 # Africa's Mineral Makeover by [Charlie Campbell](https://time.com/author/charlie-campbell/) ## Charlie Campbell Editor at Large  Aerial view of Kansanshi Copper Mine in northern Zambia Aerial view of Kansanshi Copper Mine in northern ZambiaPhotograph courtesy of FQM The journey from tawny earth to copper wire begins with an explosion. Or 2,697 explosions, to be precise. At the 1,100-acre main pit of Kansanshi copper mine in northern Zambia, a lattice of six-inch blast holes punctuates the ribboned moonscape. At 3 p.m., the ground erupts in an echelon pattern, sending plumes of dust skyward. Cue the arrival of the world’s largest electric dump trucks, which haul away the rubble to be ground to a fine powder. The ore is then concentrated via chemical flotation and finally transformed into 99.5% pure copper anode on site in Africa’s biggest smelter, where the liquid metal emerges amid an emerald glow. “The green color shows it’s pure copper,” says Edmund Mokolo, a smelter engineer for First Quantum Minerals (FQM), which runs Kansanshi. Zambia is already Africa’s second largest producer of copper, which accounts for around 70% of its export earnings. As with many of its neighbors, its history and culture have been shaped by minerals. Copper’s historic importance is spotlighted by an orange stripe on the Zambian flag—the world’s only national banner to reference the mineral. The landlocked nation of 22 million has highly ambitious plans to quadruple copper output to 3 million tons annually by 2031, electrifying the global economy while juicing its own. About $10 billion of private capital is being invested into mine expansion, including $1.25 billion by FQM for its new S3 processing plant in Kansanshi. But Africa’s current moment isn’t just about copper. It’s about whether the continent can shed historic dependencies to turn its mineral wealth into prosperity, without repeating mistakes of the past. One way is to leverage the U.S.-China rivalry, and the global clamor for the minerals essential to both the green transition and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Zambia’s potential is undisputed. Slightly larger than Texas, the country is 60% arable, though only 14% of its landmass is cultivated. Its English-speaking population has an enviable median age of 18\. (The U.S. and China are over double that.) With eight countries on its borders, Zambia is perfectly placed to serve as a regional economic hub for a quarter of a billion people. It is a country that has never been at war with itself or its neighbors and, notwithstanding flirtations with authoritarianism, has been broadly democratic for over three decades. Then there are mineral resources that are the envy of the developed world. Yet Zambia remains both the sixth poorest and sixth most inequitable nation on the planet. Power shortages are endemic. In 1996, 46% of Zambian people were living in poverty. Today, it’s 63%. Squandered promise is a refrain across Africa, galvanizing calls in Washington to prioritize trade over aid as the best means of uplifting its people. There’s plenty to be excited about. By the year 2050, over 25% of the world’s population is expected to hail from the continent, including a third of those ages 15 to 24\. Africa’s combined GDP was $2.6 trillion in 2020 but is projected to reach $29 trillion by 2050\. Africa boasts a middle class exceeding 350 million people as well as three of the world’s 20 fastest-growing tech hubs, including Nigeria’s Lagos in first place. There are ambitious plans for blockchain technology to unlock the value of gold, copper, and diamond reserves while leaving them in the ground. “We should stop crying and blaming other people,” Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema tells TIME on the veranda of his palatial home on the outskirts of Lusaka. “We should take charge of our destiny.” --- After 15 years in opposition, and five unsuccessful presidential bids, Hichilema finally secured power in 2021 after winning fans in Western capitals by painting himself as a principled champion of democratic values. The shine has come off since, with Western diplomats muttering bitterly about graft and backsliding democracy, even as enormous billboards adorned with Hichilema’s stern visage loom over Lusaka’s acacia-lined streets exhorting citizens to Say No to Corruption. In 2017, as opposition leader, he was imprisoned for four months and tortured before being released amid an international outcry. “There were some excesses here and there,” he shrugs. “The last government was a little bit heavy-handed.” Hichilema’s desire to play down his past tribulations and play up Zambian stability is understandable. In particular, he wants last January’s dismantling of USAID, which had allocated $12.7 billion to the sub-Saharan region, accounting for 0.6% of GDP, to entrench a new paradigm of self-sufficiency. It’s a decidedly silver-lining perspective on a shock treatment that was widely condemned at the time. Various studies suggest the aid cuts could push 5.7 million more Africans into extreme poverty within a year, while 2 million to 4 million people were likely to die annually as a result. Zambia was receiving around $600 million annually toward health care, food security, governance, and security—of which some $70 million was cut. At first, food imports had to be urgently distributed to Zambia’s poorest to plug the gap. “We had to work hard to make sure that nobody died of hunger,” says Hichilema. Still, he calls the cuts a “long overdue” wake-up call. After inheriting an economy that contracted 2.8% in 2020, Hichilema is now aiming for 6% growth next year. In 2022, he made primary and secondary education free for all citizens and has since added 10,000 teachers to the 30,000 already on the national books. At Mushitala Primary School in Zambia’s northern town of Solwezi, attendance has soared from 1,700 boisterous schoolkids in azure blue uniforms when universal education was introduced to over 2,800 today. “We have 47 teachers today instead of 30 before,” says head teacher Doreen Shimishi.  Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema pictured on June 23, 2023 IANNISG/REA/Redux In August, Hichilema inked an agreement with Indian pharmaceutical firm Akums to start producing 700 types of generic drugs at a special economic zone outside the capital. He also unveiled a policy to irrigate 1.2 million acres of farmland to allow two maize crops each year. Despite one of the worst droughts in decades last year, Zambia just enjoyed its highest agricultural yield since independence in 1964\. “So we’ll be food secure,” says Hichilema. “We should continue being a food basket for not just ourselves but the region.” Despite Africa hosting 20 of the 25 most climate-vulnerable countries, in other ways the fight against global warming plays to the continent’s advantage. The continent’s young population, natural resources, and abundance of untapped renewable energy make it essential to climate goals. Africa hosts 60% of the planet’s uncultivated arable land yet only 16% of the global carbon-credits market. Zambia sits on the southern fringe of the Congo Basin, the world’s second largest rain forest, which every year removes $55 billion in carbon from the atmosphere. “Anyone serious about decarbonizing major chunks of the global economy will invest where the energy, the people, and the raw materials are,” says James Mwangi, founder and CEO of Africa Climate Ventures. Still, many challenges persist. Africa faces limited access to international markets, unfair trading conditions, and only 6% of global capital allocation. Corruption remains rife. But the hope is that the decline of foreign aid creates a rallying call that compels African countries to forge their own paths, freed from the rules donors attached to aid. Studies show ready access to aid cash also gnaws at professionalism and fosters corruption. Every year, an estimated $88.6 billion—some 3.7% of Africa’s GDP—leaves the continent for overseas bank accounts, according to U.N. data. In 2021, $5 billion reportedly vanished from Zambia’s coffers alone, about 20% of GDP. Owing to perceived venality and instability, many African countries pay four times as much interest on their debt as do high-income nations despite often having lower debt-to-GDP ratios. An average African government spends 18% of all state revenue on interest alone, compared with 3% for E.U. nations. Since coming into office, Hichilema has restructured 94% of Zambia’s debt, but laments the high price of capital as a “trap” and “death sentence” for Africa. Money that goes to servicing debt could fund health care, education, and other public goods, he says. “The risk premiums attributable to Africa are overly inflated. This is now a moral issue.” Indeed, a September report by the Global Emerging Markets Risk Data-base found that while sub-Saharan Africa recorded the highest rate of default on private loans from 1994 to 2024 at 6.05%, it also had the highest rate of recovering funds (78%). “Africa is not without risk,” says Mark Napier, CEO of Financial Services Deepening Africa, which helps establish capital markets across Africa. “But on average it’s less perilous than you might think.” --- Despite efforts to diversify Africa’s economy, near-term prosperity relies on more efficiently exploiting natural resources. Africa is home to 30% of the world’s minerals but nine of its 10 poorest nations. Unfortunately, until now mineral wealth has been more likely to correlate to instability than prosperity, as spotlighted by the ongoing civil war in Sudan, where access to gold fields is a key driver. “The continent has always been very rich under the ground,” says Moses Michael Engadu, secretary-general of the Africa Minerals Strategy Group (AMSG), an intergovernmental body that aims to ensure the continent benefits from its vast mineral wealth. “But that wealth is not being transformed above.” Geopolitics may help unlock this potential. For decades, most of the copper leaving Africa was bound for China, whose 58 smelters underscore its stranglehold over processing. (The U.S. has two.) But with the Trump Administration adding copper to its list of critical minerals in November, extricating supply chains from Washington’s superpower rival is now a national-security priority. In recent months, the U.S. has signed seven bilateral critical-minerals agreements with countries around the globe. Zambia hopes to take advantage of great power tensions to refine more minerals locally and retain more value-add. On Dec. 11, Caleb Orr, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs, visited Kansanshi and met with Hichilema to discuss accessing critical minerals. “Data centers and the AI boom rely on copper,” Orr tells TIME. “And so our own economy has immense interest in securing the copper supply chain.” Kansanshi is Africa’s largest copper mine and pivotal to Zambia’s development goals. As the world clamors to electrify and embrace transformative technology like AI, soaring demand for copper is poised to outstrip supply, with the world facing a 30% copper deficit by 2035, according to the International Energy Agency, which has warned scaling copper production will require more investment than any other transition mineral. “We want our copper ... to do to us what oil and gas has done to the Middle East,” says Hichilema. “That’s our aspiration.” Historically, the generosity of Western nations put aid recipients in a bind, making governments accountable to donors rather than constituents, who are spared the hardship of paying taxes but are less likely to hold public officials to account. Meanwhile, the sovereignty of their resources is diluted. “Now, African governments have recognized that they have more autonomy and must use it to become more self-reliant and to achieve genuine financial sovereignty,” says Marcus Courage, founder and CEO of Africa Practice, a business consultancy. Guinea, the world’s top bauxite exporter, has begun mandating that foreign mining companies invest in local alumina refineries. Ghana’s first commercial gold refinery opened in August 2024, while a ban on foreign traders to combat smuggling helped gold exports to rise 75% year-on-year. Malawi banned all raw-mineral exports in late 2025; Gabon is set to stop exporting raw manganese by 2029\. “For a long time, Africa has been operating on potential,” says Engadu. “It’s time to transform that promise into action.” Zambia has eyes on doing more with mining than collecting royalties. FQM is already its top taxpayer, contributing $650 million to state coffers in 2024, not including an additional $2 billion in wages, supplier contracts, and community outreach. The Canada-headquartered firm, which started life in Zambia as a copper-tailings reprocessor but has since expanded across five continents, has also trained 7,000 local farmers, supports 35 schools and 23 health facilities, and runs a range of community activities. “We very much understand that we’re in a community,” says FQM CEO Tristan Pascall. “We need to be there with people to provide something that impacts their lives beneficially.”  Molten copper pours from First Quantum Minerals’ smelter in northern Zambia Timothy Kambidima—FQM Hichilema wants to codify that largesse into policy. From Jan. 1, 2026, new local-sourcing legislation compels Zambian mines to purchase 20% of core goods—materials used in the actual mining process—and 100% of secondary goods and services from Zambian-owned businesses, with the aim to seed domestic manufacturing for lubricants, explosives, PPE, foodstuffs, and more. Over time, the core provision will be increased to 40%, says Hichilema, with the mines themselves encouraged to work with nascent suppliers to build capacity and ensure quality, as well as provide capital via prepayment and loan guarantees. “We still have to teach our people to do business,” says Hichilema. Another hope is that “tokenization” can boost investor confidence by ensuring transparency. In theory, anything can be tokenized. Once an asset has been quantified and assigned a value, it can be sold on open markets much like shares. Blockchain technology can then follow that asset via every stage of processing. “It solves problems related to fraud, transparency, provenance,” says Chris Wong, CEO of LifeSite, whose TokenX platform is being used by the AMSG to develop a standardized Africa Mineral Token. Carbon credits offer another potential revenue stream. The Luangwa Community Forests Project east of Lusaka is the continent’s largest REDD+ project by size and the largest in the world by quantified social impact, part of a U.N.-backed framework that pays communities to protect forests rather than clear them. It’s run by Lusaka-based Bio-Carbon Partners (BCP), which sells carbon credits to private industries including oil and gas and luxury goods, as well as individuals. BCP manages a total of 16.5 million acres of forest in Zambia, where over 70% of the workforce is recruited from communities served, and is currently undertaking additional projects in neighboring Mozambique. Still, CEO Nicholas Mudaly cautions that BCP took seven years and spent $85 million to achieve the necessary accreditation and that money hasn’t been recouped. While carbon credits are different from aid, they still rely on a capricious West keeping its side of the bargain. In 2022, Gabon pursued an ambitious strategy to leverage its vast rain forests to issue 187 million REDD+ carbon credits. Pricing guidelines at the time suggest they should have reaped up to $2 billion. However, Gabon only managed to sell $17 million worth to Norway. Critics say the economic and social cost of Gabon’s conservation efforts contributed to President Ali Bongo’s removal in a coup d’état the following year. Lee White, a conservationist who served as Gabon’s Environment Minister until Bongo’s ouster, says that $2 billion could have drastically altered the national mood if spent on education, health care, and forestry management. Carbon markets are “a risky thing for a country to gamble on,” says White. “Should we put our limited financial resources into creating forest carbon credits if we aren’t confident that we will actually get paid for it?” --- When it comes to seeking economic opportunities, Hichilema makes no bones about looking both East and West. He held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in both 2023 and 2024, with bilateral ties upgraded to a “comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.” On Nov. 17, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed “shared economic goals” by phone with Hichilema. Two days later, Chinese Premier Li Qiang came to Lusaka. The superpowers’ courting of Zambia can verge on pantomime. In September, China inked a $1.4 billion deal to rehabilitate the historic Tanzania-Zambia Railway, which was first built with Chinese help and serves as a vital link for Zambia’s copper exports to the Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam. In response, the U.S. Embassy in Zambia tetchily posted on social media that two years after its 1976 opening Washington had to provide locomotives for the “prematurely decrepit railway,” as well as an additional $45 million toward maintenance in the 1980s owing to “poor quality and cutting of corners in project delivery.” Not that the U.S. has been a model of consistency. In May, its ambassador announced the U.S. was cutting $50 million of medications and medical supplies because of “systematic theft of these products” and “minimal responsive action by the government.” But just six months later, Washington unveiled a $1.5 billion grant over five years to build capacity in Zambia’s health care sector. The reversal appeared a ploy to counter China, whose no-strings, look-the-other-way approach to mineral-rich nations can both produce results and leave a stain. In Zambia, for all his progressive and pro-business rhetoric, Hichilema has been accused of implementing oppressive measures, like a draconian cybersecurity law, while opposition figures have been targeted with a flurry of charges such as sedition, defamation, unlawful assembly, hate speech, and espionage. In August, Hichilema will seek re-election and has backed a controversial constitutional amendment that would allow him to stack parliament with presidential appointees. Hichilema insists that his government respects the rule of law and denies undermining democracy. “We want stability, peace, security,” he says. “This government does not support ... conflict, settling matters in the streets, agitating populations, disrupting the flow of ordinary life and conduct of business.” But the concern is that Zambia’s leverage in the global marketplace will be squandered without true accountability. In February, a tailings dam collapsed at a copper mine operated by a Chinese state-owned enterprise in northern Zambia, releasing some 13 million gal. of highly toxic and acidic waste—including heavy metals like arsenic, mercury, and lead—into the Kafue River, Zambia’s longest waterway and a major drinking-water source. The spill killed fish, destroyed crops, and rendered the water undrinkable. Experts say a full cleanup could take longer than a decade—and nobody is sure who is going to foot the bill. “We’re not happy about the spillage,” says Hichilema. “That is why we’re working closely with Sino Metals, working with the Chinese government, because they own the company, to make sure that there’s no repeat.” Still, an independent audit into the disaster was dismissed by Lusaka, raising fears of a whitewash. (The fact that Zambia is burdened with more than $4 billion in Chinese debt, some of which had to be restructured after defaulting on foreign repayments in 2020, has not gone unnoticed.) In November, Hichilema was forced to abandon a speech in northern Zambia after the audience pelted him with stones. The prospect of any nation getting a free pass is galling for Zambians, for whom autonomy also means being able to hold foreign companies to account. It’s also a potential self-inflicted wound for attracting the new investment necessary for Zambia to thrive. “If we’re going to grow in Zambia, it needs to be on the basis of strong institutions, low levels of corruption, and a democratic process,” says FQM’s Pascall. Rather than begging for a seat at the West’s table, Africa now has every power clamoring for an invite to its own. But while the new paradigm of self-sufficiency means future successes will be purely African—failures must share that same label. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/davos-2026/7339212/africa-zambia-copper-mining-critical-minerals-green-energy-transition/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/davos-2026/7339212/africa-zambia-copper-mining-critical-minerals-green-energy-transition/"},"headline":"Africa's Mineral Makeover","datePublished":"2026-01-15T12:01:44.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T01:03:55.762Z","description":"Soaring demand for resources is reshaping Africa’s ambitions—and place in the global order.","url":"https://time.com/collections/davos-2026/7339212/africa-zambia-copper-mining-critical-minerals-green-energy-transition/","keywords":["Davos 2026","list","franchise","Magazine","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78f408ec1c580668/6998ccdbe2d64beb5cc5ffcd/africa-minerals-03.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Charlie Campbell","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/charlie-campbell/"}],"creator":"Charlie Campbell","articleSection":"World","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78f408ec1c580668/6998ccdbe2d64beb5cc5ffcd/africa-minerals-03.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/world/","name":"World"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/davos-2026/","name":"Davos 2026"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/davos-2026/7339212/africa-zambia-copper-mining-critical-minerals-green-energy-transition/","name":"Africa's Mineral Makeover"}}]}] ```