By Oli Brown, Senior Advisor

The latest grim chapter in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s bloody history started in December 2024 with the breakdown in negotiations between the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the M23 movement, an armed group composed predominantly of ethnic Tutsis that has been fighting in eastern DRC since 2012. The Congolese government and multiple UN reports have accused Rwanda of supporting the M23 rebels as a means of looting the minerals of eastern DRC. On 24^th February the DRC’s Prime Minister told the UN that 7,000 people have been killed in the latest round of fighting. Reports are emerging of horrendous human rights abuses, including the rape and burning to death of 100 women in a Goma prison. M23 now controls a huge area of eastern Congo and has taken the regional capital of Bukavu.

The current fighting in DRC is emblematic of a new frontier in geopolitical competition, violent conflict and business risk: the contested control for the so-called ‘critical minerals’ which underpin the clean energy transition and digital infrastructure. These two-dozen[1] or so minerals are necessary for a raft of new technologies – everything from wind turbines to computer chips to missile guidance systems. Scratch the surface of many current geopolitical challenges and conflicts – the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Trump’s push to absorb Greenland and Canada into the US, or the brewing trade war between the US and China – and critical minerals appear, sooner or later.

These minerals are important at the macro-scale, driving geopolitical risk and economic competition within countries, but also significant for business interests at the enterprise level, driving consumer and regulatory pressures, shaping shareholder activism and corporate reputations based on upstream responsibilities from supply chains emanating from areas by armed conflict. DRC, for example, filed a suit in the EU in December 2024 accusing Apple and its subsidiaries for using conflict minerals in its supply chain. Understanding the strategic issues involved and addressing the factors that are exacerbating conflict is vital for companies, investors and governments alike.

Critical minerals are so described because they are essential to build the sinews of the fourth industrial revolution – the digital revolution – as well as the transition to renewable energy that is necessary if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change. Cobalt is needed for smartphones and laptops. Lithium is the core ingredient in many types of rechargeable battery. Copper is essential for high voltage transmission cables. Quartz is used in smartphone screens and solar panels. Neodymium is crucial for missile guidance systems. And so on. In essence critical minerals underpin four essential elements of the modern economy: How we provide energy, how we transport ourselves, how we generate and share information, and how we secure our borders.

Many of these minerals are highly specialized and do not have easy, or indeed any, substitutes. And reserves of these materials are unevenly distributed across the world. Consequently, their ‘criticality’ is something of a subjective attribute. Lists of ‘critical’ minerals vary by country: some countries have plentiful supplies of some minerals but not others. Those resources are highly concentrated. Roughly half of the global supply of cobalt comes from the DRC, 80 per cent of lithium comes from just three countries (Australia, Chile and Argentina), 60 per cent of the global supply of manganese comes from South Africa, China and Australia and 88 per cent of the global supply of rare-earth elements comes from China alone.

Processing is even more concentrated. China handles 40 per cent of copper, 35 per cent of nickel, 58 per cent of lithium, 65 per cent of cobalt and 87 per cent of rare earth elements. The domination of extraction and processing by a handful of countries and companies makes mineral supply chains inherently less competitive and vulnerable to logistical risks and natural disasters. It also makes them prone to geopolitically induced disruptions, such as trade restrictions, armed take overs and hoarding behaviours.

Demand for critical minerals has skyrocketed over the past decade: annual growth in digital infrastructure is above 22% per year, and the share of renewables in electricity production is projected to increase from 30% in 2023 to 40% in 2030. Equipping the world for net zero by 2050 implies a six-fold increase in production of these minerals from 2022 levels. By 2040, copper demand will increase by half, cobalt and nickel will double, while lithium will increase nine-fold. And the explosive growth of AI is likely to push this further and faster: in February the EU announced plans to mobilize 200 million euros of investment, which comes on top of eyewatering investments in the US, such as the February announcement by Apply that they plan to spend 500 billion usd on AI over the next four years.

However, the supply of these minerals is far from certain amid a trend of declining ore grades, long lead times for new mining operations and a limited number of countries and companies extracting and processing the minerals. The speed and extent of the digital and energy transitions will be determined by getting the right amounts of these minerals in the right places at the right time. The supply chains of these minerals are complex, fragile and often dominated by a limited range of countries and companies. This makes them vulnerable to political pressure, armed take overs, and economic shocks.

We are seeing this play out in real time, with huge implications for global power politics.

In just the past few weeks, President Zelensky has offered critical minerals to the US in return for military and civilian aid to the Ukrainian war effort. Justin Trudeau said that he believes that Canada’s critical minerals are behind Donald Trump’s astounding idea that Canada should become the 51st state.

Meanwhile, the extraction of critical minerals is frequently marred by severe challenges including forced and child labour, huge environmental damage such as deforestation, water pollution and soil degradation, and the very real risk that their extraction may cause, contribute or be linked in some way to violence and armed conflict. Lithium mining has been associated with corruption in in Zimbabwe, DRC and Namibia, rare earth mining is having devastating environmental and social impacts in Myanmar, and control over gold is fuelling fighting in the Sahel. These issues are particularly serious in fragile and conflict affected settings. Mineral resources can motivate and sustain armed groups and states behind these, profits can support armed conflicts, and legitimate/well-intentioned projects can create tensions with local communities. The NGO Global Witness estimates that critical mineral mines are tied to 111 violent incidents and protests on average a year between 2021 and 2023, with nearly 90% of violence and protests happened in emerging economies.

As a result, the regulatory environment for critical minerals has been changing fast. Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act included extensive support to expand critical mineral production in the US. Producer countries such as Indonesia and Namibia have banned exports of raw materials like nickel, lithium and bauxite to encourage greater domestic processing. In 2021 the EU brought in its long-discussed Conflict Minerals Regulation which aims to stem the flow in four conflict minerals: tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold. The regulation puts the onus on EU importers of these materials to put in place comprehensive due diligence of the supply chains where minerals are determined to be coming from areas suffering from armed conflict, such as civil war, a state of fragile post-conflict, or witnessing weak or non-existing governance and systematic violations of international law, including human rights abuses.

With Rwanda engaged in a blatant effort to loot the critical minerals in eastern DRC, the EU is reviewing a 2024 minerals deal with Rwanda that had the EU providing Kigali with 900 million euros to develop infrastructure in raw materials extraction. With the multiple pressures associated with critical minerals only likely to intensify, public and private stakeholders will need to work together to foster safe, sustainable, equitable and reliable critical mineral supply chains with a strong focus on ensuring adherence to international humanitarian law, sustainability and efficiency, heightened human rights due diligence and conflict-sensitivity if we are to ensure that the rush to make the world greener doesn’t simultaneously make it more violent.