At an Open Society Foundation workshop on Africa’s critical minerals future in Pretoria in May 2026, Farai Maguwu, a Zimbabwean natural resources expert, made an observation: “Africa’s engagement with China is outdated.”
His target was not Beijing itself. Rather, it was the mindset with which many African governments continue to approach China — one shaped by memories of Cold War politics and anti-colonial solidarity.
The trouble, he argued, was that “the Chinese arriving today are not comrades.
“They are shrewd businesspeople” pursuing clear strategic objectives, while too many African governments continue to greet them with what amounts to a “blank cheque” and the liberation sentiments of the 1960s.
Outdated mindset
The observation extends well beyond Africa-China relations. As global powers scramble for Africa’s critical minerals, the question is not whether Beijing or any other foreign power is advancing its interests. It is whether Africa is pursuing its own interests with equal clarity and purpose.
But the outdated mindset in question is rooted in a particular history. China was not merely a rhetorical supporter of African liberation.
In Zimbabwe, for instance, Beijing backed the Zimbabwe African National Union during the liberation struggle, including through training and military assistance.
In Mozambique, China also engaged the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (Frelimo), especially in the movement’s early years in the 1960s, through the provision of military training in Tanzania.
The Tanzania-Zambia Railway further cemented Africa-China relations. Built between 1970 and 1975 with a Chinese interest- free loan of $415 million and technical support, the 1 860km railway linked Dar es Salaam to Kapiri Mposhi and provided landlocked Zambia with an export route that bypassed white-minority-ruled Rhodesia and apartheid
South Africa.
The interventions did not end with the liberation era. They continue today in projects such as the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, completed in 2012 with Chinese funding.
Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui summed up Africa-China relations through the lens of solidarity rooted in shared experiences of racial domination, anti-imperial struggle and resistance to Western hegemony.
From the Bandung Conference of 1955 to contemporary platforms such as BRICS+, whose members include Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Africa-China relations have been framed through a language of anti-imperial solidarity and South-South cooperation, giving Beijing a political identity on the continent distinct from that of former colonial powers such as Britain, France and Portugal.
Yet solidarity, however genuine, should not overshadow Africa’s strategy for the critical minerals era.
The China that supported liberation movements was a revolutionary state seeking allies in the Third World and competing with the Soviet Union for geopolitical influence.
Position of power
The Beijing that African governments deal with today is a global economic power, a manufacturing giant and a strategic actor securing the minerals, infrastructure and supply chains it needs for its own development and geopolitical positioning.
China speaks the language of South-South cooperation but it now does so from a position of immense economic power. That is precisely why Africa cannot afford to engage China through the memory of comradeship when the present demands negotiation, leverage and strategy.
A shift in thinking is urgently required because the world is no longer approaching Africa’s minerals as ordinary commodities but as strategic assets.
Resources in demand
Africa’s resources have always attracted external demand but critical minerals are different because they sit at the intersection of energy transition, technological competition and national security.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) identifies lithium, copper, nickel, cobalt, graphite and rare earth elements such as neodymium and praseodymium as essential to batteries, renewable power and advanced manufacturing.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) estimates that Africa holds 48.1% of the world’s cobalt reserves, 47.7% of manganese, 21.6% of natural graphite, 5.9% of copper, 5.6% of nickel and 1% of lithium.
The world’s need for Africa’s minerals is therefore not in doubt. But who gets to define what makes them critical?
Calling these minerals “critical” is not neutral. The expression reflects the priorities of those who need these minerals the most: battery manufacturers, industrial powers, technology firms and states seeking control over future supply chains.
For Africa, the real test is whether this new demand can be made critical to Africa’s development. That means that minerals must do more than leave the continent as raw materials. They must also support industrialisation, technology transfer, skills development, energy access and economic transformation.
Otherwise, Africa’s minerals might be critical to the world’s future while remaining peripheral to the continent’s own future.
Case in point
The need to prioritise Africa’s interests is where the conversation about China often goes wrong. Consider the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC’s) Sicomines agreement.
In 2008, Kinshasa signed a minerals-for-infrastructure deal that gave a Chinese consortium 68% of a vast copper and cobalt venture in exchange for roads, hospitals and other infrastructure.
Years later, the DRC’s internal auditor discovered that only about $822 million in infrastructure had been delivered out of an expected $3 billion. Therefore, President Félix Tshisekedi pushed for a renegotiation of the deal in 2024, raising the infrastructure commitments to $7 billion, while China retained its 68% stake.
Additionally, South Africa possesses roughly 80% of the world’s known chrome reserves, yet exported nearly 24 million tonnes of chrome ore in 2025, much of it for processing in China.
In both cases, Beijing did not force these outcomes.
The problem was whether the governments of both countries had the capacity and vision to secure the best possible outcome for their own African citizens.
What would a different approach look like? Indonesia offers one example.
After restricting raw nickel ore exports, first in 2014 and more fully from 2020, Indonesia used state policy to push for the processing of the mineral within the country.
Nickel-related exports rose from about $6 billion in 2013 to nearly $30 billion by 2022.
The model is not perfect and it has relied heavily on Chinese capital but that is precisely the point: Indonesia did not reject Beijing. It made Chinese investment serve Indonesia’s own industrial policy.
That is why the problem is not China. Beijing is simply doing what successful states do: pursuing its own interests with clarity and purpose.
Are African governments prepared to do the same? The minerals beneath African soil might help power the world’s future.
Whether they transform Africa’s future power will depend less on Beijing than on the choices made in African capitals.
Dr Kofi Bediako is a senior researcher/postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship.