Congo’s Desperate Minerals Offer
March 11th, 2025
Via The Economist, commentary on the DRC’s latest mineral offer to the U.S.: At the bar in Fungurume, in the Congolese copper belt, the drinkers were unimpressed with the Chinese lanterns. The decorations had been donated by representatives of the Tenke Fungurume Mine (TFM), one of the largest copper-cobalt mines in the world. A Chinese […]
Read more »China, America, and the Great Railway Race in Africa
March 7th, 2025
Via The Diplomat, a look at how China and the United States are engaged in a battle for access, resources, and influence along railways in Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, and the DRC, echoing trends from the colonial era. The Mukuba Express had been motionless for eight hours, stopped in a small village about 50 miles west […]
Read more »The Age of Metals Diplomacy: Critical Minerals Take Center Stage In Global Politics
March 5th, 2025
Via Reuters, commentary on how critical minerals are taking centre stage in world politics: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is set to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump today to sign a critical minerals deal as a way of securing continued U.S. backing in the war against Russia. It initially started as a rare earths deal […]
Read more »Congo Courts Trump for Strategic Minerals Tie-Up as War Looms
March 5th, 2025
Via Bloomberg, a report that The Democratic Republic of Congo has offered the US exclusive access to critical minerals and infrastructure projects in exchange for security assistance as it battles a rebellion backed by neighboring Rwanda: The Democratic Republic of Congo has offered the US exclusive access to critical minerals and infrastructure projects in exchange […]
Read more »Trump Aid Freeze Risks $1 Billion African Minerals Project
February 18th, 2025
Via Bloomberg, an article on how an expansion of the US’s biggest strategic critical-minerals project in Africa is at risk: A billion-dollar expansion of the biggest US strategic critical-minerals project in Africa faces delays because of the Trump administration’s sweeping foreign-aid freeze, providing a potential opening for rivals like China. The Lobito corridor railway project […]
Read more »DRC-Rwanda: Rubaya Coltan Mine at the Heart of M23 Financing
February 7th, 2025
Courtesy of The Africa Report, a look at how a coltan mine is integral to M23 funding: In April 2024, Rwandan-backed armed group M23 seized one of the world’s most productive coltan concessions, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then, a UN report estimates that 120 tonnes of the precious mineral are mined every […]
Read more »Focusing primarily on The New Seven Sisters - the largely state owned petroleum companies from the emerging world that have become key players in the oil & gas industry as identified by Carola Hoyos, Chief Energy Correspondent for The Financial Times - but spanning other nascent opportunities around the globe that may hold potential in the years ahead, Wildcats & Black Sheep is a place for the adventurous to contemplate & evaluate the emerging markets of tomorrow.