To the naked eye, these thousands of hectares of sparsely vegetated plains punctuated by a few slag heaps and pools of water in the Congolese province of Tanganyika, a few days’ drive from Lubumbashi, don’t look like much. Yet this land in Manono holds a valuable prize, which Chinese mining giant Zijin Mining and Australian junior AVZ Minerals have been battling over for several years.

Of late, it’s the Chinese group that looks to have the upper hand. In mid-September, Manono Lithium, a joint venture between Zijin (61%) and the Congolese state-owned company Cominière (39%), was granted a licence to mine the lithium contained in the area, a move that AVZ regards as “illegal”.

The Australian company claims to be the real proprietor of the site and has appealed with the arbitration courts of the World Bank and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) to have this recognised. Zijin, headed by Chen Jinghe, and Cominière have also launched arbitration proceedings to validate their position.

An ocean of ‘white gold’

The battle for Manono is particularly fierce because wresting control of it means claiming rights to a reserve of 131.7m tonnes of lithium, a soft alkali metal essential to the energy transition. Electric cars, wind turbines, solar panels, computers and telephones are all made from this white gold. Lithium is highly sought after, with demand set to increase 40-fold between now and 2040. This means that new mines need to be opened, despite the metal’s falling price. Manono is home to one of the world’s largest untapped lithium deposits.

But this place hasn’t always stirred such passion. In the early 20th century, Belgian company Géomines extracted tin from the site. Operations were taken over after independence by Congo Etain, which became Zaïrétain under Mobutu, and then Cominière. But activity dried up in the 1990s, during the Congo war, when fighting raged around Manono, the hometown of one of the main protagonists in the conflict, Laurent-Désiré Kabila.

In the 2010s, with the advent of the energy transition, Manono’s appeal was rediscovered. Deposits containing tin and lithium were increasingly coveted.

Kabila stronghold

The directors of AVZ at the time, including current CEO Nigel Ferguson, who had been active in the DRC’s mining sector for many years, saw an opportunity. In early 2017, they acquired 60% of Dathcom Mining, a venture set up in 2016 by Cominière and Dathomir, which was owned by Chinese businessman Cong Maohuai, owner of the Fleuve Congo hotel in Kinshasa. In so doing, they got their hands on his flagship project: the Manono exploration licence. The campaigns that followed would confirm its immense potential for the precious metal lithium.

But tensions were already running high. In 2017, investment firm MMCS Strategic 1 took AVZ to court, claiming ownership of the site. It also took Cominière to court, to no avail. In this Kabila stronghold – Joseph’s brother Zoé is MP for Manono, his sister Jaynet is MP for Kalémie, the capital of Tanganyika – AVZ was in control of the lithium extraction project.

??China wakes up

Manono soon attracted the interest of Chinese groups on a different scale, from Cong Moahuai, cobalt giant Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt and a company co-owned by the world’s leading battery manufacturer, CATL, invested in AVZ. China is the world’s largest buyer of lithium.

The situation was complicated when one of their compatriots, Zijin, set its sights on Manono. The group is well known in the DRC: it owns 39.6% of Kamoa-Kakula, a giant copper mine operated by Ivanhoe Mines, and 67% of Compagnie minière de Musonoie (COMMUS), which operates licences in Kolwezi.

In 2021, Zijin signed an agreement with Cominière to buy 15 % of its 25 % stake in the joint venture operating Manono, Dathcom, for $33m. AVZ opposed the transaction, which the Inspectorate General of Finances (IGF), valuing the shares at $154m, called a “sell-off”. But this new partner seemed to appeal to the Congolese government, which was impatient to see the windfall from lithium mining become a reality, while AVZ, which had been managing the project, had been slow to implement it. Cominière’s lawyers said the delay was the AVZ’s fault, telling the ICC that some of the Australian company’s actions had “led to the collapse of the Dathcom joint venture” and “paralysed the project”.

Things started to go south in 2023. The mines minister at the time cancelled the Manono lithium mining licence awarded to Dathcom. Cominière then unilaterally terminated the joint venture agreement with Dathcom, obtained a licence for the Manono project in its name alone, and set up Manono Lithium with Zijin, which received a new exploration licence for the north-eastern part of the deposit. In mid-September, Manono Lithium was granted an operating licence for this area. This sequence of events is what led to the arbitrations undertaken by AVZ and Zijin.

Multiple fronts

“Zijin has benefited from relations and the rapprochement between the DRC and China. In addition to Manono, Zijin has won infrastructure contracts in Tanganyika,” says Jean-Pierre Okenda, an expert in governance issues and country director of The Natural Resource Governance Institute. While he believes that the conditions under which Zijin’s contracts were awarded, particularly the licence, are opaque, Okenda points out that “the entire mining sector is rotten in Manono”, calling for “a review of all partnerships”.

Even though AVZ is in a bad position, the company is arguing before the courts that Cominière is taking advantage of the delays inherent in arbitration proceedings to implement its strategy. To assert its interests, AVZ had recourse, for a time, to a consultant who conveyed his findings to DRC President Félix Tshisekedi, without apparent success. In addition to the proceedings between the company and Zijin and Cominière, a front has been opened against its former Chinese co-shareholder, Cong Maohuai, who believes that he was cheated out of the sale price of his shares in Dathcom to AVZ.

At the same time, scalded by the setbacks of the company they thought was a gold nugget, AVZ shareholders have also rebelled, calling for a change of management at the company through a group called ‘Make Manono Great Again’.

Despite the mess, AVZ is still hoping for a happy ending. There is no telling who will prevail in the courts, but on the ground, it looks – at least for now – like Zijin is on the winning team.