The UK’s advantage on critical minerals in Africa
Partnerships with African states are an important and neglected part of the UK’s response to the distinct set of interconnected problems the country faces on critical minerals.
Critical minerals are integral to our modern way of life. Small amounts of various elements underpin our communications, critical infrastructure, defence, renewable energy, transport and life sciences. Without secure supply chains for these minerals, the UK strategic imperatives for rearmament and energy security are endangered, as is broader economic stability and growth. In the UK alone, annual demand for copper will almost double by 2035 and demand for lithium will increase by 1,100%.
China has developed an overwhelming dominance of minerals processing, driven by its need for inputs for its manufacturing base and benefitting from economies of scale and less rigorous ESG. Beijing’s weaponisation of this dominance through export restrictions on Rare Earth Elements, and limitations on skills transfers, have been a wake-up call to western vulnerabilities, but challenging this dominance will be costly. Supply chain concentration also makes the UK vulnerable to shocks such as natural disasters, war or geopolitical fallout.
The UK and its allies face tough choices on how and where to deploy capital to mitigate trade chokepoints and market dominance, without creating new poles of dominance and control. For example, increasingly large-scale investment by the US government into certain mineral supply chains may be a step to resolving its own exposure to export restrictions. But this could leave partners facing tighter supply or even replacing one vulnerability with another. Few, if any, non-US partners have the fiscal capacity to sustain intense fiscal interventions such as price floors – intended to offset China’s ability to undercut prices and therefore improve project bankability and financing.
The reality of a fragmented global north means the UK must work hard to shore up alliances with other middle powers. This involves a complex process of bilateral and multilateral bloc-building against key threats, using a wide range of tools to reduce dependencies and rebuild collective power to prevent economic coercion.
For the UK and likeminded allies, a durable and reliable minerals supply requires upholding a rules-based system of trade that allows equitable access. It also means leveraging the bargaining chips that the country has in its negotiations with major players. Especially when the USA and China are respectively its first and fourth largest trade partners.
One of the cards that the UK could play more effectively is its relationships with Africa. Greater attention must be paid to leveraging the UK’s partnerships on the continent and connecting economic security with shared political priorities. This could take the form of a national champion, such as a Prime Ministerial adviser, to elevate consistent political presence and representation on the continent; deepen partnerships around targeted economic issues, with diplomatic missions pushing depth on one or two priorities rather than trying to achieve broad aims; and ensuring that UK investment and incentive schemes are opened to mineral producers, including UK companies operating in Africa.
By bringing together the UK’s new Africa Approach with its Critical Minerals Strategy, the government could position the UK as a credible and effective partner on a central pillar of economic security and sustainability; and begin to show that the UK is an important ally for African nations seeking an alternative to zero-sum great-power competition.
Africa partnerships: a neglected opportunity
The UK offers several diplomatic advantages for African partners. Firstly, the UK’s objective is to ensure the reliable security of supply of minerals through diversification, not to replace China’s monopoly with a China/U.S. duopoly. This mirrors African nations’ own aspirations for strategic neutrality and multi-partner relations. Recognising a multi-partner approach to minerals supply also offers opportunities for deepening strategic alignment with African plans to move up the critical minerals value chain. Secondly, the UK is committed to Africa’s equitable position within the multilateral system. Including supporting African nations’ call for a permanent seat on the UN security council. Furthermore, the Africa elite is well connected to the UK through education, property ownership, and transnational cultural and familial connections.
For the UK, critical mineral strategy is not just about supply chain security, but about positioning UK companies and entities to benefit from rising global demand. The city of London has seemingly lost its appetite for mining finance. Its centuries-old dominance has diminished as major commodity firms pivot toward the Australian and Toronto exchanges. Yet the city still offers deep pools of capital that could, with incentives, be rejuvenated to support national ambitions for junior and exploration firms seeking operating in Africa.
Beyond finance, the UK has a significant opportunity to benefit from Africa’s existing and frontier mining ecosystems. The UK has 42 High Commissions and Embassies across Africa that can help the UK leverage its soft power competitive advantage of the expansive network of companies, industry bodies, traders, and service industries that are registered, listed, or based in the UK and operate globally. A key part of this is the knowledge industries of think tanks, media, secondary and tertiary education institutions. The British Geological Survey’s partnerships on developing and sharing open geological data provide an important public good, helping countries attract investors to overcome exploration deficits. This is already proving to be a valuable diplomatic tool.
These advantages are shared with like-minded EU and non-EU partners, providing opportunity for mini-lateral groupings with Australia, Canada, Japan and others. Such middle power partners share a core interest in managing a close relationship with the EU’s fast-developing economic security umbrella and would welcome a clear statement of contribution and strategy from the UK. Furthermore, such partners help create an aggregated demand for minerals that make projects more economically viable and possess the requisite skills and offtake to support in-country processing in Africa.
Options for implementation
The UK is well positioned to build on these advantages. Doing so would benefit from a national champion or senior adviser position; additional critical minerals funding through existing business support mechanisms; and using the forthcoming G20 presidency to continue the implementation of elements of the Critical Minerals Framework agreed in South Africa.
A national champion in the form of a Prime Minister’s Special Adviser on Africa or equivalent senior position could be tasked with aligning the UK’s Africa Approach with its Critical Minerals Strategy for implementation on the continent. This could consolidate the UK’s national economic interests at the confluence of economic security and political interests where there is a clear commercial overlap with African interests, a vision for collaboration, and existing UK presence and power. France and the USA both have senior Africa advisers to the respective Presidents. Such positions can straddle political and diplomatic structures to lead negotiations on commerce and security, deepen commercial ties and work with international bodies that complement and enhance existing mechanisms. They are also an important signal to partner nations of the level of seriousness of engagement and carry significant authority in negotiations.
Africa critical mineral partnerships have the potential to realise a number of objectives simultaneously, including climate, development, and diplomatic goals as well as economic security, and therefore could call upon a wide variety of cross-Government resources. However, this wider value needs to be articulated, with projects broken down creatively so that bodies with different mandates and risk appetites can play their role. After all, there is great breadth to the contributions needed to make a diversifying critical mineral project a success: from reliable power to infrastructural steel, and from engineering and environmental consultancy to de-risking finance including specialist insurance cover.
Public and private actors need to be actively cohered, particularly given that fiscal resources are scarce, rather than expecting that broad policy and strategic frameworks will spontaneously create meaningful outcomes. Agreeing a shared pipeline of high-potential project options across the UK Government and key partners could be the first step, enabling arms-length public bodies such as British International Investment, PIDG, and UKEF to contribute to joined-up offers alongside private investors, International Financial Institutions and others.
The UK offers several direct grants for business, including for critical minerals, such through the National Wealth Fund (NWF) and UK Export Finance (UKEF). UKEF, the UK’s export credit agency, provides guarantees, loans and insurance products that can support domestic and international critical minerals projects, including two critical minerals-specific guarantee products. The Critical Minerals Supply Finance instrument supports overseas projects (including mining, processing, manufacturing and recycling) by providing guarantees to back commercial loans where a project has a long-term offtake contract with a UK exporter.
There are further opportunities to boost UK companies and encourage investment in the sector. For example, at present, the Enterprise Investment Scheme does not include critical minerals firms. If it were to include junior mining and exploration companies it could offer EIS tax reliefs to individual investors who buy new shares in a company to attract more registrations and, hopefully, eventually more listings in London. Such a move would show that the UK is interested in supporting small entities, not just large mining firms, to use the UK as a financial hub, and demonstrate that while the UK cannot compete on the overall amount of fiscal allocation for the sector, it could do more to compete on the basis of the number of recipient firms.
While many of the UK incentives for critical minerals are not yet directly available to African entities, some are and represent an important area of partnership. At the 2026 Mining Indaba, the UK Government and Anglo American announced the establishment of a £2 million Impact Finance Facility through the Impact Finance Network, targeted at expanding access to capital for South African small medium enterprises (SMEs).
UK global leadership: G20 and G7
Prominently incorporating Africa’s critical minerals agenda into the UK’s Presidency of the G20 in 2027 and expected hosting of the G7 in 2028 could be a clever way of integrating economic, security and sustainable development priorities and elevating the UK’s leadership credentials.
As the 2025 G20 host, South Africa successfully demonstrated that there are areas of common ground and potential agreement on an issue that is inherently geopolitically divisive. The resultant G20 Critical Minerals framework offers a starting point for discussion on implementation on areas of mutual interest – exploration, reliability of supply and non-discriminatory trade, and the need for producer states to benefit from their resources.
Senior political UK participation at the Investing in African Mining Indaba in Cape Town would be an important means of engaging not only South Africa, but the wider continent and international community. The US has excluded South Africa from this year’s G20 summit, and the UK will need to ensure that it doesn’t deepen this division. However, the UK could acknowledge the achievements made in South Africa in 2025 through the continental forum and ministerial, strengthening its regional relations.
The G20 sherpa track (as opposed to the finance track) will be an important means of deepening international relationships for delivering the UK’s minerals security ambitions. It will be the third time the African Union is a full member of the G20, and a significant opportunity to refocus the conversation on minerals around development and sustainability, beyond just security.
The G20 engagement process could also be an important means to strengthen bilateral relations with priority producer countries ahead of the G7 in 2028, which would be more security focussed, but a key juncture for MoUs and minerals agreements with specific invited countries beyond the G7 membership. Success at the UK G20 would act as a proof-of-concept, demonstrating that the UK is capable of cohering partners and exercising leadership towards fairer and more reliable mineral trade globally; success at the G7 would then demonstrate the security benefits that can be gained from Africa partnership, including to the US and EU.
The UK cannot outspend either China or the United States, but it can mobilise distinctive assets – its diplomatic footprint, financial and insurance capabilities, technical and geological expertise, globally connected mining and professional-services ecosystem, and convening power in the G20 and G7.
UK global positioning on critical minerals will be most credible and effective if it treats African partnership not as a peripheral development initiative, but as a central pillar of economic security, industrial renewal and diplomatic strategy. Aligning its Africa Approach with practical support for diversified extraction, processing, infrastructure, skills and finance, will position the UK as an alternative to zero-sum great-power competition: one grounded in multi-partner cooperation, domestic value addition and more resilient supply chains. Delivering this advantage will require sustained senior political leadership.
Dr Ben Bessey is Senior Parliamentary Assistant to Calvin Bailey MBE MP. Dr Christopher Vandome is Director, Critical Minerals Initiative and Senior Research Fellow, Global Economic and Finance, and Africa Programmes, Chatham House.