IN SHORT: Global investors are pouring into the DRC’s Copperbelt following the June 2025 Washington Accords. A US-backed consortium has signed a $9 billion MOU with Glencore for stakes in two of the DRC’s largest copper and cobalt operations. The DRC supplies over 70% of global cobalt and the energy transition depends on it.
Global investor interest in the Democratic Republic of Congo is accelerating, driven by the country’s dominant position in cobalt and copper at the precise moment the world needs both most. The DRC supplies over 70% of global cobalt and ranks second in copper output. Following the Washington Accords of June 2025, US-backed consortia have moved into the Copperbelt at scale, with one consortium signing a memorandum of understanding with Glencore to acquire a 40% stake in Mutanda Mining and Kamoto Copper Company in a $9 billion transaction.
The strategic logic is straightforward. The energy transition runs on copper and cobalt. Electric vehicles require four times more copper than combustion engines. Every AI data centre being built in the US, Europe and the Gulf is consuming thousands of tonnes of the metal. Global copper demand is projected to face a supply deficit of up to 30 percent by 2035, and the DRC and Zambia together represent the single most concentrated source of both metals on earth.
Two large-scale producers are driving the DRC’s copper output story in 2026. CMOC, the Chinese mining group, reported 650,200 tonnes of copper from its DRC operations in 2024. Ivanhoe Mines guides production of 380,000 to 420,000 tonnes from Kamoa-Kakula this year as it advances its recovery plan. Together with smaller operators, the DRC is emerging as the decisive swing factor in global copper supply.
The Washington Accords context is essential. In February 2025, as M23 rebels backed by Rwanda occupied Goma and Bukavu, President Félix Tshisekedi wrote to President Trump offering US access to DRC minerals in exchange for security assistance. The accords followed in June, brokering peace and paving the way for bilateral strategic partnership agreements granting American companies preferential access to Congolese minerals. The Orion Critical Mineral Consortium’s Glencore deal was signed the day before this year’s US Critical Minerals Ministerial. Glencore retained operational control. US strategic interests secured the output.
The governance risks are real and unresolved. The DRC government ordered a halt to artisanal copper and cobalt processing in late 2025 while it tightened traceability rules and cracked down on corruption. Fighting continues in eastern Congo despite the Washington Accords. Policy enforcement can and does change quickly. The question of whether increased extraction revenues actually reach the Congolese treasury, rather than being absorbed by state-owned enterprise inefficiencies, international arbitration costs, and opaque contract terms, remains open and structurally important.
On infrastructure, China is backing a rival export artery. Reuters reported a $1.4 billion deal between China, Zambia, and Tanzania to refurbish the TAZARA railway, the historic copper route to Dar es Salaam. If completed, it would give Copperbelt producers an Indian Ocean alternative to the current Southern African routes and reduce single-corridor leverage over freight costs and logistics pricing. The same question of who builds the infrastructure and on what terms confronts every resource-rich African nation facing the green transition, as explored in our analysis of Uganda’s copper dilemma.
The DRC also opened its first official gold refinery in March 2026, a joint venture in Kalemie with capacity to refine 500 to 600 kilograms per month, signalling a broader push to capture more value from extraction rather than exporting raw material.
Bigger Picture: The DRC’s Copperbelt moment is real but structurally fragile. The country negotiated the Washington Accords from a position of acute military vulnerability, and the terms reflect that imbalance. US strategic interests, Chinese operational control through CMOC, and Glencore’s retained management authority collectively determine the rules of a sector that should be the foundation of Congolese industrial policy for generations. The governance architecture around revenue capture, domestic processing, and community benefit-sharing is not keeping pace with the investment surge. If DRC follows the pattern of previous African resource booms, increased extraction volumes will coexist with persistent poverty in mining communities and fiscal underperformance in Kinshasa. Avoiding that outcome requires Congolese institutional capacity and political will that the international investor community has no direct interest in building.
Source: The Exchange Africa / The Africa Report / openDemocracy
