The New Scramble for Africa: A Lithium Play
THE CLAIM: National Security and a 'Gloves-Off' Approach Bloomberg's article, dated February 12, 2026, details how Trump administration officials allegedly pressed for a US company to acquire a lithium mining claim in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The surrounding commentary describes this as a 'new approach' to securing critical minerals, one that's 'gloves-off.' The implication is that
the US, under a specific administration, is merely looking out for its strategic interests in a competitive global market, particularly against China. THE EVIDENCE: A History of Resource Extraction and Intervention The notion of a 'new approach' to African resources is a profound misreading of history. The DRC, rich in minerals from copper to cobalt to now lithium, has been a battleground for
foreign powers for over a century. Belgium's brutal colonization of the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908, under King Leopold II, is perhaps the most infamous example, where an estimated 10 million Congolese lives were lost for rubber and ivory. Post-independence, the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Congo's first democratically elected prime minister, orchestrated with Belgian and US
involvement, directly paved the way for decades of authoritarian rule (Mobutu Sese Seko, 1965-1997) that facilitated unchecked resource exploitation by Western corporations. Fast forward to today, the US Department of Defense itself acknowledges that critical minerals, including those for electric vehicle batteries, are a 'national security imperative' (DoD, 2022 Critical Minerals Strategy). This