Africa’s Role in Addressing America’s Critical Minerals Refining Vulnerability

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Refining capacity is the greatest vulnerability in the United States’ critical minerals supply chain. After a decades-long campaign to price out competitors, China now dominates the refining sectors for many minerals and metals that are central to the global economy and to the US defense sector. In some sectors, Chinese firms account for as much as 90 percent of global capacity. This dominance is central to Beijing’s quest to recenter the international system away from the US and toward China.

Washington needs to engage in a strategic and sustained effort to escape this predicament—and African nations will play a critical role. Hudson Senior Fellow Joshua Meservey will host senior representatives from Rainbow Rare Earths, ReElement, and US Strategic Metals—firms on the frontier of the critical minerals industry—to discuss what this effort will entail. The discussion will cover the scale of the challenge, how the US government can better support domestic and allied refining, and how African nations can climb the critical minerals supply chains.

Event Transcript

This transcription is automatically generated and edited lightly for accuracy. Please excuse any errors.

Joshua Meservey:

Welcome everybody. My name is Joshua Meservey. I'm a senior fellow here at Hudson Institute. Really pleased that you all could join us today. There's a lot of interest, so apologies if we have to squeeze a little bit. But do appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedules to join us for what's a really, I think, important topic and we've got an excellent panel here this morning to help us better, help me, help us better understand the implications of what's going on in the refining space as well as the potential way forward.

So I'm going to go down the line here for very brief introductions. These brief introductions won't do justice to the full biographies of everybody here, but I do want to give you a sense of the expertise of our panelists.

So to my immediate left, Dr. J. Peter Pham, he is the non-executive director of Rainbow Rare Earths. He's the chairman of the board of Ivanhoe Atlantic. He's a non-executive director for Africell Group. He's also a former US Special Envoy for the Sahel, the very first one I believe, in that position, as well as in a separate role, the special envoy for the Great Lakes region of Africa. He also had a long history in academia and think tank world.

To his left is Michael Hollomon II. He's the commercial director for US Strategic Metals. He has nearly 30 years in the global mining and metals industry. Previously he was the head of the coal department for Gunvor Group based out of Geneva. He also spent most of his career at Glencore, a well-known name of course, in the global mining space, the largest commodities trading firm in the world.

And then last but not least, we originally had Ben Kincaid from ReElement slated, but he had to leave on a last second trip, so we're really fortunate that Tony Carroll can join us. He is a board member of ReElement Africa. He spent nearly five decades working and investing in Africa, has a long, long experience there. He's the founding managing director of Acorus Capital, which is a private equity firm focused on Africa. He's a senior advisor for Manchester Trade. He's also the co-founder of the Mining Indaba, which is an annual gathering in South Africa, focused on the mining industry of course. And then he's a fellow RPCV, served in Botswana in the 1970s.

So that's our panel for this morning, and I'm going to give very stage setting remarks here just so we can have a little bit of context to the discussion and then we'll quickly turn it over to the main event, which is hearing from our panelists.

So obviously we're talking about the choke point in the US critical mineral supply chain at the point of refining, and I assume we're familiar with a lot of these statistics, but I'm going to rattle off a few of them for you. China accounts for more than 90 percent of the refining of rare earths, polysilicon, manganese, and graphite, more than 70 percent of, in addition to those, platinum group metals, lithium, cobalt, more than 50 percent of steel, nickel and aluminum. The United States is very, very highly dependent on the imports from Chinese refining operations. So it's net import reliance for yttrium from China is 93 percent , bismuth, 60 percent rare earths, 56 percent antimony, 54 percent arsenic, 52 percent . And that's just a sampling. In all, the United States imports refined critical metals, almost all refined critical metals from China at some percentage or another.

And then we have very recent examples of China being willing to use their dominant position in the refining space as leverage in geopolitical disputes. So we saw this first in 2010 when it bans rare earth element exports to Japan during a dispute that they were having. In 2024, they put export controls on graphite and tungsten. In this year of April, they restricted the export of seven rare earths to United States, they expanded that just this month and added another five to that list, so now they have export controls on 12 of the 17 that are relevant to the US.

Again, that's just a very, very quick snapshot to give some context to the discussion today. But I do want to get now to our panelists who can speak much more in depth from their expertise on this issue. So first, tell us about your companies that you're representing here today, exactly what do they do in the refining space and how is that helping the United States with this challenge that I just very quickly outlined there.

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

Well, thanks Josh, and thanks for putting this panel together for I think an important, one that as we've seen just in recent days, has really, the strategic and national security implications of which perhaps have long been latent, but now certainly are in the forefront.

I say I'm here today as a member of the board of Rainbow Rare Earths, a publicly traded London-listed company. We do have some mining assets, but our primary value, if you will, to this conversation is what we're doing in Phalaborwa in Northern South Africa, but which we're about to, and I can say this now since our annual report was released yesterday at the close of the markets, we're also finalizing a joint venture agreement with a US company, Mosaic, to do with their, in Brazil, much larger project and which is cutting through the mining bottleneck in rare earths, which is where a lot of the costs that my colleagues can talk about are at and moving directly to refining from waste byproducts.

We work with, we have unique technologies using pruned methods relating to using already cracked substances. In our case, the remnants of phosphagets and stacks, which are the waste remnants of mining for phosphorous and production of phosphoric acid for agriculture and fertilizer. Our tier one project in South Africa, Phalaborwa, which will be online, inshallah, as they say, within the next 18, 24 months, will produce roughly 1,750 tons per year of neodymium, praseodymium and mixed oxide, separated and ready for OEMs as well as about 80 tons per year of heavy rare earths, dysprosium and terbium. Altogether, that's an output. . . They'll produce roughly 6,000 tons per year of permanent magnet production. So that's just out of one asset and we have several larger ones in the pipeline.

And the key there is cutting through and lowering costs, because that's where China has its advantage. It sets the price because of both the mining and refining capacity that you mentioned, and it's able to undercut anyone else in the market. And we lower our costs by, if you will, bypassing the mining stockpiling, sorting, crushing phase and moving right into chemical separation and using also a bit of chromatography in it. So it's a unique IP, but it's one that enables us to lower our costs significantly. It doesn't de-risk it entirely, and we can talk later on about how the US government and other friendly governments can de-risk both the processes and the market, but it certainly cuts out a lot of that and that's why it leaves us the unique advantage of being one of the lower price in terms of cost per ton to producing rare earths.

Joshua Meservey:

Yeah, thank you. The heavy rare earths are particularly important too, because that's maybe the greatest single chokehold that China has.

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

Certainly for applications like infrared as well as one can get into how many kilograms of heavy rare earths a next generation fighter requires. It's rather extraordinary.

Joshua Meservey:

Right. Yeah, exactly. Okay, let's move to Mike. So same question for you. Tell us a little bit about your company, what you do in the refining space and why what you do can be helpful to this dilemma we're discussing here.

Michael Hollomon II:

Sure, Josh. And thank you for again organizing the event. This is important. I think we see this and hear this talked about all the time now it's on mainstream news, it's in podcasts. Everyone is talking about this vulnerability, which it seems like it's all new to us. I mean, for the three of us, we've probably been at this for 10 years, but for the mainstream majority of people, it's like, “Wait a minute, China has built up this monopoly on rare earths that we need for chips, for fighter jets. How did that happen?” Well, it was a long game. China's been playing the long game. They've been looking for a strategic return, not a financial return. And America has been NIMBY, “Get it out of my backyard. We want batteries made elsewhere. We want chips made elsewhere. We don't want any mining and processing.”

So I was a Glencore coal trader, old dirty coal for 20 years. Also built a coal company with Gunvor, retired about eight years ago, and I got a call from some friends of mine that had a property in Missouri. It's an old lead mine. It was a Superfund site because it was used for lead mining for 40 years in and around World War I and II, they closed the mine in 1968 and it became a Superfund site. It was leaching lead off into local communities. So these friends of mine who have a company called Environmental Operations Incorporated, cleaned up the site, got an administrative order of consent to re-mine, and they check the tailings and the geology in Missouri and Southeast Missouri is it has cobalt, nickel, and copper.

So this is how we got into the business. We said, “Look, let's go after the cobalt, nickel, and copper.” I'm a trader, a commodities trader, I'm extremely bullish on those metals long-term. You hear about their uses, superalloys, batteries and AI, data centers. These are important base and minor metals. But what we learned during the past seven years as we've been building our processing plant is the most important thing and the big mistake America made was not, “Mine, baby, mine. Drill, baby, drill,” it's process, baby, process.

The Chinese do not have significant quantities of any of these metals ready to hand. But what they did was they built processing, massive multi-metallic processing companies. In fact, the five largest companies in the world are all eight-plus metals, Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, Baotou Steel Rare Earth, China Minmetals, Jiangxi Copper, and GDR. All five of them produce many, many metals, some of them mine nearby, but most of them brought from around the world, Latin America, Africa, where they dominate. They've gone, they spent at least trillion over the last 20 years buying mines and getting access to this metal. But that's not why they controlled the game, they controlled the game because they built processing, major hubs of multi-metallic processing.

So this is what we are trying to do at US Strategic Metals. We have been very fortunate because we're a Superfund site, we are permitted to handle metallic mineral waste, which is going to be a big problem for all the many projects. You see literally a universe of new rare earth projects and things popping up in America, all good projects, I'm sure, and exciting people, people with financing, good ideas, they're going to run into permitting problems. When you process any of these things, any of these metals, rare earths, cobalt, nickel, copper, whatever it is, you will have metallic mineral waste. It is very difficult to find places to put this stuff.

It has already led to a disaster, a classic example, Li-Cycle, I don't know if there's any Li-Cycle people here, I feel for you. We really wanted to help you succeed. But they built a nice big black mass processing plant to take recycled lithium ion batteries and return them to nickel, cobalt and copper, magnesium graphite from the batteries. Well, they ended up with all this waste, a hundred thousand tons of sodium sulfate, not necessarily a bad actor, but what are you going to do with it? You're not going to store it in New York. You're not getting permitted. So they looked around, “Can we ship the waste somewhere?” That was too expensive. Glencore, our partners said, “Listen, you can bring it to Canada.” That was too expensive. The company ended up, I don't think it's bankrupt now, but it has ended the Li-Cycle story because you've got to be able to store the waste.

We have an 1,800 acre private land, not BLM land, private land permitted site to handle the waste. What we're doing at US Strategic Metals is we're building a multi-metallic processing. Our own expertise is for things like zinc, nickel, cobalt, copper, base metals, minor metals. But we have in the past year and a half started partnering with technology people. We've actually been in discussions with ReElement, which have a very interesting new technology chromatography, which has a lot of potential. We're kind of old school, we're going to start with solvent extraction, things that we've seen at scale working for many, many years, but we're open to the cool new tech, and I think America should be open to the cool new tech, but let's don't forget tried and true ways to do it and we have to get back in the game.

We're deeply into Africa. We're going to be bringing cobalt from the Congo. We're also working on the Chemaf deal, which is a massive copper/cobalt deal, looking at rare earths, including the heavies from Uganda and Scandium. There's a bunch of metals that we're looking at, and we just feel like a multi-metal recycling hub provides a lot of efficiencies. There's a reason Umicore, Korea Zinc, Kazzinc, and the big five Chinese are all doing 10, 12, 14 metals at single sites. It's because it works, it's more efficient and it's a better way to do it, that's US Strategic Metals.

Joshua Meservey:

Yeah, thank you. We could do a whole panel on the permitting and the regulatory environment in the United States, which is a massive impediment to implementing some of what we're going to be talking about here. And I was struck, you talk about the long-term Chinese strategy around this, it goes back to the late '80. Deng Xiaoping first started talking about this, so that gives a sense of their long-time horizons and the fact that they've been working at this for decades.

All right, so Tony, same question to you regarding ReElement. And Mike teed you up a little bit there as well.

Tony Carroll:

Yeah and thanks Mike for teeing this up for me. It's great to see all of you here, many friends for many, many years, many former ambassadors and diplomats and military and state department. I'm honored to be among you.

Anyway, I'm not a technician. I mean, I do probably only know enough to be dangerous. I did spend a year at Colorado School of Mines as a fellow, so I'm not able to talk much about metallurgy, but I am willing to talk a little bit about ReElement's genesis, and Mike touched upon our technical strategy.

ReElement also is born out of the coal industry about 10 years ago to executives within a traditional coal company who started to explore the prospects of developing and using chromatography to refine critical minerals and rare earth elements. They got into a discussion with Purdue University. Purdue University is, I think many of you would know, one of our leading engineering schools. Purdue University, has been spending almost a decade in using chromatography for the production of medical applications for insulin. And so this technology was basically devoted to use for health applications.

But the professor, Professor Wong at Purdue started to try to deploy that technology because sometimes these things wind up being useful for other purposes. And Eli Lilly had given a large grant to Purdue as a neighboring Indiana pharmaceutical company to explore the use of chromatography for the production of insulin. But the team at ReElement that was formed to pursue this technology was able to explore and eventually acquire the IP from Purdue University.

And as Mike was saying, the technology is basically chromatography as opposed to solvent extractions, both of which are important to the supply of rare earths heavies and lights. But our process is a much more benign approach. We use less energy, we have much less environmental waste to deal with. We use much less footprint. Our footprint is miniscule compared to solvent extraction. And I think we're really, I think at the pioneering edge here of being able to have a nimble solution to processing rare earth elements.

And what I think our nimbleness is really attractive to the Africans, is that Mike has an historic property that's in Missouri that obviously can be deployed very effectively for many, many purposes, what I think ReElement brings is the opportunity of doing this processing at site. So we're able to do either at or near site processing in Africa, which of course is something that the Africans are very much keen on, deriving more value for their mineral resources, and we are able to offer that opportunity.

We'll also continue, we're just in the construction stages of building a large facility in Indiana. So we already have permitted that we're up and running and doing our work there. So we'll be able to both use and produce minerals, rare earth elements in Indiana, but also be able to deploy this technology in the field. And as maybe some of you have read, we're in partnership with Pensana, which is a European to do processing in Angola of rare earths. And we've already signed an agreement with a large magnet manufacturer, so we'll have an end user for those materials.

So the beauty of what we have is it's more energy efficient, so more environmentally benign, it requires much less of a footprint. I always reminded about Peter's early. . . Peter was early into the argument that it doesn't make any sense to bring raw earth across waters to process them somewhere else. And Peter, I think we're guided by your advice many, many years ago about that. And I think our beauty is our ability to deploy in the field, to be able to achieve more value for Africans in their mineral resource bounty and to do it in a more responsible way. So we're excited about this. We're not as mature as some of the companies that are doing this, but we believe that our technology is one. . . And Whitney, good to see. We reserved that seat for you. That's right, he's buying lunch. Anyway, I think we're really off to something exciting and we're looking at venturing with others to do the work.

And let me just say on the larger issue of the China dominance in this field, I actually started off as a mining lawyer. I went to the School of Mines, studied mineral economics, got a law degree and was doing a lot of work in mining in Denver, Colorado, which used to be probably the most, sort of the core headquarters of US mining investment. And the US basically exited the mining industry in part because of some of the environmental rigors which came to the fore, and basically in the processing space as well as the mining space made it unviable. And also the US financial institutions didn't really want to fund mining. And so they went to Canada and Australia, some Australians in this room, to get financing for the mining industry. So the US has exited the game as much as China has entered the game. And I think we have to be mindful of that. So, thanks.

Joshua Meservey:

Yeah. No, I think that point is exactly correct. I was reading recently about antimony, as I do, and during World War II, the United States produced about 90 percent of antimony. Antimony is a hardener, among other things, but. . .

Joshua Meservey:

Antimony is a hardener among other things, but really good for making hard bullets, for instance, or armor and all sorts of applications. It essentially produces zero today, and then again, China has grown its share of that. So I think this point about the US exiting and China simultaneously coming in is a really good one. So there's a lot we could tackle here, but I wanted to first, we've already referenced some of the challenges associated with what you do. We talked about environmental regulations and et cetera. Could you get a little bit more into that? As you start your processes, as you're in the process of building these operations, what are you running into? What are the problems that are really causing you heartache and heartburn? And we'll go right down the line again to Dr. Pham.

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

Well, I think for all of us, the key question, and this is where the dominance really hits road, is the economics. One can lower costs, but ultimately, China, as Mike and Tony have both emphasized as well, china's willing to play a long strategic game. By the way, full disclosure, I'm not a paid shill for tourism in La Rochelle in France, but I invite anyone who does go to La Rochelle to tour what once was the world's largest rare earth processing plant. It's now a wonderful art studio. You can go there, and now the art there is dubious, but you know, but, but it was once the world's largest rare earth processing plant. Today, it's an art co-op, and the reason it is is because China waged a decade-long price war, selling low price to the point where the company exited and now we have a beautiful art factory to visit if you're on the Atlantic coast of France. And that's really the lesson to take away, is that we can lower costs by various efficiencies.

We do it at Rainbow by picking up waste projects and environmental projects and turning them around using our IP. And Tony's mentioned what ReElement does, but we can all lower prices at a certain extent, but at a certain point, there has to be a price floor, otherwise we're all out of the business because China strategically is willing to use its state assets on long-term, so that's challenge one.

Challenge two I think in Africa ultimately is always one that comes up all the time is infrastructure. It's critical infrastructure too because that's another way China, through its Belt and Road and its other infrastructure controls pricing and access to markets and to sources of minerals. And that's another opportunity and we can delve into that, but that's certainly. . . And this is where I think the continuity in US policy in the Lobito Corridor through Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia really was an African dream for many, many years.

Discussions began in the first Trump administration, picked up speed under the Biden administration, now continues with the support of the current Trump administration, and other corridors in Africa. I chair you mentioned the board of Ivanhoe Atlantic. We're doing another strategic corridor with strong support. Again, this unblocks it not only for ourselves as individual companies, but for other US investors and other allies who don't want to go on Chinese infrastructure. And so that's another little roadblock to unlock.

And then finally, I think domestically, it's also investing here in the human capital aspect, not just the financial capital, which my colleagues have mentioned about why companies list on first the Canadian Exchange and now more on the Australian exchange, but also the human capital to process. Colorado's School of Mines is a great institution. If you're a young person looking for assured employment, a degree from there is probably as assured of employment as you can get in today's economy. But we don't have the human capital, the IP. Not just the IP, but the human capital to handle some of this, we're lacking on and so we need to build up and strengthen those. And those are just three, and I could go on but I'm sure my colleagues have others to add to that.

Michael Hollomon II:

Yeah, I agree with Peter. Those are huge things that we are challenged by. I think one thing that I would like to say is the narrative and the will of the government, these are the two things that we struggle with because we've got a lot of narrative out there that mining processing bad. I want the cheapest iPhone. These are competing narratives against us having not only energy security, which is national security, but energy dominance. We need to make sure that people understand, that $10 cheaper iPhone means child labor, slave labor and chemicals into the rivers, oceans and air. That's what it means. If you want to have a $10 cheaper whatever it is that's made in China, that's what they do, and this is why their costs are cheaper than us.

We have extremely competitive costs. We're 50 percent of the price, our cost of production compared to the Europeans, but it all boils down to we have our own tailings impoundment. We don't have to take care of the waste. It still costs something. The Chinese just dump it in the water. We pay a fair wage. We can't compete with the Chinese paying a fair wage. Maybe our automation gets us there, but those are the two things. But power, right now, our power prices in Missouri are cheaper than Chinese power prices. So we are there, we are nearby, but we don't have a will in my opinion of hey, we must get this done now.

It's like when we talked to the DLA not long ago, they were saying, “Well, we had a strategic stockpile, but it was a law written during war, so we really need a war in order to build up a strategic stockpile.” We were gobsmacked by this kind of comment. It was later walked back and they're trying to build a strategic stockpile, but we don't have the stocks. Tomorrow there's a war, we are in big trouble because we don't have a strategic stockpile. So I think we need to get away from waiting until the last minute when our back's against the wall. I know that's democracy, three steps forward, two steps back, all for it, but this is one place, national security, that we need to get out of the way. Forget about it.

We'll do it cleaner, and this is also our fault. We can process cleaner by far because we have to. We're on a Superfund site. We have EPA. Water, air, soil, every month, they're checking to make sure we're not doing anything wrong. You think that happens in the Chinese? You think those big black smokestacks belching waste into the air, you think that's the way they do it? It is not the way they do it. We can do it clean. It's worth the extra five cents. That's why we're heartened by a deal like MP where they put a price floor for the NDPR. It's 105 percent higher than the spot price, love that. We don't need that much, but still, that's a great signal that we are willing to support.

And by the way, when the Chinese, when Huayou Cobalt sells $9 cobalt to CATL, which makes a battery that goes to a BYD car that is now better than a Tesla and much cheaper, like $10,000 cheaper, YU is not making money. They are losing money, but they are subsidized by China Inc. CATL, the middleman of the battery process, is not making money. They're getting a widget, a super cheap widget into BYD to beat Tesla. That is called a whole of government approach. That's how they attacked us. They consider us to be at war as far as this rare earth and critical mineral war. We are not involved in this war. We're dancing around it, talking about it. So we want to see funding, we want to see political will jump in, fund all of us that are in the space that have legitimate projects and let's get them going. We will work out the details of how we pay back, how we have sustainable pricing over the long term, but we need to get involved. We're not involved right now.

Tony Carroll:

Let me approach this with three points. First of all, unlike any foreign investment, you want certainty. You want to make sure that the rules and conditions that you're entering into a business marketplace are here now and they're going to be five or 10 years down the road, because mining itself is a long cycle. Even processing is going to be a long cycle. An average mine will take anywhere from 15 to 18 years from exploration to production, and so you want to be certain that the investment environment that you entered into is the investment environment you're going to have when you get to be operating, so that certainly is one important thing.

Related to that is trust and realism. I was fortunate enough to serve in Botswana as a Peace Corps volunteer, and I probably don't say that enough. Botswana developed a long-standing relationship over 50 years with de Beers that gradually saw de Beers do more and more and more and more value addition in Botswana. That relationship was based on trust. It was a matter of just careful negotiation and realistic expectations. The idea of having a blanket export ban from day one is going to, I think, not benefit Africans. It will probably restrict investment. So I think there's got to be a sort of, you could say in five years, we want you to do your processing here, but I think the idea of having an export ban is not a good idea. I think it could create. . . Africa has 35 percent of the world's critical minerals. That means 65 percent are elsewhere, and that means they'll go elsewhere. It'll also advance the idea of substitution, that they'll use other chemical and mineral platforms to develop alternatives to the materials that they're getting from Africa, so there could be a losing proposition over time by having export bans.

And the third thing that I'm going to offer is the idea of regional integration. So the re-element strategy is either we'll do tolling for you, we'll do processing at your site and you pay us a fee for doing that processing, or we'll actually be an investor and take that raw material and sell it to our customers down the road. So we'll either be a toller or we'll be an investor, but what's going to happen, and we learned this, believe it or not, from the cocoa industry in West Africa, when Cargill went in and invested in the Cote d'Ivoire to build a cocoa processing plant, that all of a sudden opened up the supply of cocoa from across Cote d'Ivoire. I think the idea here is if we're able to build a processing plant in, say, Kenya, that is going to incentivize the development of mines that can supply that processing factory.

We've already had these discussions elsewhere, that an individual mine might not in itself be economically viable to do processing, but five mines that could supply one processing plant could. So all of a sudden, you're opening up the opportunity of five mines being viable that were not viable before by building a processing plant. The idea that this also has to come across borders so that if you're in one country and you want to do processing, say, in Phalaborwa or Saldana Bay, which is another place to look at, you want to be able to bring those materials in from Botswana, from Namibia, from Zambia and elsewhere, and being able to do the processing. So the idea of regional integration, which is an aspiration. It's more than an aspiration. It's become more of a reality, but frankly, it needs to be accelerated, so to the point where we can comfortably rely upon being able to build these facilities and be able to rely on being able to source materials across border.

And I guess concomitant with that is the idea of infrastructure. I think we're all in the same business of having necessary access to infrastructure. Whether it be ports, roads, power, that's going to be essential to all of the operations that we do. And then lastly, it may be a topic for another discussion is the idea of human capacity. The idea that accelerating the technical capacity within Africa so that when we're doing business in Africa, we're dealing with individuals and officials that also have an understanding of the work that we're doing.

I know that I'm involved with this Mineral X project at Stanford, supported to a certain extent by Cobalt, which Jen is sitting in the front row. The idea that they're also looking at doing collaborations with the University of Lubumbashi in the DRC to develop and accelerate their technical capacity in education. I think there needs to be a lot of that being done so that we have an even playing field, if you would, that there's more, shall we say, awareness of what's going on among our African partners. So the idea of human capacity development is really important and I think something that we really should never lose sight of, but that's my Peace Corps volunteer stuff.

I'm in this because we want to bring and accelerate and enhance the human capacity in anything and everything that I do in my life, and that's an important part. Whatever we do commercially, we have to keep that in mind.

Joshua Meservey:

Yeah. I'm going to combine the next two questions because I do want to leave time for Q&A from the audience. I know there's a lot of expertise in the audience and questions as well. So Tony, you just talked about there's a real movement on the African continent towards beneficiation, moving up the value chain, et cetera. Very understandable. For each of you, how does the US navigate this growing trend on the continent? Now, it looks different in different countries and I understand that, but in general, what are the opportunities here for the US? And we've actually already talked about some of these, but if you could expand a little bit.

And then in conjunction with that, how can the US government, which we've already talked a little bit about this, how can the US government better help companies like your own, and also African governments, how can they better help companies like your own, which could really do great business in these countries? But let's discuss what needs to happen on the African government side as well to facilitate what you're doing. So again, we'll go right down the line.

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

Well, thank you. I think several points. First, on the what can the US government do? I think certainly, I think we've all, all three of us have seen really a sea change. Although there's great continuity in US policy toward Africa by and large, there's also been, I think, a rupture, in a way, a good rupture in the support that the US government has given to not just our specific projects, but projects across the industry as it's taken seriously, this question of critical minerals. Not just in the State Department's commercial diplomacy advocacy that was previewed at the African CEO Summit by senior bureau official, Ambassador Troy Fitrell, but also just the whole of government approach, the accessibility, commerce of energy, treasury, the White House. The direct involvement in this, I think it's been a sea change and it's a very welcome one in our discussions with the US government. I think that's been a very. . .

The second thing is this African desire for beneficiation, a very legitimate desire, dovetails with our own I think. Ultimately, strategically, and I'm speaking here not as a corporate representative but as just an American, ultimately, our desire is access to these critical minerals in a timely manner at a level playing field, and that's best achieved by having the supplies available. It's the capture of processing by China that both throttles the price that African governments receive, whether directly through shareholdings or indirectly through royalty payments, as well as the value chain that's captured. And often, and I think Mike makes a powerful point that perhaps is underappreciated, the value of multi-metal processing.

I'll give you an example. Recently in the Democratic Republic of Congo, after more than 40 years of being mothballed, Congo started real operations again of the Kipushi Zinc mine, which is one of the great assets of the old Belgian Congo from the fifties through the seventies, and it was mothballed. Now, the mine currently is producing a concentrate of about 55 percent zinc that goes for processing, and that's what the mine, which is partially owned by the Congolese state, this is what they're paid for is the concentrate. Everything else, they're not paid for. But within each ton of zinc concentrate that's exported from this mine now, there's about 50 to 60 grams in that of highly valuable germanium, which is one of the restrictive minerals.

Now, if you're a Chinese multiprocessor and you're buying this on the open market, you're buying this zinc, you're paying for the zinc but you process and can extract the germanium and you didn't even pay a penny for it because it's not paid for in the pricing. So this is something we miss out on by not being there. Now, the Congolese could process this themselves in their own country using energy, the possibilities of hydro and other renewables to lower the cost. They could capture this because historically, the data is there. Between 1956 and 1978, this very mine, which has just been reopened produced 278 tons of germanium. You don't need that much of it to go a long way. US consumption, by the way, is about 30 tons a year, so if you do the math out from what is being. . . Once Kipushi is ramped up, if Congo could capture the whole value chain there or at least a good chunk of, it could produce roughly a third to half of what the US needs. Just sell it on the open market and it's available for sale.

That's just one little example I would side. One could come over with other ones, but I'll stop there, that if the US government could use through its financing arms, the DFC and its authorities, perhaps EXIM, and I know they've got a critical minerals so there are options out there. We think creatively and a little outside the box a little bit, I think there are all sorts of very creative things that can be done.

Michael Hollomon II:

Thank you. Yeah, I think that's a very good point, Peter. The fact that you can go into Africa, help the processing, upgrade the material, they're losing so much value. This is what led to the cobalt, you're talking about the bans. So we've had an eight-month ban on a major minor metal that's used globally, eight months ban from a 72 percent producer, the Congo. That is unheard of. Why did it happen? The Chinese came in, they started operating Kisanfu, one mine, and the Congo went from producing about 200,000 metric tons per year up until now, until this year, they're going to produce 300,000 metric tons. This is a hundred thousand ton increase because the Chinese want to drive everyone out of the cobalt market, and they also want to dominate the copper market.

So Kisanfu's a copper mine, cobalt's a byproduct, and what they're saying is, “No, no, no, we're just doing it for the copper. We need the copper.” But it was so bad that the Congolese very rightly, super astute move, is they said, “Listen, we will make less this year, 2025, on cobalt with a 100 percent increase in production than we did when we only had a hundred thousand tons of production.” It is such a big move that they blocked all exports.

So there are ways to use export bans properly. I think this is the right one. Now they're doing quotas, but just back to the idea of processing and upgrading. We've been looking at this in Congo. We really want to deploy our novel but not complex hydrometallurgy for copper and cobalt in the Congo. We're discussing that with the Congolese. There are issues, water, power. So this is a great opportunity for DFC, XM to use some of our soft power, our money to help with the Congo, upgrade the power structure, upgrade roads. This is the way the Chinese did it, and we would be happy to go in there and help with processing closer to the mine site.

Also a big issue with the rare earths, you have radioactives in the rare earths. You should really be doing a concentration and intermediate step in a lot of places that have rare earths because it's hard to transport radioactives, and even us permitted for metallic mineral waste, we don't have radioactive permits, and that's tough to get in the United States. So there's a real potential to add value, eliminating the radioactives there in country.

Tony Carroll:

I don't have an awful lot to add to what Mike and Peter have said other than a couple of high level points.

Tony Carroll:

. . . other than a couple of sort of high-level points.

While we seem to have a lot more ambition and institutional capacity for the US government to become involved in different ways, including equity, and Peter and I can remind you of many instances where getting to pull that trigger has taken an awful long time. And in so, we've lost many opportunities. So if they're going to do things differently, they also have to be incentivized to act quickly.

And frankly, and again I'll get in a lot of trouble for saying this but I'll say it anyway, at my age I can probably get away with it. Is that we don't often recruit deal people in these institutions, we recruit people that are basically there to say no, or put hurdles into getting a deal done. So we have to incentivize people to get deals done, that we're going to put them in these positions. And that's one of the problems that we've been up against.

Look, where we compete with China I think are in two areas, and this is a hackneyed statement. Whitney's probably heard it 10 times, but I remember Molosi and Becky talking about this maybe 15 or 20 years ago, at the US Institute of Peace, about where we compete with China. Look, we're not going to compete with China in scale. They take the long view. They're willing to deploy capital on any terms to secure what they want. We're not in that game. We don't have that risk willingness that the Chinese have shown over time.

But where we do really compete is in technology, and in creative capital. I think in the technology space we're particularly well-enabled. We talked a little bit about ReElement, we talked about all of the different technology approaches that we've had. Just last week I was looking at a technology called Endolith, which is using bioprocessing for applying AI to derive more from tailings ponds. There's lots of ore in tailings all over the world that could be recovered by using new technologies. So there's just new technologies that are coming, where the US really is at the fore. And I think we need to advance those technologies, incentivize those companies to get more involved into Africa, do the processing.

On the creative capital side. I think Peter has issued, as said, that we're a lot more, I share his enthusiasm about our willingness to step to this space, to be much more ambitious about deploying capital. And I guess while I love that the proof will be in the pudding, to see whether or not it does result in really getting to incentivize the things that we're after, but I do think that's a space that we do play in.

And then, just in closing, let me underscore again, the work that's being done at Stanford at Mineral-X, which is part of the Doerr School of Sustainability, they've got whole research teams that are doing the applications of AI and machine learning, in both clean energy and in mining. And it's from all aspects, it's from discovery, which is an area that Cobalt works in, to production. Production, looking at applying maybe robotics to be able to reach reserves that were not otherwise available using human mining techniques. So there's a whole opportunity for robotics. And of course in the processing space, where we are, being able to use AI to derive much more value. I think that's really important.

And in fact, at the next Mining Indaba, we're going to showcase Mineral-X, which is going to be an exciting addition on technology. And then we're also going to have a creative capital, which will be sponsored by the Milken Institute, about how to bring creative capital into the mining space. And those are, I think, going to be two very interesting new additions to the Mining Indaba. I'm looking forward to see how the response is to that.

So I do think that we're in a better space than we were a few years ago, where nobody wanted to talk about mining, and now we're in a space where we're much more ambitious in terms of talking about mining as a good thing. But again, I think we only now have a DFC CEO, we haven't yet got them reauthorized for funding, so there's some hurdles ahead that we have to deal with.

Joshua Meservey:

Yeah. Thank you. And thanks for tackling the technology issue. I had a technology question, but I do want to get to Q&A, because obviously technology will be a huge part, is a huge part of this equation, and will continue to be into the future.

And I agree about the sea change. These conversations happen constantly around critical minerals. I wanted to do the refining piece specifically, because I think that's a little under-explored. And again, when you think about the numbers that I rattled off at the beginning, which was only a sample of the numbers, it paints a really dire picture.

So it feels like the conversation has changed, there is more energy around this. But as far as a really holistic, systematic, long-term framework and structure and strategy, that I think is where a lot of the work needs to be done for the United States. A lot of this approach of which I'm very supportive is ad hoc right now, and we have to do everything we possibly can, so we have to be ad hoc while we get the structure and the strategy together. But I think that's the other big hurdle is, how do we put a real, sustainable structure around addressing this problem? Which is going to be a decades-long challenge. There's no doubt. We've been talking about the time horizons associated with some of these, whether it be refining, or even mining, et cetera.

So I do want to get to questions, so you can just raise your hand if you've got one. I think we have a mic somewhere, but if not, just you can emit. So I saw Aubrey, and then we'll go over here, and then Aubrey.

Aubrey Hruby:

Thanks, Josh. Aubrey Hruby, A couple of quick, fast questions, for the panel. One is on the economics corridors.

Joshua Meservey:

You do have a mic coming here. Yep.

Aubrey Hruby:

Thanks. The first question is on economics of corridors, just to anyone who's really seen any interesting work on this. I've had a lot of conversations about Lobito in the last few weeks, and people are like, “Listen, it's going to take massive ag exports to make this thing economically and commercial viable for the long term.” So just because there's a mine somewhere doesn't mean that all the surrounding infrastructure will be profitable. So, one question there.

My question for you, if we all went to Missouri today, what would we see there? And how do you reach the scale in the, let's say, next 18 to 24 months to tackle some of these issues?

Lastly, I would say that let's not forget about MCC. What we really need is large, very flexible monies to do things like infrastructure, which is what MCC did the most of. I don't believe DFC or EXIM, with their underwriting standards, are going to be able to move quickly or meaningfully to build the surrounding things in the near term.

Joshua Meservey:

Who wants to tackle the corridor-

Tony Carroll:

I'll take MCC.

Joshua Meservey:

Okay.

Tony Carroll:

I was approached by MCC about two months ago, because they've been given a directive to get into the mining space. They hadn't been. And as many of you know, the chairman of MCC is Chris Landau, who is the Deputy Secretary of State, and for all practical purposes seems to be the go-to guy these days, particularly as it turns to Africa and economic affairs. I think we'd agree with that. And they've decided to target two countries that they are going to try to elaborate this strategy in a meaningful way, infrastructure support for the mining industry, and those are Liberia and Mozambique.

You know, I mean, not maybe the first countries you would think of in terms of mining. They both have appreciable mineral reserves, but it's not like Zambia or the DRC, or countries that have well-established mining histories. But nonetheless, it's a starting point. I put them in touch with. . . you know, there aren't a lot of American mining companies in Mozambique. I mean, with all due respect. So I put them in touch with Kenmare, which is an Irish firm doing mineral sands development in Northern Mozambique and they're in touch with them. Fortunately, I put him in touch with Gerald Padmore, your colleague, and probably the most well-known mining authority in all of Liberian history, if not beyond. And they're talking about what they can do, also, which includes the regulatory environment not just hard infrastructure, but doing things that make practical sense.

So I've been working, fortunately, working with them and trying to get them off the mark. They've got a board meeting coming up next month to sort of incentivize this process going forward. We'll see how that turns out. But thanks for the collection. I agree with you, MCC can take a longer view, and can deploy necessary funds for the type of supportive work that needs to be done.

Aubrey Hruby:

A CEO would be nice.

Tony Carroll:

A CEO would be nice. Yeah.

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

And I can just follow up very quickly on that point since, under my other hat, I chair the board of Ivanhoe Atlantic, and we've been working very closely with Deputy Secretary Landau, and see on that, because although Liberia doesn't have deep mineral resources, neighboring Guinea does.

Tony Carroll:

That's right.

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

And we have the agreement ratified by parliaments of both countries to export from our project, which is world-class iron ore. It's the richest iron ore deposit on the planet, actually, 67.5 percent-

Joshua Meservey:

Unbelievable.

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

. . . grade, coming out of the earth, to export through Liberia through distant corridors. So we're deeply in conversations, and so, we appreciate the support from MCC in that regard. But let me pick up Aubrey's question on Lobito. Agreed.

I think the current administration's support for the Lobito Corridor is a strategic support, and a strategic optic on the whole thing, but not everything that went before is economic. And I think there's certain projects that will be reviewed, and some will be continued and even augmented, others perhaps reviewed more critically on that, and I don't want to prejudge how the administration is going to do that.

But it is ultimately, and what made Lobito work, is because the private sector was already there. Government came as an accelerant and a facilitator, but it wasn't a top-down approach. The mining companies were there, in Eastern DRC, and the western forelands area of the DRC, Zambia's Upper belt, Angola's development sector. Telecoms was there. I'm the senior outside director on Africell's board. There are agricultural companies, including some in Angola, Carrinho and others.

So it was private sector, the US government served as a convener and accelerant, but wasn't. . . And it's the same with other corridors. It only works if it's private sector led, and not a subsidy driving the. . . The tail wagging the dog.

Michael Hollomon II:

Yeah, just on Lobito. All you have to do is look at the road to Durban, right? Look at that road. It's 59 days. I have it on good authority, there's conversations going on with some trading companies, it revolves around Chemaf, but one of the bigs wants the million tons a year Lobito, badly. So if you have major trading companies that are desperate to get this one million tons a year, they have stuff to put on that Lobito Corridor. It's going to be a fabulous railroad, and corridor. It's going to be highly profitable. Right now, it may look a little bit pie in the sky, but it will be fantastic.

As far as what would you see, if you came to Missouri right now, we are out of the ground. We have, all of our concrete is poured for solvent extraction. We have crystallizers up. We are building our hydrogen reduction. We have a concentrator that we built in 2019 that is, we can turn it back on right now, we have enough of our tailings concentrates stored in and around, that we don't need to be concentrating right now, but we have a fully-fledged concentrator. We have storage with black mass ready to go, as well. We have oxygen. We are 50 percent of the way down the not-being-brownfield anymore. We are a brownfield, out-of-the-ground, active project. We do need money, long lead time things right now.

We have an LOI with EXIM, $400 million. We've been sitting in transaction review committee too since February. They haven't even decided on all five of the third party people to review us, and that's a three-month process, so we're kind of beating our heads against the wall. Now we have the new John Jovanovich is there. We think we're going to get some movement and traction, but really, we're also doing a private raise, and the private capital is still sitting there saying, “Ooh, cobalt price. Copper price. Wait a minute. Chinese people-”

Tony Carroll:

But it's lithium right?

Michael Hollomon II:

So it's tough.

Aubrey Hruby:

The multi metals should help you with that.

Michael Hollomon II:

Yes, we are able to have exposure to a bunch of different pricing, you're exactly right. That's one of our, our main pitch-

Tony Carroll:

As is ours.

Michael Hollomon II:

. . . points.

Tony Carroll:

Yeah.

Joshua Meservey:

Yeah. And the timeline you just referenced with DRC or DFC, excuse me, is totally representative of the problem that you hear voiced over and over again by -

Michael Hollomon II:

Yeah, if we had a check today, 12 months, we could be turning on for the beginning of the processing plant in 12 months, 12 to 14 months until ramp to first cobalt production.

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

And in all honesty, the new management at DFC, now that he's confirmed and assuming the authorities are renewed, they have a lot to cut through. I mean, I sit on the board of a company, Africell, that actually paid off the DFC four years early just to get rid of them-

Michael Hollomon II:

I know that, yeah.

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

. . . from our structure, because they were that much of a hindrance.

On that note, if you're interested in Lobito, in the Department of Shameless Promotion. Coming to Apple TV this week is a documentary on, Lobito Bound, tracing the whole trajectory of the Lobito Corridor. So it's on Apple TV this week.

Michael Hollomon II:

Interesting.

Tony Carroll:

I've watched that right after Slow Horses.

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

Yeah.

Joshua Meservey:

Yeah. I remember the story you telling me about signing the DFC paperwork at Africell, and your hand started cramping up, and ran out of ink in your phone pen.

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

Reduced to signing with a ballpoint.

Joshua Meservey:

Okay. Yeah, I want to do a whole separate panel on DFC and EXIM, and et cetera, because we've been talking about this problem for years already. And I know people are working on it, but it's very frustrating sometimes to listen to. So we had one over here, and then we'll go back to Memba. A gentleman in the green tie, I think, was first up on that. Yeah.

Quill Robinson:

Hi there. My name's Quill Robinson. I'm with the House Foreign Affairs Committee majority, and I cover DFC and minerals, so appreciate this conversation.

You talked about the need for grand strategy. You talked about some of the different tools that are important. Could you get a bit more granular about Africa, and what particular tools are most important? Like MCC, if we're talking about DFC, is it equity, is it debt, is it political risk insurance? Can you just get a little more granular about what are the specific tools that are very important, that perhaps differentiate Africa?

Joshua Meservey:

Who wants to tackle that?

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

I'll-

Tony Carroll:

Go for it.

Joshua Meservey:

Yeah.

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

. . . I would say all of the above, but they need to be coordinated. They need to be coordinated, and hopefully the State Department's commercial diplomacy strategy, which had general buy-in across the inter-agency, helps a little bit. But there has to be coordinated action, otherwise you often have. . . One of the things, I can say this now, I'm out of R&D. One of my great satisfactions was reading, when DOGE was active earlier this year, was the elimination of a senior advisor role at Embassy Kinshasa, that had been contracted out to one of the Beltway bandits. Apologies to any Beltway bandits in the room, but at $2 million a year.

And I was curious, so I reached back to find out what this role was, because. . . It turns out that for several years, State Department had been awarding this contract to send someone out there on a contract, not to open doors for American mining companies or processing companies, but to create local NGOs and other activists to obstruct investors. That's an extreme example, but it's telling about lack of coordination in the whole of government. But all those tools are useful. Equity is, even a minimal, de minimis equity stake, in effect is political risk insurance. Who wants to expropriate from Uncle Sam, especially under the current administration?

Certainly, financing is helpful. EXIM or DFC, or infrastructure finance through MCC. So it's all of the above, but it all has to be tied together and holistic. Otherwise, even if DFC and EXIM are financing your mining or beneficiation in Congo, if State is ginning up opposition to you, not organic opposition, but opposition being literally ginned up, that's not going to be helpful.

Tony Carroll:

Let me add, on the commercial diplomacy piece. Look, we have to be on the playing field. And I don't think we've been on the playing field for a long time. The Chinese have filled a vacuum. We haven't really deployed effective and deep commercial advocacy in this area for a long time. So I think we have to have people on the playing field, as well as just having institutional capacity.

The one thing I've learned in this town, and I came here in 1986 as Assistant General Counsel of the Peace Corps, had the opportunity to work from a distance with people like George Schultz, and an incredible discipline within that realm. It has to have high level, high level buy-in, for all these institutions to march in line. I was pleased that the White House has a energy dependence task force, headed up by Jarrod Agen, and that's sort of run rough herd over these various agencies, to make sure that they're keeping their eye on this issue of developing our independence in terms of energy, and that includes critical minerals.

They're very much in. . . I was with Secretary Burgum in Milan for the Gastech Conference, and he's the Secretary of the Interior, and of course they are in charge of USGS. And boy, I mean, listen to him for 20 or 30 minutes. I mean, you'll want to sign up, this guy's very dynamic. Getting buy-in at that level sets the tone for everybody beneath them. You need that type of leadership. It's both being on the playing field, and making sure you get guidance at the very top. Because if it isn't at the top, we've seen over the years, in Republican and Democratic administrations, things dissipate down the line. So you really got to keep their eyes on this coordination role that Peter has articulated. It has to be at the highest level, and we have to be out in the playing field.

Michael Hollomon II:

Just, the last thing, Tony and Peter are exactly right. They're trying to address this with National Energy Dominance Council-

Tony Carroll:

that's right.

Michael Hollomon II:

. . . which Doug Burgum is the chairman of.

Tony Carroll:

Right.

Michael Hollomon II:

There's also a person, who is David Copley, who's really herding the cats. We need the de-silo-ization. Here's an example. I just came back from Pakistan, September 8th, we signed a big minerals deal with Pakistan. They are basically giving us a ROFR on everything not nailed down by the Chinese, and by Barrick. While we're there, we find out Barrick has a commitment from DFC.

Who is Barrick? This is a giant Canadian gold company. DFC is committing 1.8 billion, somewhere around there, don't quote me exactly the number, but a huge billion, almost $2 billion number, to a Canadian company that is going to be producing copper and gold in Pakistan, that will probably go to China. That's where, the metal is not required to go to America. Why are they doing it? Because they're going to use Caterpillar, they're going to use Fluor, American companies to do all the design, and get their foot in. So I think it's a good use of DSC money, but of course it's a big, too big to fail Canadian gold and copper company.

You have to also look to the up and comers. Yes, we're pre-revenue, but we have a lot of people on our team that have done this before in the world. They've got very good people, Peter's got very good people. Look outside of your Albemarle's and your Barrick Gold's. Have the US government take a shot, we'll take loans to do some of this heavy lifting for the US government. I think that's something we got to look at.

Joshua Meservey:

Yeah, I think that's a good point. On the high level buy-in that you were articulating, Tony, this was the problem that Prosper Africa ran into. One of the problems that Prosper Africa ran into, it was supposed to be a coordinated. . . This was Trump I, it was supposed to be a coordinating body for all of the other bodies that are involved in these issues. But it was just very hard when you didn't have a senior person with political pull heading that up, because then the other agencies could just ignore Prosper, which is frequently what they did. Okay, and then, I promised Memba, and then we'll get to some over here too.

Tony Carroll:

Uh, there he is.

Memba:

Thank you Josh, and thank you panelists, great conversation here. But I want to just talk a little bit about the credibility trust deficit. Sitting in Washington, we hear these great conversations. This is not what the Africans hear. I was in Lubito, so everything we said about Lubito in Benguela, that's not the conversation on the ground. But also the connection with the Chinese. It's very interesting, because whether we talk about TAZARA, or we talk about Lubito, it's very much Chinese-centric. The Chinese built, rebuilt Lubito, after the war because nobody was willing to accompany the Angolans when they need the money. So now the Angolans are stuck with the Chinese.

Memba:

. . . when they need the money. So now the Angolans are stuck with the Chinese, in terms of paying the debt and so on. In case of Katanga itself, in DRC, I grew up in Lubumbashi and Kipushi and those areas. The Americans were always present to a great extent. The longest serving CEO of Gécamines was a graduate of the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy, as it was called it at the time. We saw Flor Utah, we saw Morrison Knudsen and all those things. We were kids, but we were very aware of this big American presence there.

That is gone. So today as we talk about critical minerals, whether we call them conflict minerals as we did for the last two decades, and now all that is American-centric and it's great. But I don't think we have convinced any African that America is serious. Always about technology, always about this what you're going to do, it's going to be great for you, but we're not doing it.

So we did play a great role in building and financing. It was Exim Bank that financed the high power lines from Inga to Shaba. Again, as a kid, I saw those. They lived across from the street, but we're not there today. So when Tshisekedi finally says, “I'm going to put a cap, I'm going to put a ban.” Yeah, economically, in theory we can say, yeah, people can migrate, go elsewhere, but elsewhere where?

If Congo is 70 percent of cobalt, Glencore is not going to leave tomorrow. It's just too much of a sweet deal for them. So if you can, gentlemen, address these gaps, I think some of the solution to our challenges laid there and less in everything else that we've said. Thank you very much.

Joshua Meservey:

Anyone want to take a hack at that?

Michael Hollomon II:

Well, just on Glencore, they're always complaining that they're not making a killing, just so you know. They're looking at potential partners for shares, maybe even selling Mutanda and KCC. They've been in discussions about this. It's difficult with the different governments there, but I think there's a real path with the Chemaf asset. I'm sure you're aware of the Chemaf asset. There is a US group that is bidding for it. It's being blocked right now by the head of Gécamines, who I'm sure you know exactly who that is, who's interested in going a different way with Swiss Moroccans. But there's a chance for Americans to come in and be a big player.

I think we need to start with one asset and start going. And that play is interesting because it revitalizes Mutanda, right? They're going to take Metoshi and the Etwal sites and have it processed at Mutanda. The hydroxide then will go to Missouri, to us. So this is a nice way to get America started, and we just need one anchor investment and I think you'll see a lot of things change.

Joshua Meservey:

Okay, good. There was a gentleman here that I saw his hand earlier.

Audience Member:

Hello, I'm representing the Delphi Global Research. A lot of issues were discussed in terms of the technologic advancement that the US might have. And one of the issue briefly was touched upon was an energy issue. So how you would see, or if you could elaborate more, applying advanced nuclear or small modular nuclear reactors in terms of getting an edge in terms of mining, or solving some of the issues that Africa has in terms of the transmission lines.

Tony Carroll:

Well, I'm in theory a big believer in SMRs, and I think Africa is the right proving ground for SMRs, because you're not replacing existing generation capacity in many instances, you're bringing a new technology. So I've been, not only for refining, which energy of course is a massive shortage of energy, but for other applications such as desalination, many African countries, urban environments are growing so fast. In fact, in the history of time, no continent has urbanized as quickly as Africa is urbanizing now.

And so, there are cities, you saw it in Cape Town just a few years ago, but this is happening across Africa, that they're not able to build enough impounded water that they're going to be able to satisfy the needs of these rapidly growing populations. So small modular reactors could solve some of that problem, because what's the thing about desalination? It's all about power and that's what you really need. And so, driving this will help in order to the benefit of not only manufacturing and processing of all types, but also for social uses, which could include irrigation, it could include desalination and other applications that we haven't even really thought about.

So I do think that SMRs. . . And that's maybe a role that we can play. I'm going out to Seattle this week to speak at the Africa Chamber of Commerce event, and the Gates Foundation has been playing around with SMRs. Maybe that's the space that we should play in. Maybe because the economics of it aren't really viable now and may not be viable for 10 or 20 years, but that's the space that really we can absorb that risk to make it happen, and maybe that's really where a field that we can play on.

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

Well, the approach should be all the above, and it has to be tailored to the needs. For example, just earlier this month, Rwanda signed an agreement with US companies to build three small actors. So in that case, it's one that makes perfect sense, given their geography and everything. And other places nature gives. . . Congo, to our friend, Katanga, the ex-Katanga, in Kolwezi at the Ivanhoe Mines, a sister company, 90 percent of the energy provided that powers not just the mining. . . And by the way, it's Congo's largest employer, 33,000 employees. 90 percent of the energy comes from renewables from hydros installed by the company of the company refurbished. And the excess energy is then put back in the local community power pool.

So there, that's the solution. And that's the hydro plus, a little bit of solar is going to power the smelter, which is starting operations next month. It's the largest copper smelter in Africa. And that's the energy mix that works best there. In other places you can imagine other. . . So I think it needs to be all the above and not have, unlike the previous US administration, ideological blinders on what type of energy should be prescribed for reasons other than economic.

Joshua Meservey:

Yeah. And even beyond the mining issue, vis-a-vis energy, the cost of under-electrification and the lack of energy on the African continent are enormous, they're staggering, the human costs, economic costs, et cetera. So yeah, all of the above, I'm a firm believer as well. Whatever makes the most economic sense. All right, so we do have a little bit more time.

Michael Hollomon II:

Eric.

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

Eric. Maybe Eric.

Michael Hollomon II:

Don't forget Eric in the back.

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

In the back.

Joshua Meservey:

Okay. Yeah, sorry, I'm losing track of 

Audience Member Bocar Thiam:

Thank you. My name is Bocar Thiam, I am from Guinea and I work for Tetra Tech. The question that I have maybe for Peter actually, all of you mentioned the importance of regional integration, which is good actually, but it's pretty slow in Africa as many of us know, because of national pride, all those kind of thing. You mentioned the iron ore reserve. I think you had mentioned the Nimba Mountain here actually, at the border of Liberia actually. You mentioned that there is a negotiation between Liberia and Guinea to figure out how to export the-

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

Actually there's an agreement that was ratified by both parliaments several years ago.

Bocar Thiam:

Okay, so the problem is since secretary's tenure actually there have been discussion between Guinea and Liberia to export that iron ore through LAMCO, which is very close actually to the Nimba Mountain. I did my internship actually in Nimba, so I know where it is actually.

But so far it has not come to realities, actually. I grew up and I've seen a discussion going on out there actually. Now, up north they have just started building right away from the Simandou all the way to Forécariah actually, on the Atlantic coast, plus 600 kilometers actually. Built by the Chinese. The question that I have for you as an expert actually, do you think building that right way will have some kind of implication of the negotiation that is going on right now between Liberia and Guinea about maybe-

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

Not if you look at a map, my friend. Not if you look at a map. Simandou is 200 kilometers in Nimba Mountain. They're not building that, so it doesn't help. And if you look at the capacity, the capacity of what the Trans-Guinean Railroad, which is the Chinese built railroad is doing, the capacity just because Simandou is a rich divide, not as rich as Nimba, but it's rich. Well, already, in fact, they have more production than they have capacity, so there's no room on the railroad for anyone else to move on it.

And so, where Guinea's at, if you've heard the two weeks ago during the IMF World Bank fall meetings, Guinea's minister Abé Sylla was speaking about Guinea's plan for itself, and this is Guinea's plan, embraces multiple actually because it can be a regional hub. So there's no capacity on the Trans-Guinean for anything else. And even if there was, it's 200 miles of mountain between it and Nimba. So it doesn't work.

So if you look at a map, your question isn't a question, it's really the only path for moving the Nimba resources to market and benefiting Guinea is a railway through Liberia, because it's only 40 kilometers exactly from Nimba Mountain to the railhead at Yekepa in Liberia, and then down to the coast, straight down. And then that eventually we will build that spur necessary, ultimately. But then Guinea can expand that northward to the border with Mali and you then open up other vistas. So in a way, Guinea is poised to be, and I think, a regional hub for transport. And that I think is another added-on value to Guinea's government has increasingly recognized.

Joshua Meservey:

I think they ran into some problems with disturbing the local chimpanzee populations as well when they were blasting their way through, trying to blast their way through Simandou, that made national news for a while. All right, Eric, thanks for your patience.

Audience Member Eric Silla:

Eric Silla from Straife Business Advisory Company. Question is builds on comments made earlier by everyone, and I think most of us in this room have spent our careers trying to elevate Africa as a policy priority in this town. And so, I think to boil everything down, it's like how important is Africa really in this particular space? Are there alternatives? Could US companies go to other countries and find just as compelling opportunities?

And are we at a inflection point, where now we can actually make a compelling argument to non-Africanists that Africa in fact merits more engagement in Washington? Or are we just facing the similar dilemma that we've faced with say, Prosper Africa, Power Africa, we can go back 20 years and see just a succession of discussions that we've had about why Africa matters, why the US should pay more attention, and how China is out-competing us there.

Joshua Meservey:

Penetrating question there. Someone want to take first stab?

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

No one's ever accused me of being a super optimist. In fact, I tend to be the Peanuts character with the cloud over his head. But that being said, I do think this is a unique moment, that I've not seen, where there's recognition geology in a way is destiny. And Africa's geology positions it well to make a strategic argument that. . . You cannot avoid the cobalt issue, for example. DRC possesses more than half of the Earth's known reserves, and two-thirds of its production capacity at the moment. That's a fact.

Our Phalaborwa asset at Rainbow Rare Earths, it's only project that's going to deliver separated oxides in the next 18 to 24 months to the US, to the Gulf of America, we're scouting brownfield sites on the Gulf, and in the Department of Shameless open for bids and offers from local governments on incentives. But they'll bring it to the. . . And again it's geology. And then our next project in the pipeline is not Africa-centered, it's Brazil. But again, geology is going to dictate a lot of this, and I think that's the opportunity that Africa offers.

And the assets that are available, the assets that are coming on are in Africa and that's what's getting the attention in the supply chain. It's interesting that David Copley was mentioned, his title has shifted. He started out at the National Energy Dominance Council and it's now Senior Director for Global Supply Chain. The recognition-

Michael Hollomon II:

At the NSC.

Dr. J. Peter Pham:

At the NSC. So I think there's recognition that this whole issue of, and Africa is nested in this, this whole issue of where we're going to get these supplies, that's what's elevated it, and in that sense it's helped it.

Michael Hollomon II:

Yeah, totally agree. It's something that we have to engage in more. It's a great opportunity for us to, because it's national security for the United States, but also Africa does have to decide permanent vassal state of China, or are we going to engage? Because you've got these two big competing countries, make it worth their while, while you have the attention of the whole global community. We're all looking at critical minerals.

Africa is rich, super abundant, natural resources. You've got the Chinese already there, people are getting sick of them. The US needs this. So I think it's time for Africa as well to put their best foot forward. This is kind of a comment about what's going on in DRC. We really need to have a win in DRC and not be blocked by the existing, the powers that be. It needs to happen, and there's never been a better time for it. To your comment, we've had many iterations of this. This is the best one. I can't say it's a slam dunk, we can't do it. We can in our hemisphere, we could get all of the stuff we need in our hemisphere, would take us a lot longer. Right now is a great opportunity to leverage the relationship.

Tony Carroll:

I don't have a lot to add, Eric, but I'll say this, it'd be helpful to have somebody at the State Department other than the senior bureau officer. I'd like to see an assistant secretary at that position. I think it's something that gets people in the room and serious about Africa, if you've got a sort of flag officer in the room. Not to say that the senior budget officer isn't a. . . He's a former ambassador or senior bureau officer, or former ambassador and a serious guy, and I must say the Africa Bureau is staffed with some very able people, and I'm very impressed with many of the people that are doing the work there. But I think it would be a show of commitment, if you would. But I think I'm having conversations at really senior levels within the Department of Energy and within the Department of Interior, that probably wouldn't have been possible in previous administrations, certainly the most recent administration, so that's good.

In front of you is probably one of the most effective Congressional staff members, two of them, that I've seen in this town in 30 or 40 years, in Liz and JT. The Senate has been really guiding us in many, many ways and I appreciate the work that they've done, and I think we've got a good team on the hill. Not perhaps as extensive as we would like on the other side, but we've really got some great leadership in the senate side. So we're thankful to Chairman Risch to have given the support that both JT and Liz have in really providing us a lot of guidance.

Joshua Meservey:

Yeah. And I think, Mike, you made this comment, it does seem that African governments more and more are interested in diversifying their partners after decades of intensive engagement with China in various industries. They look around and they understand, well, goodness, it's all Chinese companies who have built all of our infrastructure, or most of it, let's say, and whether it be ports or roads or whatever.

And so, there is an interest in diversifying away. So I think that makes this moment more opportune for the United States than traditionally as well, perhaps. We are at time. So sorry, that went really quick, we could have gone for a lot longer. I do apologize that we didn't get to all the questions perhaps. But really thank you all for your attention and thank you to our guests. That was really excellent. I personally learned a lot. I'm sure everybody else in the room did as well. So please join me in thanking our panel.