The US and the EU Bet on the Wrong Race in Zambia

Copper runs through everything the world's largest economies are racing to build over the coming decade, including electricity networks, electric vehicles, and data centers. The vulnerability of these inputs lies not in the mines but in the middle of the value chain. China absorbs around 60% of global unrefined copper and produces around 50% of its refined output, a share that is increasing. For the United States and the EU, this dependency risk has prompted protective measures. From increasing domestic processing to extending bilateral critical mineral agreements, both are looking to de-risk.

Zambia holds some of the world’s largest copper reserves, putting it at the center of the wider contest for access to African minerals to secure supply chains.

The initial reflex in Washington and Brussels has been to read de-risking as a race against China for access. Their strategies have therefore concentrated on the first link of the chain: extraction and the corridors that carry its output to the coast. Zambia shows why this misses the target. China’s leverage lies not in mining but in refining, the stage that turns concentrate into usable metal, and refining is precisely what Zambia lacks the capacity and power to expand. To reduce their dependence on Chinese refining, Western partners must recognize that their interests converge with Zambia’s. Lusaka wants to move beyond extraction and will favor partners that invest in refining and the stages beyond it. Those that fund only mines and railways risk financing supply chains that still run through China.

Connecting Copper

China, Zambia’s largest export market for refined copper, relies on mineral transport corridors. The main example is the TAZARA railway, which links landlocked Zambian mines to Tanzania’s Indian Ocean coast. China helped build the line in the 1970s after Western lenders refused to finance it. Chinese firms are now set to upgrade it for $1.4 billion, ensuring a steady flow of copper to Chinese refineries and manufacturing centers.

In reaction, Washington and Brussels placed their interests in the Lobito Corridor, a revived old colonial rail line linking the DRC to Angola, refurbished through a loan from the US government's development bank. A new 800km greenfield line to connect Zambia is planned, but unlikely to carry freight before 2030. Western leaders often brand the Lobito Corridor as a game-changing counterweight to China, but the facts on the ground tell a far less binary story of the corridor’s success in de-risking.

At the same time, the domestic policies of the United States and the EU focus on bringing mineral processing back within their borders or closer to home, which sidesteps the urgent need for deeper partnerships with African producers. While the EU signed a strategic partnership MoU with Zambia in 2023, its broader Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) targets 40% domestic processing by 2030. Most refined supply will thus come from non-European sources. Yet the Act suggests no public de-risking mechanism designed for refining in African countries. In the United States’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), clean energy incentives were scrapped, which ended the electric-vehicle tax credits that drove investment in the copper supply chain, weakening Washington’s own demand signal.

What Zambia Is Building

Zambia’s own priorities point to the stage the West is neglecting. President Hakainde Hichilema, re-elected in August after a first term that did little to ease the cost of living, campaigned on turning Zambia’s copper deposits into jobs and prosperity. Mining is central to the country’s economy, representing 72% of its total foreign export earnings and contributing 9% of GDP. Lusaka is therefore building policies to move beyond the raw-export model and capture more value from its resources at home. To keep processing in the country, it levies a 10% export duty on unrefined copper concentrate. However, in a sign of how thin refining capacity remains, the duty has been waived since August 2025 while domestic smelters undergo repairs.

Corridors fit into this strategy, but where most see a corridor as a route out for raw materials, Zambia sees the industrial base it can build along it. Lower transport costs ensure that mines with higher onsite processing demands are commercially competitive and connect regional initiatives. For example, Zambia and the DRC agreed to establish special economic zones for battery-precursor manufacturing along the Lobito railway, which could allow entry into a new section of the supply chain.

This logic is part of a continental wave of value-addition restrictions, including Zimbabwe’s pioneer raw mineral restrictions—which resulted in the country’s first domestic lithium sulphate exports this year. Washington and Brussels should recognize that this shift operates on a different layer from access. It decides where processing happens, not who reaches the mine. Zimbabwe’s lithium sulphate was produced domestically, but in a facility owned by China’s Huayou Cobalt. By aligning with domestic policy, Beijing kept its place in the chain, secured the partnership, and reinforced its dominance.

The Power in Processing

Rather than aligning with any single power, Lusaka is using intensifying great-power rivalry as leverage for its own growth. China holds a structural head start, built over decades of investment in Zambia’s mines, railways, and energy infrastructure, and through off-take agreements with non-Chinese mines. This is a strategy the EU and the United States cannot replicate due to time constraints and fundamentally different market models. They should instead differentiate their offer by backing the priorities of Zambia’s National Critical Minerals Strategy (NCMS) and the African Green Minerals Strategy (AGMS), which emphasize ownership, co-industrialization, and electrification.

Energy is the biggest operating cost in refining. Recent IEA findings state that it accounts for 44% percent of total production costs in Africa. While the NCMS sets out frameworks for Zambia to claim economic ownership of its resources, energy remains its main vulnerability. Recently, drought-induced load shedding forced domestic smelters to shut down, and industry estimates suggest that at least 2,000 megawatts of new generation are needed to meet the country’s output target. Zambia is thus looking for partners to end its energy deficits.

On top of energy partnerships, new partnerships should be built through market access clauses. To send clearer signals to private investors, both should extend friend-shoring through critical mineral agreements that define eligibility by stage of transformation rather than by mine of origin, so that African-processed materials, such as Zambian refined copper cathode or battery precursors from the planned special economic zones, count as eligible inputs. The US-Zambia minerals agreement now under negotiation is an immediate test. Granting this market access would connect Western de-risking with Zambia’s pursuit of autonomy and growth.

What Zambia Reveals

When Washington initially attempted to leverage a $1.5 billion health aid package to secure preferential access to critical minerals, Lusaka pushed back, insisting that humanitarian aid and mineral rights be decoupled. The ultimate signing of a standalone health deal with mineral negotiations moved to a separate economic track shows how critical minerals can be treated to capture economic growth. African producers are negotiating stage by stage, pricing each concession against their own industrial plans. Partners who invest in the stage a producer wants to reach next will gain supply security as a by-product. For Washington and Brussels, resource security and African value addition can meet not only at the mine, but further up the value chain.

The views expressed herein are those solely of the author(s). GMF as an institution does not take positions.