Minerals for Security Pacts in the Great Lakes and East Africa
The accelerating global scramble for green transition minerals is rapidly evolving into a multidimensional geopolitical and security challenge for the Great Lakes and Eastern Africa region. The African continent is endowed with large amounts of critical mineral supplies, making the continent a theater of geopolitical competition. For instance, the DRC holds some of the world’s largest reserves of cobalt, estimated at 50-70% of global supply.
What was once largely a commercial contest over copper, cobalt, and rare earth supply chains is now increasingly framed through the lens of national security, defense diplomacy, and strategic alignment. This shift carries profound implications for governance, sovereignty, and regional stability.
Recent developments indicate that the United States and its partners, including Gulf-linked investors associated with the United Arab Emirates, are intensifying efforts to counter the entrenched position of China in African mineral ecosystems. The emerging “minerals for security” approach is therefore not merely an economic phenomenon but a structural transformation in how strategic resources are negotiated and controlled.
Across the Great Lakes corridor, competition over critical minerals is becoming increasingly embedded in broader geopolitical positioning. Western actors are expanding development finance, private equity participation, and security cooperation alongside targeted acquisitions of copper and cobalt assets, particularly in resource-rich jurisdictions such as Zambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the wider Great Lakes region.
The US and EU-backed Lobito corridor is in competition with the Chinese-backed Tazara Railway. These transport corridors aim to secure critical mineral supplies from Central Africa, each presenting itself as an alternative. These moves reflect a deliberate attempt to build resilient supply chains for the global energy transition while reducing dependence on Chinese refining dominance. However, the blending of mineral access with defense cooperation is introducing new pressures on domestic policy frameworks that many regional governments are not yet institutionally prepared to manage. Nonetheless, this competition offers potential leverage for African governments in negotiating for better terms.
The operational logic of minerals for security pacts is both strategic and transactional. External partners increasingly offer military training, intelligence cooperation, diplomatic backing, or maritime and border security support as part of broader engagement packages. In exchange, host governments may provide preferential concession access, fast-tracked licensing approvals, or long-term supply assurances for strategic minerals.
While such arrangements can unlock capital inflows and geopolitical relevance, they also risk compressing regulatory scrutiny and weakening the procedural safeguards that underpin transparent extractive governance.The main risk for governments is not direct coercion, but the gradual acceptance of preferential treatment for investments linked to security arrangements, which can compromise sovereignty and equitable governance.
Recent evidence indicates that the securitization of mineral supply chains might already be affecting policy decisions in some areas of Eastern Africa. The recently signed Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity between the DRC and Rwanda underscore this phenomenon. The Accord was brokered with the strong involvement of the US under Donald Trump’s administration, with commitments to end decades of conflict and foster lasting peace.
The agreement serves as a tool for securing the United States critical minerals supply chains by linking the accord’s regional economic integration framework with peace commitments in the DRC. Governments under fiscal strain, infrastructure gaps, and complex security situations may see minerals used in security partnerships as a politically advantageous move, especially with the spike in Gen Z protests over poor public service delivery in the region. However, this situation can lead to subtle incentives to modify mining regulations, local content policies, or fiscal systems to favor strategic allies. Over time, these changes could result in sovereignty and institutional drift, where regulatory frameworks shift due to geopolitical negotiations instead of aligned national development strategies.
At the heart of the policy challenge is the growing tension between investment attraction and sovereign control. The global energy transition has elevated critical minerals to the status of strategic assets, prompting major powers to treat supply access as a matter of national security. For resource-rich but institutionally uneven states in the region, this creates a structurally asymmetric negotiating environment. Without strong legal safeguards and transparent oversight, the risk of long-term strategic lock-in becomes significant. Once mineral concessions, defense cooperation, and infrastructure financing become bundled, policy autonomy can narrow in ways that are difficult to reverse.
Structural governance vulnerabilities across parts of the Great Lakes ecosystem further amplify these risks. Fragmented interagency coordination, uneven contract transparency, and limited technical capacity in complex mineral negotiations create openings that external actors can exploit. Where licensing authorities operate under political pressure or fiscal urgency, fast-tracking of strategic projects may occur without adequate environmental, fiscal, or community safeguards. In historically sensitive mining zones, this can deepen perceptions of elite capture and foreign resource control, potentially feeding localized grievance dynamics.
Regional cohesion also faces new stress under the emerging minerals for the security landscape. Institutions such as the East African Community and the African Union have long promoted harmonized mining frameworks and collective resource governance principles. However, if individual states pursue bilateral strategic mineral deals with competing global powers, regulatory divergence and fiscal competition may intensify. This fragmentation could weaken the region’s collective bargaining leverage while encouraging a race to the bottom in concession terms.
Local security environments add another layer of complexity. In several parts of the Great Lakes belt, mineral corridors intersect with fragile political settlements and unresolved community land claims. The visible coupling of foreign security cooperation with extractive expansion may heighten community sensitivities, particularly where resource nationalism narratives already resonate. If not carefully managed, these security trends could unintentionally militarize perceptions around mining zones, complicating community relations and raising reputation risks for host governments.
The comparative posture of major external actors further shapes the strategic landscape. China retains significant structural advantages through long-term infrastructure-for-resources arrangements, refining capacity dominance, and established commercial footprints across African mineral value chains. The United States and its partners, by contrast, are increasingly emphasizing diversified supply chains, friend-shoring strategies, and security-linked economic engagement. For East African policymakers, this evolving competition presents both leverage opportunities and governance threats. The central challenge is to convert geopolitical attention into developmental gain without compromising regulatory sovereignty.
Addressing the emerging risks associated with minerals for security pacts requires a calibrated and forward-looking policy response. Governments across Eastern Africa and the Great Lakes region should first institutionalize clear legal separation between security cooperation agreements and mineral licensing processes. Embedding parliamentary oversight and independent regulatory review for major strategic concessions can help prevent policy compression under geopolitical pressure. At the same time, developing comprehensive national critical minerals strategies will enable states to define priority resources, value addition pathways, and ownership thresholds before entering high-stakes negotiations.
Regional coordination must also be strengthened through effective natural resource governance, such as harmonizing mining codes, improving contract intelligence sharing, and developing common negotiation principles through regional platforms to significantly enhance collective bargaining power. Transparency remains equally essential by enforcing mandatory disclosure of beneficial ownership, fiscal terms, and environmental obligations for major mineral agreements to reduce opacity and build public trust. This can be through various frameworks, such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which provides a global framework that enhances open and accountable management of oil, gas, and mineral resources.
Over the longer term, investment in domestic value addition, refining capacity, and technical skills will be critical to shifting the region from a position of raw material dependency toward greater strategic autonomy. This will be integral in the implementation of Africa`s Green Minerals Strategy (AGMS). This policy framework offers a strategic road map for leveraging Africa’s mineral wealth amid the intensifying need to secure critical minerals, accelerating global energy transition, and increasingly competitive supply chains.
For the Great Lakes and Eastern Africa region, the stakes are exceptionally high, but if managed strategically, minerals for security partnerships could catalyze infrastructure development, technology transfer, and market diversification. However, if poorly managed, they risk embedding a new generation of externally driven resource dependency under a security banner. The policy window for proactive rule setting is narrowing, and the decisions taken in the next few years will shape whether the region emerges as a rule-shaper in rare earth minerals exploration or remains primarily a supplier in the evolving geopolitical order.
Stephen Nduvi is a meticulous Policy Analyst and Advisor specializing in geopolitics and geo-economics in Africa, artificial intelligence and governance, and the political economy of development and regional integration. His work also focuses on anti-corruption and electoral governance, cybersecurity and emerging technologies, climate resilience and green transitions, and gender inclusion in public policy. He has over ten years of experience in policy research and analysis.
As a seasoned policy analyst who has worked with Kenya-based think tanks, he contributes to high-impact research, multi-stakeholder engagement, and evidence-based policy design for inclusive and forward-looking development.
