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The Trump administration's aggressive pursuit of critical mineral supply chains, most dramatically embodied in the US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement signed on 4 December 2025 – has laid bare a new reality: that geopolitics can override the legal architecture that mining executives and investors have long taken for granted. The multilateral system constructed after 1945 was designed precisely to prevent the strong from using their might in destructive ways against both the weak and their foes. Treaties, international courts and institutions such as the United Nations were meant to provide guardrails. When the President of the United States considers that international law does not bind his administration, that his wishes are above internationally recognised and protected rights of peoples and nations; that his lust for Greenland is stronger than the historical relationship between the US and Europe and that longstanding agreements may be disregarded at will, he is not merely engaging in provocative rhetoric; he is signalling that, much like the colonial era, geopolitical territories, resources and strategic assets are now, in his calculus, commodities available for acquisition by negotiation, coercion or unilateral action of the mighty.
For the mining industry, this presents an existential question: what does security of mineral title actually mean in a world where the most powerful state openly rebels against the rules-based order?
The scale of US withdrawal from international frameworks is without precedent. The Trump administration has announced plans to withdraw from 66 United Nations and international organisations, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the UN Democracy Fund. It has quit the World Health Organisation, exited the Paris Agreement and withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the United States retains the power to veto measures it dislikes – a power it has wielded repeatedly, even as it dismantles its participation in the broader multilateral architecture.
The message to resource-rich nations is unmistakable: international institutions offer no protection when strategic interests collide. The United States shut down USAID in early 2025, cutting billions in foreign aid affecting African countries most acutely. In the DRC specifically, funding cuts of $351.7 million over six months have resulted in a severe reduction in food assistance, with 28 million Congolese facing food insecurity.
These are not unrelated policy choices. They constitute a deliberate recalibration of American leverage in resource diplomacy. The United States was, by its own admission, behind the curve in critical mineral supply chains. China spent decades building dominance: it now refines 90% of the world's rare earth elements and controls 60-70% of lithium and cobalt processing capacity. Beijing bankrolled exploration abroad, subsidised domestic smelting, forced technology transfer and deployed export quotas as tools of industrial leverage. Washington, on the other hand, having neglected mineral-producing markets for decades, now faces a stark choice: compete on commercial terms from a position of disadvantage or disrupt the supply chain frameworks themselves. It has chosen the latter.
The DRC deal: Peace for minerals or leverage for extraction?
The Critical Minerals for Security and Peace Deal between the United States and the DRC exemplifies this new approach. President Trump hailed it on Truth Social as "A Great Day for Africa and, quite frankly, a Great Day for the World." The Strategic Partnership Agreement grants US persons "right of first offer" for Strategic Asset Reserve Projects, requires the DRC to provide preferential fiscal, tax and regulatory incentives for American investors and mandates that the DRC and its state-owned enterprises provide US persons with first right of offer on marketed critical minerals destined for export.
The Lobito Corridor – the rail infrastructure connecting the DRC and Zambia to Angola's Atlantic coast is designated a strategic priority. The agreement stipulates that within five years, at least 50% of copper volumes, 90% of zinc concentrate and 30% of cobalt that the DRC and its state-owned enterprises elect to commercialise pursuant to their equity and contractual marketing rights over production from certain partnerships, must be exported via the Sakania-Lobito Corridor. The United States has signalled its intention to mobilise financing through development finance institutions, export credit agencies and multilateral development banks to ensure the corridor's success.
From a pure supply-chain perspective, the logic is sound. The United States needs secure access to the minerals that underpin its green energy transition and defence apparatus. But the terms of the agreement and the conduct of the parties since its signing, raise fundamental questions about whether this is partnership or extraction.
Five months before the peace agreement was signed, Trump announced the closure of USAID, placing half a million people in the eastern DRC at risk. The August 2025 Treasury sanctions on entities linked to armed group violence and the sale of critical minerals, whilst ostensibly targeting those fuelling conflict, underscore the complex environment in which mining companies must now operate. Congolese Nobel laureate Denis Mukwege has called the deal a "scandalous surrender of sovereignty" that validates foreign occupation and exploitation. Congolese analyst Kambale Musavuli characterised it as "Berlin Conference 2.0" – a reference that requires no elaboration for anyone familiar with the history of resource extraction on the African continent.
The DRC entered this agreement from a position of desperation. With M23 rebels having seized Goma and Bukavu and threatening to advance on Kinshasa, regime survival and not national interest drove the calculus. The United States, by contrast, approached the table with substantial leverage: the DRC needed diplomatic and security support; the US needed to counter China's dominance in critical mineral supply chains.
Force majeure and the new geopolitical risk
Mining agreements have traditionally contemplated force majeure events: natural disasters, wars, civil unrest, acts of government. But the drafters of such clauses assumed a relatively stable international order in which sovereign nations respected each other's legal frameworks and in which treaties provided meaningful protection.
What happens when geopolitics itself becomes the disruptive force? When the world's most powerful state signals that it will not be bound by international agreements and that it may intervene to redirect mineral flows regardless of existing contractual commitments?
Mining companies with capital deployed in jurisdictions that find themselves on the wrong side of great-power competition now face risks that no force majeure clause was designed to address. The question is no longer simply whether a host government will respect its commitments. It is whether external powers will permit those commitments to be honoured.
Consider the position of a mining company holding offtake rights from a Congolese operation. Under the Strategic Partnership Agreement, the DRC is obligated to provide US persons with first right of offer on marketed critical minerals. What becomes of pre-existing offtake arrangements with non-US parties? What recourse does a Chinese, European or Australian company have if its contractual rights are subordinated to American strategic interests? The honest answer is: uncertain.
South Africa at the crossroads
For South Africa, these dynamics carry particular weight. The country possesses an abundance of critical minerals that feature prominently in global supply-chain strategies. But South Africa also finds itself in a delicate geopolitical position. The Trump administration has levied 30% tariffs on South African goods after making debunked allegations of a "genocide" against the country's white Afrikaner minority. The US government has prioritised resettling Afrikaners as refugees. When President Cyril Ramaphosa met Trump at the White House in May 2025, he was never going to persuade the American president that crime in South Africa targets the population at large, not just its white citizens.
Meanwhile, as a founding member of BRICS, South Africa has deepened its relationship with China and the broader East. This is not merely diplomatic positioning; it reflects economic reality. China is a major market for South African minerals and Chinese investment in African mining has grown substantially.
The question for South African mining houses and for foreign companies operating in South Africa is how to navigate an environment in which alignment with one bloc may invite retaliation from another. If geopolitics can dictate the terms of mineral access, then every mining agreement carries embedded political risk that extends far beyond the borders of the host country.
As delegates gather for the Mining Indaba, the industry confronts a landscape fundamentally altered from even two years ago. The old certainties – that legal title would be respected, that contracts would be enforced, that international institutions would provide recourse, no longer hold with confidence.
This does not mean that mining ceases to be viable. It means that the calculus of risk must evolve. Boards and investors will need to assess geopolitical exposure alongside geological, operational, social and regulatory risk. Legal teams will need to revisit force majeure clauses and consider whether geopolitical disruption should be explicitly addressed. Strategists will need to scenario-test what happens if their host country's relationship with the United States or with China deteriorates.
The principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources remains enshrined in international law. But law, as the past year has demonstrated, is only as robust as the willingness of powerful states to respect it. When that willingness falters, mining companies find themselves exposed in ways that no contract can fully mitigate.
The DRC's experience offers a cautionary tale. A peace deal was signed; humanitarian assistance was withdrawn. Strategic partnership was proclaimed; sovereignty was circumscribed. The Congolese people, despite possessing some of the world's richest mineral deposits, have for decades borne the costs of extraction without sharing in its benefits, treated as collateral in deals driven by geopolitical rivalries and elite bargains.
The challenge for the mining industry is to ensure that it does not become complicit in a new chapter of that same history. Resource extraction can generate prosperity and stability, or it can entrench exploitation and conflict. The difference lies not in geology, but in governance, accountability and the willingness of all parties – companies, governments and international partners to insist on terms that serve more than narrow strategic interests. In an era when international law is treated as optional by those with the power to ignore it, the mining industry must decide what role it will play. Whatever its decision, the industry must ensure that it can survive the collapse of the post 1945 world order.
We have curated a compilation of insight and perspectives on the trends, challenges and opportunities shaping Africa’s mining sector. Click here to explore the page: Mining Indaba 2026 DM
Authors: Otsile Matlou (COO) and Denise van Heerden (Candidate Legal Practitioner: Natural Resources and Environment), ENSafrica