A 15-year US deal to secure Greenland’s Tanbreez rare earth deposits ignited a new competition with China’s rare earth minerals in Africa strategy, with Washington’s diversification proactively maneuvering to establish zero-dependence supply chains before the 2027 Pentagon mandate banning materials coming from China from US and European defense and aerospace systems.
The US’s pivot to make Greenland and Africa its new rare earth war frontline means Washington has decided to stop pretending the current mineral supply chain is acceptable and began paying for it.
2027 Pentagon Chinese Materials Ban
The two developments may appear unrelated, but in actuality, are interconnected by the same geopolitical calculation. After the Pentagon’s 2027 mandate deadline, origin materials from China will disappear from Western defense, and the redirection to Greenland is linked to the severe security and regulatory hurdles across the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mali.
Simply, Greenland is just a simpler – and stable – jurisdiction for Washington.
As AI, defense modernization, electric vehicles (EV), aerospace systems, and advanced manufacturing drive demand for rare minerals. The largest global powers are redrawing supply chains to secure access to the rare African minerals materials to power their next industrial age.
Africa, home to roughly 30% of the world’s proven critical mineral reserves, including cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese, copper, nickel, uranium, platinum group metals, and rare earth elements, is centering this contest and rare earths race.
The US recently secured future supplies of heavy rare earth elements through a 15-year agreement tied to Greenland’s Tanbreez project, one of the world’s largest known deposits of dysprosium and terbium, essential for fighter jets, missile systems, radar platforms, drones, and other advanced technologies increasingly shaped by AI.
Washington seeks to reduce its reliance on China’s rare earths deposits – the dominant force in the global rare earth industry – accounting for about 60% of mining production and approximately 91% of refining capacity in 2024.
Yet, while Greenland offers political stability and long-term security, rare earth minerals in Africa remains the ultimate prize, but the Western shift – EU and US – collides with Beijing’s zero-tariff policy for 53 African nations engineered to structurally lock the continent’s raw graphite, cobalt, and rare earth deposits into China’s global rare earths’ refining monopolies.
China Rare Earth Minerals in Africa Zero Tariff Policy
The current fracturing of the global critical mineral architecture is the deep industrial disconnect between mining raw resources and actually possessing the technology needed to separate them.
Across Africa, projects in Malawi, Angola, Tanzania, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and the Democratic Republic of Congo are moving closer to production. New discoveries continue to expand the region’s mineral potential, attracting growing interest from governments and investors seeking supplies for the technologies that will define the coming decades.
According to Business Insider Africa, Malawi’s Kangankunde African rare earth minerals mine, as well as Angola’s Longonjo are racing toward production. The real price of Great Powers Era 2.0 is not even mine ownership – despite powerhouses’ competition to own rare African minerals, but the refining hegemony.
At the same time, the continent’s governments managing these rare minerals from Africa are increasingly seeking a larger share of that value chain. Policymakers from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Namibia and Tanzania have expressed ambitions to move beyond exporting raw materials and develop domestic refining and processing industries.
The challenge is that such ambitions around rare minerals mine in Africa require far more than mineral deposits. Advanced processing facilities depend on stable electricity, transportation infrastructure, engineering expertise, financing, environmental safeguards, and highly specialized industrial capabilities that take years, if not decades, to build.
The Great Powers Era 2.0 is a new geopolitical landscape where traditional globalization has collapsed and powerhouses, such as the US, China, EU bloc, and in some cases Russia, compete for global dominance by using industrial supply chains, rare earth minerals, and advanced technology as a leveraged instruments of national power.
And since Beijing currently holds 90% of global rare earth refining capacity, then US and EU-backed mines harvesting rare minerals from Africa must still rely on China’s chemical and metallurgical complexes to transform raw ore into the specialized magnets needed for robotics, AI data centers, and military technology.
For many observers, however, the deeper story is not about the mines themselves.
Minerals may begin in the ground, but the greatest economic value is often created later through refining, processing, manufacturing, battery production, magnet fabrication, and advanced industrial ecosystems.
Opportunities from Rare Minerals in Africa
Over the past two decades, Beijing invested heavily across rare earth minerals in Africa and its mining corridors, transportation networks, industrial parks, ports, and energy infrastructure. Its recent decision to expand zero-tariff treatment to nearly all African countries with diplomatic relations is another effort to deepen those ties as competition over strategic resources with the US and EU grows.
Unlike traditional resource competition, today’s contest extends far beyond extraction. The objective is to build industrial networks capable of transforming raw materials into finished products used in AI systems, defense technologies, robotics, renewable energy equipment, and advanced electronics.
As Washington, Beijing, Brussels, Moscow, and Gulf states expand their presence across Africa rare earth minerals resources, the continent is becoming one of the most consequential battlegrounds of the twenty-first century.
Beijing’s systematic undercut of US and European attempts to build independent supply chains, especially through the rare earth minerals in Africa corridor, will bring an intense cost-curve battle where nations rich in resources are caught between immediate cash liquidity of Chinese processing networks, and sluggish infrastructure rollout of the US and its Western allies.
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