In January 2023, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and national mining company Ma’aden launched Manara Minerals, a joint venture designed to acquire stakes in mining assets worldwide. Africa was named a priority region from the outset, reflecting the continent’s commanding position in several minerals considered critical for the energy transition. The Democratic Republic of Congo alone accounts for roughly 70 percent of global cobalt production, according to US Geological Survey data, while the DRC and Zambia together form one of the world’s largest copper belts. Zimbabwe, Namibia and Guinea hold significant lithium, rare earth and bauxite reserves respectively.

Manara’s creation was not an isolated signal. Emirati sovereign wealth funds, including Mubadala Investment Company and ADQ, have also earmarked capital for African resource sectors over the past several years. The logic is direct: as electric vehicle sales and renewable energy storage scale up globally, demand for cobalt, lithium, nickel and copper is projected to multiply significantly over the coming decade, according to the International Energy Agency’s Critical Minerals Market Review. Gulf states, which built sovereign wealth funds on hydrocarbon revenues, are positioning themselves as indispensable nodes in the new energy supply chain even as oil’s relative centrality shifts.

The scale of the opportunity on the African side is substantial. Africa is estimated to hold around 30 percent of global mineral reserves relevant to battery production when cobalt, manganese and other inputs are combined, per African Development Bank analysis. Gulf capital entering this space therefore meets a continent whose resource endowment is increasingly acknowledged as a strategic geopolitical asset, not merely a raw commodity source.

African governments push back: from extraction to processing

African policymakers have made clear they do not intend to repeat earlier extractive patterns. Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a memorandum in 2023 to collaborate on building an electric vehicle battery value chain, targeting local production of precursor chemicals and battery cells. Under this framework, both countries sought investors willing to fund smelting, refining and manufacturing capacity inside their borders, rather than simply shipping unprocessed ore concentrate abroad.

This posture reflects a wider continental debate about beneficiation. The African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the African Continental Free Trade Area both explicitly support industrialization goals that tie resource extraction to downstream manufacturing. Several African governments have moved from rhetoric to concrete policy instruments: export restrictions on raw ores, licensing conditions and fiscal incentives have been deployed to steer investment toward processing facilities. For Gulf investors, this means that securing access to African minerals now requires negotiating over where value is created, not just who extracts it.

How Gulf entities respond to this insistence will shape the quality of Africa-Gulf mineral partnerships. Some have expressed willingness to co-fund refining infrastructure, which would align with African industrial ambitions. Others have focused primarily on equity stakes in upstream operations. African mining ministers and trade negotiators have made it clear that partnerships offering only extraction rights will encounter tougher political conditions than those bringing processing investment and technology transfer.

A competitive field, with African actors asserting leverage

Gulf investment in African minerals does not unfold in isolation. Chinese firms and state entities have built deep relationships across African mining sectors over the past two decades, funding infrastructure and acquiring concessions from the DRC to Guinea. Western governments have also stepped up engagement: the US Minerals Security Partnership and the European Union’s Critical Raw Materials Act both seek to diversify supply chains away from dominant single sources, with Africa as a key partner.

African leaders have shown increasing willingness to use this competitive environment as leverage. The 2023 BRICS expansion, which brought Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE into the bloc at the Johannesburg summit, created a shared forum where African and Middle Eastern states can align on global economic governance questions, including trade rules for critical minerals. The practical ability to play different investors against each other is still developing, but the intention is clearly articulated by a growing number of African finance and mining officials.

For Gulf states, building durable partnerships in African mining requires more than capital deployment. It requires long-term presence, technical co-investment and a political relationship that survives government changes and commodity price cycles. Saudi Arabia’s PIF and the Manara vehicle face this test as they move from initial deal exploration to actual project development. The quality of these early partnerships will shape how African governments and publics perceive Gulf actors in the sector for years to come.

The trajectory of Africa-Gulf critical minerals cooperation is ultimately an industrial policy story more than a finance story. Whether African cobalt, lithium and copper end up processed locally or exported raw, whether Gulf capital helps build battery factories in Lusaka or Kinshasa or simply adds another layer of foreign ownership to existing mines: these choices will determine how much of the energy transition’s economic value is captured on the continent. As Manara Minerals and comparable vehicles move from exploration to execution over the next few years, they will provide the clearest test yet of whether Gulf-Africa mineral partnerships can deliver on the industrial ambitions both sides have publicly articulated.