EU targets Africa’s mineral wealth and green energy in new partnership

The European Commission is launching negotiations on what it hails as a first-of-a-kind Clean Trade and Investment Partnership, president Ursula von der Leyen has announced while on a diplomatic mission to Cape Town.

“South Africa has everything to become a global leader,” von der Leyen said on the way into talks with president Cyril Ramaphosa, also attended by EU Council president António Costa.

“You have clean energy in abundance from wind to sun, you have raw materials that are critical for electrolysis, including 91% of the world's platinum group metal reserves,” she said while pointing to South Africa’s plans to ramp up production of clean hydrogen for export.

Von der Leyen also announced an investment package worth €4.7bn through the Global Gateway scheme, the EU’s answer to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a geopolitically significant global web of trade and infrastructure investments and financing.

Ramaphosa said the mix of European public and private finance would be channelled in part towards critical raw material processing. Von der Leyen stressed that refining (she used the technical term “beneficiation”) and the economic benefits of the consequent “added value” should stay in South Africa – a principle the EU uses to bolster its raw materials diplomacy more broadly.

 The South African president also listed green hydrogen production and other forms of renewable energy, strengthening transport and digital infrastructure, and investing in vaccine production and skills as targets for investment.

A specific project mentioned by von der Leyen was the development of a rail link between South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), another key source essential minerals like cobalt and – partly for that reason – a hotbed of armed conflict.

“We're investing in transport corridors like the north-south Lubumbashi to Durban route to upgrade railway and port infrastructure so important for connectivity,” the president of the EU executive said.

In a wide-ranging joint declaration published after their meeting, Ramaphosa, von der Leyen and Costa agreed on the need for a “just, comprehensive, and lasting peace in Ukraine, the occupied Palestinian Territories, Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo…and other major wars and conflicts around the globe.”

They focused in particular on the DRC, calling for rebel groups in the mineral-rich east of the huge country to be held to account, with Ramaphosa urging support from the United Nations, the African Union and the European Union in tackling the humanitarian crisis.

Von der Leyen underlined the EU’s commitment to the Just Energy Transition Partnership signed at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, where France, Germany, Kingdom, the United States and the European Union pledged $8.5bn in financing for South Africa’s green transition.

“We know that others are withdrawing,” she said in a pointed reference to the Trump administration, which announced last week the US would quit the programme intended to help developing countries move away from fossil fuels. Subsequent partnerships were formed for Indonesia and Vietnam in 2022, worth $20bn and $15bn respectively.

“We are doubling down with our support; we are here to stay,” von der Leyen said.