Governments, industry, and civil society organizations (CSOs) are gathering this week for Africa’s Mining Indaba, with big announcements already emerging. The splashiest thus far has been news of a collaboration between the U.S.-led Minerals Security Partnership, Congolese state mining company GECAMINES, and Japanese state agency JOGMEC for mineral exploration, production and processing.
This announcement is the latest in a spate of projects involving the Minerals Security Partnership. In today’s press briefing about the partnership, U.S. diplomat Jose Fernandez reiterated the importance of benefit sharing, value addition, and ESG protections, but shared minimal information on what this would look like in practice; such a dearth of detail characterizes many such deals.
Such next-generation state-state mineral partnerships have become a key tool for wealthier jurisdictions such as the U.S. and EU. Referred to as “buying partners” in this post, their aim is to secure the minerals needed for the solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles that will help the world transition away from fossil fuels (in some cases to supplement their own mineral production). But many questions remain around such partnerships, including on their overall purpose and value for lower- and middle-income mineral-rich countries, referred to as “supplying partners” in this post.
NRGI has recently updated ResourceContracts (a repository of publicly available oil, gas, and mining contracts and associated documents) with documents related to this new type of state-state mining partnership (variously labeled “strategic partnerships,” “mineral security partnerships,” “memoranda of cooperation”, and the like).
A new generation of mining partnerships
These partnerships are driven largely by the political or geostrategic needs of the buying partners. Governments in such countries are motivated by the importance of diversifying supply. The partnerships may: lay the groundwork for future cooperation between different jurisdictions, incentivize buyer-country industries to invest in a particular supplier country, and/or merely send a warning shot to international “competitors” that the buying partner has an interest in sourcing minerals from a particular country.
The implications for the supplying partner are even less clear. While buying partners emphasize the language of “partnerships” and “win-win” approaches, whether these partnerships will deliver equal benefits to both parties remains to be seen. These partnerships should be aligned with the supplying partners’ own objectives such as skills development, greater domestic value addition and economic diversification, while also encouraging international cooperation on a just energy transition.
Yet the lack of publicly available information about these partnerships means that scrutinizing them is difficult. This results in little accountability, even though contract disclosure is a well-established norm in the sector. While some memoranda of understanding have been made public, such as those signed by the European Union, these documents are scant on details despite sometimes taking months to negotiate. Others, such as those recently signed by Saudi Arabia at its January Future Minerals Forum, remain a mystery. We couldn’t find any publicly available information about 22 of the 35 partnerships of which we’re aware.
Some partnerships are backed up by a specific authority’s legislative framework, such as those in the EU—although there is still much to improve there in terms of transparency and civil society input—while others are backed by a consortium of countries. Some are agreed with one supplying partner, others with several. Some supplying partners participate in multiple concurrent partnerships, with little clarity over whether or how the relationships interact. The documents we’ve seen are not legally binding, and the relationship between these partnerships and existing trade agreements are unclear. The extent to which the agreements align with supplying partners’ mining or industrial policy frameworks is also largely unknown.