DRC Expands Strategic Minerals List: Lithium and Rare Earths Officially Brought Under Regulation

The cabinet of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has reviewed and approved a draft decree submitted by the Ministry of Mines, revising and upgrading the national list of strategic minerals to align with changes in the global industrial chain and expand the scope of control over key minerals.

The country's 2018 decree designated only three types of strategic minerals: cobalt, germanium, and coltan. This new regulation adds six categories in one go—tantalum, niobium, tungsten, lithium, uranium, and rare earths—expanding the strategic minerals list to nine types.

The core logic behind this list expansion is to adapt to the resource demands of the global high-tech manufacturing and new energy industries: lithium is a core raw material for power batteries; rare earths are essential materials for high-end permanent magnets, precision electronics, and new energy equipment; and uranium supports the development of the nuclear energy industry. The global demand for these resources continues to rise.

Leveraging its resource endowments, the DRC is fully confident in including lithium as a strategic mineral. The Manono deposit within its territory ranks among the top three hard-rock lithium mines globally, with a total ore resource of 401 million tons, an average lithium oxide grade of 1.63%, a lithium carbonate equivalent of 16.32 million tons, and economically recoverable reserves of 5.36 million tons. Relying on high-quality lithium resource reserves, the country is further consolidating its potential for lithium raw material supply, in addition to its global cobalt supply. This also serves as an important basis for the local government's decision to raise the lithium mining royalty rate to 10% and tighten resource control.