For much of the twentieth century, oil defined global power. It shaped geopolitics, bankrolled industrialisation and determined which nations held strategic leverage over others. Wars were fought for it. Alliances were built around it. Economies rose and fell on access to it.
That dynamic has not disappeared. It has transferred.
Critical minerals are the new oil, and the race to secure them is already well underway.
The materials that will define the next century
Lithium, cobalt, graphite, manganese, rare earth elements, antimony, coltan and a handful of other materials sit at the foundation of every technology that will shape the coming decades. Energy storage, electric vehicles, advanced defence systems, semiconductors, renewable infrastructure, consumer electronics — none of it functions without these inputs. The IEA projects that demand for energy transition metals alone will surge fourfold by 2030. For some minerals, the supply gap is already visible on the horizon.
What makes this moment distinctive is not just the scale of demand. It is the concentration of supply. China currently leads refining capacity for 19 out of 20 key strategic minerals, processing around 90% of the world’s rare earth elements and controlling the majority of global cobalt, lithium and nickel processing. When Beijing restricted exports of gallium, germanium and antimony in late 2024, the tremors were felt immediately across semiconductor and defence supply chains in Europe and North America. This is not a theoretical risk. It is an active geopolitical instrument.
Britain, for its part, sources over 95% of its critical mineral inputs from abroad, most of them routed through intermediaries with no direct relationship to the upstream source. This is not merely an economic vulnerability. It is a strategic one.
The case for upstream engagement
Britain does not need to become a mining nation in the conventional sense. It does need to stop behaving as though secure supply will materialise without effort or investment.
The countries winning in this space — the United States, China, the UAE, India — share a common characteristic. They engage upstream. They build partnerships with resource-rich governments before the competition arrives. They deploy capital, expertise and political will in exchange for structured, long-term access. They treat critical mineral supply not as a procurement question but as a matter of industrial policy and national security.
The US trilateral agreement with the DRC and Zambia, structured around developing an integrated EV battery value chain from raw extraction through to manufacturing, is one of the clearest recent signals that Washington understands what is at stake. The EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act, the Australian-American rare earths partnership, China’s expanding FOCAC commitments — these are not coincidences. They are the architecture of the next resource economy being assembled in real time.
Britain’s response, by comparison, has been cautious to the point of passivity.
Why Africa is central to this story
Africa holds the most significant concentration of the minerals the world urgently needs. The Democratic Republic of Congo accounts for around 77% of global cobalt exports. The Central African Copperbelt, spanning the DRC and Zambia, is one of the most important industrial mineral corridors on earth. South Africa dominates global supply of platinum group metals, manganese and chromium. Guinea holds some of the world’s largest bauxite reserves. Zimbabwe, Mali and Mozambique are expanding rapidly as producers of lithium and graphite.
Critically, much of this potential remains underdeveloped. Infrastructure gaps, fragmented supply chains and limited access to international capital have historically constrained the translation of geological endowment into market-ready production. This is precisely where the opportunity lies for companies with the operational expertise, the local relationships and the capital discipline to close that gap.
There is also a geopolitical dimension that is increasingly difficult to ignore. Anti-Chinese sentiment is growing across parts of the continent. France’s influence in Francophone Africa is in structural decline. African governments are actively seeking to diversify their partnerships, to find counterparts who bring not just capital but genuine expertise, fair terms and a long-term commitment to shared development. The window for new partners to establish themselves is open, but it will not remain so indefinitely.
Antimony and coltan: the commodities most people are not watching closely enough
Two minerals deserve particular attention from those thinking seriously about the next phase of supply chain risk.
Antimony is used in defence applications including ammunition and night vision equipment, in flame retardants across construction and electronics, and increasingly in grid-scale energy storage through antimony-based battery technologies. China accounts for approximately half of global antimony production, and its 2024 export restrictions on the material sent immediate shockwaves through Western defence procurement. Alternative sources are limited and largely underdeveloped.
Coltan, from which tantalum is refined, is indispensable for the capacitors that sit inside virtually every smartphone, laptop and advanced electronic system manufactured globally. The DRC produces the majority of the world’s coltan supply, much of it through artisanal and small-scale operations that remain largely outside formal, traceable supply chains. Bringing this material into verified, compliant supply chains is both a commercial priority and an ethical one, and it represents a significant structural opportunity for platforms with the right operational approach.
These are not niche commodities. They are chokepoints in supply chains that governments and industries across the developed world are only now beginning to map properly.
The role of platforms like Azora
Securing access to critical minerals at scale requires more than financial capital. It requires operational depth, local knowledge, regulatory expertise and the ability to build trust with governments, communities and international buyers simultaneously. It requires a long-term orientation in environments where short-term thinking consistently fails.
Azora Resources is built around precisely this model. As a holding company managing a portfolio of mining and mineral assets across Africa, Azora brings together the capital discipline of an institutional investor with the operational capability of an on-the-ground operator. The company works directly with governments and local partners to develop assets responsibly, build traceability systems that satisfy international compliance requirements, and create supply chain infrastructure that connects African production to global markets in a structured, verifiable way.
This is not a passive investment thesis. It is an active one, built on the conviction that the companies that will define the critical minerals sector over the next decade are not those waiting for the resource landscape to stabilise, but those with the foresight, the relationships and the operational capability to shape it.
The strategic imperative
A Britain that secures diversified, direct access to critical minerals is a Britain that can reindustrialise with confidence. It is a Britain that can build out its defence manufacturing base, develop its clean energy infrastructure and maintain strategic autonomy in supply chains that will matter more with every passing year. The alternative is continued structural dependency — on Chinese processing, on fragmented intermediary chains and on the goodwill of trading partners whose interests do not always align with Britain’s own.
The era of passive consumption of critical resources is ending. The era of strategic supply has begun, and the positions being established today will determine who leads and who follows for a generation.
The question for British industry, British investors and British policymakers is a simple one: are you at the table, or on the menu?
This article forms part of Azora Resources’ ongoing commitment to sharing insight on critical minerals, responsible resource development and the role of Africa in global supply chains. Future pieces will explore supply security, upstream investment, government partnerships and the scaling of sustainable mining platforms.
About the Author
Daniel Seal is Executive Chairman of Azora Resources, a global resources and investment platform focused on building scalable, responsible supply chains across Africa and emerging markets.
