Reality intervenes in US race for critical minerals
Guinea has critical minerals the Trump regime wants. But getting them threatens a World Heritage Site.
Josef Skrdlik and Oliver Dunn in Conakry
The United States hosted more than 50 countries for a critical minerals summit on Thursday. The conference appears to have been prompted by an increasing realisation that the US lacks control over supply chains for metals that power its technology, defence, and energy industries.
“One day we woke up and we realised we had outsourced our economic security and our very future,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who hosted the summit.
The US proposed establishing a new trading bloc, guaranteeing minimum prices for critical minerals. According to Vice-President JD Vance, minimum prices would unlock private investment in mining and refining projects, as “sustained price weakness makes financing impossible”.
However, by the summit’s end, the US seemed even further from the control it desires – at least within the borders of Guinea, one of the seven African countries invited.
US designs on Guinea’s metals are encapsulated in the so-called Liberty Corridor, an infrastructure system aiming to connect a rich iron deposit in the country’s southeast to a deepwater port in Liberia. It remains nowhere near realisation. Ivanhoe Atlantic, the company developing the deposit, is yet to receive a mining permit from Guinean authorities.
On Thursday Ivanhoe Atlantic chief executive Brownyn Barnes resigned, an indicator that permission to proceed in Guinea might be severely delayed – or even denied.
One of the project’s major problems is its apparent incompatibility with preserving the adjacent Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve. This Unesco World Heritage Site is home to endangered chimpanzees and dozens of endemic species.