Kenya and Zambia Made It Into Washington's Critical Minerals Summit. Why Was Tanzania Not in the Room?

What the Ministerial Actually Was The 2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial was the culmination of a diplomatic and financial offensive that the Trump administration has been building since taking office, accelerating a supply chain restructuring agenda that the Biden administration initiated through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Minerals Security Partnership but that the current administration has pursued with substantially greater urgency, larger capital commitments, and more explicit geopolitical framing. The official fact sheet describes the goal in direct terms: to reshape the global market for critical minerals and rare earths, building new sources of supply, fostering secure transport and logistics networks, and transforming the market into one that is secure, diversified, and resilient end to end. The target of this restructuring is explicitly China's dominance of critical minerals processing, which the fact sheet describes as making the market a tool of political coercion and supply chain disruption. The US is not attempting to reduce China's role incrementally. It is attempting to build a parallel supply chain architecture that operates independently of Chinese processing capacity across the full value chain from mine to manufactured product. The financial commitments announced around the ministerial are substantial enough to constitute a structural intervention rather than a policy signal. The Export-Import Bank approved a USD 10 billion direct loan for Project Vault, described as establishing a domestic strategic reserve for critical minerals and more than double the largest financing in EXIM's history. The DFC has invested in and is exploring more than a billion dollars in new mineral exploration deals. The Department of Energy Loan Programs Office has supported projects including a USD 2.3 billion loan for Lithium Americas' Nevada lithium project, USD 996 million for Ioneer's lithium project, and USD 475 million for Glencore battery recycling. The Department of Defense has committed equity and debt to multiple strategic projects. The aggregate US government mobilisation in critical minerals financing over six months preceding the ministerial exceeded USD 30 billion, with private capital leverage multiplying the effective deployment several times beyond that. The launch of FORGE, the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement, as the successor to the Minerals Security Partnership is the institutional signal. The MSP was a coordination mechanism. FORGE is described as leading with bold and decisive action, chaired initially by South Korea, and operating at both policy and project levels. The name change from Partnership to Forum, and from Security to Geostrategic Engagement, reflects the explicit recognition that critical minerals are a geopolitical competition rather than a supply chain management challenge. The Coverage Region's Presence and Absence The ministerial attendance list is the most analytically significant document that has emerged from the event for Uchumi360's purposes, and it deserves careful reading. From the immediate Uchumi360 coverage region, Kenya and Zambia attended. The DRC attended. Angola attended. These are the countries whose mineral endowments, governance relationships, and existing US engagement made their inclusion logical and their delegations consequential. Tanzania was not on the attendance list. Uganda was not. Rwanda was not. Burundi, Malawi, and Mozambique were not. Of the nine countries in Uchumi360's primary coverage geography, four were present and five were absent. The significance of attendance versus absence at an event of this diplomatic weight is not ceremonial. It is commercial and strategic. The bilateral frameworks and MOUs that the US signed with eleven countries on a single day were the product of pre-ministerial engagement and negotiation. Countries that were in the room were countries with whom the US had already developed a sufficient relationship and a sufficiently articulated minerals engagement to formalise. Countries that were absent were countries with whom that engagement either does not yet exist at the required level or was not sufficiently advanced to result in a signed framework. For Tanzania specifically, the absence is analytically notable given the country's critical minerals endowment. Tanzania holds significant graphite, lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earth resources across multiple geological belts that Uchumi360 has documented in detail. The STAMICO exploration portfolio includes deposits across the battery minerals spectrum that are precisely the supply chain diversification assets that the US government is deploying USD 30 billion to secure. The Panda Hill niobium deal, signed with a US-backed investor in Mbeya, demonstrates that US capital is present in Tanzania's minerals sector at the project level. The absence of Tanzania from the ministerial attendance list suggests that the sovereign-level diplomatic framework that would give that project-level engagement strategic coherence has not yet been established. The DRC MOU: What Glencore and the US Government Just Agreed The most immediately consequential development for the Uchumi360 coverage region from the ministerial week is the MOU signed between Glencore and the US-backed Orion Critical Mineral Consortium on February 3rd, the day before the ministerial, witnessed by Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell. The MOU relates to a potential acquisition of assets in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with the explicit objective of encouraging greater US investment in the DRC's mining sector and promoting secure, reliable, and mutually beneficial flows of copper and cobalt to the United States from the DRC. This is the US government using its diplomatic presence and its development finance backing to facilitate a specific commercial transaction that redirects DRC mineral flows toward US supply chains. Glencore is one of the world's largest commodity traders and mining companies, with substantial existing assets in the DRC's Katanga Copperbelt including the Mutanda and Kamoto copper and cobalt operations. The Orion Critical Minerals Consortium, backed by USD 600 million from the DFC which has mobilised an additional USD 1.2 billion in non-government funding, represents the US government's most direct investment vehicle for securing critical mineral supply chains in partner countries. The significance of the Glencore MOU extends beyond the specific assets involved. It signals that the US government is prepared to use its diplomatic relationship with the DRC, its development finance capacity, and its partnership with leading international mining companies to actively reshape the ownership structure of DRC mineral assets in ways that redirect supply away from Chinese-dominated processing chains and toward US and allied country supply chains. This is supply chain competition conducted at the level of asset ownership rather than simply trade policy, and it represents a qualitatively different level of US engagement with African mining than anything the previous administration deployed. For the DRC government, the Glencore MOU arrives alongside the DRC's attendance at the ministerial and its existing positioning within the US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement. The DRC is being courted by the US as the anchor of its Congo Basin critical minerals strategy in the same period that Chinese companies hold dominant positions in its Katanga Copperbelt operations. The DRC government's ability to manage these competing relationships, extracting maximum value from US strategic interest without undermining the Chinese investment relationships that currently fund a substantial proportion of its mining sector, is the geopolitical balancing act that will define its minerals strategy for the next decade. What FORGE Means for African Mineral Producers The transition from the Minerals Security Partnership to FORGE, the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement, is not purely a rebranding exercise. The MSP was established under the Biden administration with a mandate focused on supply chain security and sustainability standards. FORGE, under the Trump administration, reflects a more explicitly competitive and less multilaterally restrained approach to critical minerals diplomacy. The practical implications for African mineral producers are in the structure of engagement that FORGE facilitates. MSP membership came with sustainability conditionalities, environmental governance requirements, and social standards that some African governments found burdensome relative to the commercial terms available from Chinese investors. FORGE's framing around bold and decisive action and its America First values orientation suggests a less conditionality-heavy approach that may be more commercially attractive to African governments seeking to attract US investment without the governance requirements that multilateral frameworks typically attach. This creates a specific and potentially significant shift in the competitive dynamics between US and Chinese capital for African mineral assets. If FORGE offers US-backed investment without the governance conditionalities of the MSP framework, while Chinese investment continues to offer capital without governance requirements, the differentiation between the two competitors narrows in ways that could accelerate the pace of US engagement with African mineral producers but potentially reduce the governance improvement spillovers that conditionality-linked investment produces. For Zambia, whose ministerial attendance signals an active engagement with the US critical minerals framework, the FORGE transition is an opportunity to negotiate bilateral terms that reflect Zambia's current fiscal position and its need for capital that can be deployed rapidly into its copper production expansion programme. Zambia's target of tripling copper production to 3 million metric tons annually by 2031 requires investment capital at a scale and speed that no single bilateral partner can provide, and US engagement through FORGE creates a complementary financing option alongside the African Development Bank's support and the Chinese capital that has historically dominated Zambia's Copperbelt investment. For Kenya, whose attendance at the ministerial reflects its positioning as East Africa's most institutionally developed economy and the regional anchor for US commercial and diplomatic engagement, FORGE membership creates a framework for the kind of US government-backed investment in Kenya's nascent critical minerals sector and its position as a regional logistics and services hub for mineral supply chains that its existing relationship with the US Development Finance Corporation has laid the groundwork for. The US Definition of Critical and What It Means for the Region The USGS definition of critical minerals, established by the Energy Act of 2020, is precise and consequential: minerals essential to the economic or national security of the United States, with supply chains vulnerable to disruption, serving essential functions in manufacturing whose absence would have significant consequences for US economic or national security. The 2025 USGS critical minerals list includes 50 specific minerals and elements, among them cobalt, copper, graphite, lithium, nickel, niobium, rare earth elements including the lanthanides, tantalum, and titanium. Every one of these minerals is present in commercially significant quantities in the Uchumi360 coverage region. The DRC's cobalt and copper, Tanzania's graphite and lithium and niobium, Zambia's copper, Rwanda's tantalum, Uganda's rare earth potential, and Mozambique's graphite are all on the US government's list of minerals whose supply security it is deploying USD 30 billion to ensure. The USGS definition includes the explicit acknowledgement that mineral criticality is not static but changes over time as supply and demand dynamics evolve. This has a specific implication for how African mineral producers should engage with the US framework. A mineral that is not currently on the critical list, or that is on the list at a lower priority level, may become more critical as technology evolves. The minerals that are central to AI computing infrastructure, to autonomous systems, to quantum computing, and to the next generation of defence technologies are not yet fully defined. African governments that build the institutional and diplomatic relationships required for critical minerals frameworks now are positioning themselves for engagement across the full evolving list, not just the current version. The Environmental and Social Dimension the Ministerial Did Not Emphasise The World Resources Institute analysis of critical minerals provides a necessary counterweight to the supply chain security framing that dominated the ministerial. Global mining already represents approximately 8 percent of the world's carbon footprint. Sixteen percent of critical mineral mines and deposits are in highly water-stressed areas. Between 2001 and 2020, mining drove the loss of nearly 1.4 million hectares of forest globally. In the DRC, 40,000 children are engaged in small-scale cobalt and copper mining, some as young as six years old. These are not peripheral concerns for the coverage region's governments negotiating mineral frameworks with the US. They are the conditions under which the mining sector operates, and they are increasingly the conditions on which the premium pricing that responsible sourcing commands in end markets depends. As the WRI analysis notes, large buyers including governments and companies are increasingly committing to green procurement that specifies responsible sourcing standards. The EU's Conflict Minerals Regulation already requires conflict-free sourcing documentation for gold, tin, tungsten, and tantalum. Equivalent requirements are likely to extend to battery minerals as the regulatory environment evolves. For Tanzania, whose Panda Hill niobium project and STAMICO exploration partnerships are now entering a period of active development, the social and environmental governance of those projects will determine their eligibility for the premium market access and the development finance support that US-aligned investment frameworks provide. Getting the governance architecture right at the project level is not separate from the strategic mineral diplomacy question. It is the precondition for that diplomacy to generate the commercial outcomes that Tanzania's minerals strategy requires. What the Coverage Region Needs to Do Now The 2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial created a specific and time-limited opportunity for African mineral producers to formalise their engagement with the US government's supply chain restructuring agenda. The bilateral frameworks and MOUs that were signed on February 4th were the product of months of pre-ministerial diplomatic preparation. The countries that were not in the room are not excluded from future frameworks, but they are behind in the queue. For Tanzania, the most urgent priority is establishing the sovereign-level diplomatic engagement with the US State Department and the DFC that would make a bilateral critical minerals framework possible. Tanzania has the mineral endowment. It has a US-backed project in Panda Hill. It has the institutional stability that the US government cites as a precondition for investment. What it has not yet done is convert those assets into the kind of formal diplomatic framework that gives US government financing agencies the legal and political architecture they need to deploy capital at scale. For Uganda, whose EACOP oil production and Albertine Basin rare earth potential give it a dual position in the energy and critical minerals conversations, the ministerial absence reflects a diplomatic engagement gap that the FORGE framework's launch creates an opportunity to close. Uganda's minerals sector governance, which has faced investor confidence challenges related to regulatory predictability, is the constraint that a US framework engagement would need to address as a precondition for the financing access that FORGE membership would enable. For Rwanda, whose tantalum production and institutional governance quality make it a natural candidate for US framework engagement, the ministerial absence is the most puzzling given its established relationships with US development finance and its positioning as a governance benchmark across multiple sectors. The window created by the ministerial is not permanent. Supply chain agreements, once signed, create commercial relationships and infrastructure dependencies that are difficult to displace. The countries that formalise their engagement with the US critical minerals framework in 2026 will be better positioned to attract the US-backed capital, technology transfer, and market access that the framework provides than those that formalise it in 2028 when the initial infrastructure and offtake commitments have already been made with earlier partners. The Bottom Line The 2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial was the most consequential single diplomatic event in the restructuring of global critical minerals supply chains since China imposed rare earth export restrictions in 2010. The US government is deploying USD 30 billion in financing, the institutional architecture of FORGE, and the diplomatic weight of its most senior officials to build a supply chain system that operates independently of Chinese processing dominance. For the Uchumi360 coverage region, the ministerial's significance is in the specific: Kenya and Zambia and the DRC were in the room. Tanzania and Uganda and Rwanda were not. Glencore and the US government signed an MOU for DRC copper and cobalt assets the day before the event. The bilateral frameworks that determine which countries' minerals flow into the US-aligned supply chain architecture are being negotiated now. African governments that treat this moment as an opportunity to build formal diplomatic and financing frameworks with the US while simultaneously maintaining the Chinese investment relationships that fund their current mining sector are navigating a geopolitical balance that is genuinely difficult. The countries that navigate it most effectively, securing US framework access without triggering the Chinese investment withdrawal that would leave capital gaps in their mining sectors, will be the countries best positioned to capture value from both sides of the supply chain competition. That navigation requires diplomatic sophistication, institutional capacity, and mineral sector governance quality that not every country in the coverage region currently demonstrates at the required level. Building those capabilities is not separate from the minerals strategy. It is the minerals strategy. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Sources: US Department of State 2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial Fact Sheet, February 4, 2026. US Geological Survey Critical Minerals Definition and 2025 List. World Resources Institute Critical Minerals Analysis, Serena Li and Ke Wang, October 2025. Export-Import Bank of the United States Project Vault Announcement, February 2026. US Development Finance Corporation Critical Minerals Portfolio Documentation. Department of Energy Loan Programs Office Critical Minerals Commitments. Glencore-Orion Critical Mineral Consortium MOU, February 3, 2026. FORGE Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement Launch Documentation. Minerals Security Partnership Historical Documentation. International Energy Agency Critical Minerals Demand Projections 2024. African Development Bank Critical Minerals Strategy 2024. Tanzania Investment and Special Economic Zones Authority Data 2025. ______________________________________________________________________________________ Uchi360 covers business, investment, and economic policy across East, Central, and Southern Africa.