Is Partnership the Real Barrier in African Minerals?
Securing Africa's critical minerals is a raw test of strategy and nerve. © Under Licence: RTK Graphica
❮ VSG News
OPINION
Why billion-dollar deals stall—and the one capability that gets them moving again.
★ Article by Arno Saffran, Mon 17 Nov, 2025How Europe keeps losing the race for Africa’s resources—and the one kind of operator who can still change the outcome.
Across the critical minerals landscape, a peculiar standoff has emerged—one that has less to do with ore grades or capital costs than with a profound mismatch in how each side understands the game. Europe believes it’s negotiating supply chains. Namibia and Zambia believe they’re negotiating sovereignty. The result is paralysis disguised as diplomacy.
European executives arrive with procurement logic: derisk, diversify, and satisfy regulators alarmed by an overreliance on China. Their proposals look like the product of a well-behaved bureaucracy—due diligence binders, ESG frameworks, governance committees. It’s an offer built for auditors.
Their African counterparts are playing on an entirely different board. After decades of exporting raw minerals and watching the value added elsewhere, they want what they’ve never been given: a seat in the industrial future. Not just revenue streams, but metallurgy, fabrication, and manufacturing. In short: leverage.
When these two worldviews collide, the meeting ends with polite statements and no actual progress. And in the meantime, China continues to build, invest, and embed itself in the political and economic fabric of the region.
Why the Western Playbook Keeps Failing
I’ve watched this gridlock become the defining feature of the sector. Early in my career, I learned how to sell high-level strategy to large institutions—how to build a long-term vision that feels inevitable on paper. But later, I learned what vision looks like once it hits the ground.
…It looks like a map that bears no resemblance to the territory.
The formal organisational chart rarely reveals the true architecture of influence. A partner's contractual mandate is one thing; their ability to convene the right stakeholders in an informal setting is what truly determines momentum.
This is the structural blind spot that sinks Western projects. Not financing gaps. Not technical uncertainty. A total misreading of the human and political architecture through which things actually get done.
It’s the no-man’s-land between the ceremonial signing ceremony and the moment a facility actually switches on.
The Only Operator With a Chance
Breaking this stalemate won’t come from another communique on critical minerals cooperation. Western governments have issued enough. It will come from one type of commercial actor—one that most major corporations lack and few governments even know how to identify.
Not a diplomat. Not a consultant. A genuine deal-maker.
This kind of operator has three crucial capabilities:
They translate political risk into competitive strategy. They can explain to a European CEO that local manufacturing isn’t a concession, that it’s the only durable advantage against China’s entrenched presence. Then they can go to a ministry and outline an industrial plan grounded in what can be executed immediately, not what looks good in a press release.
They broker the terms that never appear on paper. Not because of access, but because both sides trust them to communicate the real red lines: what’s negotiable, what isn’t, and what conditions must quietly be met before anything meaningful proceeds.
They treat implementation as the real battlefield. They understand that the decisive element is not the contract, but the person empowered to deliver it. Without the right operator on the ground—someone who can navigate shifting alliances and informal structures—the agreement will collapse under its own paperwork.
Europe Doesn’t Need Better Strategy. It Needs Better Operators.
The companies and governments that succeed in Africa’s mineral future won’t be the ones with the cleanest governance frameworks. They’ll be the ones willing to empower the individuals capable of turning geopolitical aspiration into practical reality.
Because the bottleneck isn’t political will. It’s the lack of operators who can execute.
Europe and Africa will eventually reach deals. The question is whether Europe will still be a relevant player by the time it learns the lesson China internalised years ago: in the end, outcomes are delivered by people, not by policy.
How relevant and useful is this article for you?
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ 21
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
— Arno Saffran
Arno developed his approach through roles in client development (KPMG) and strategic commercial engagement (affiliated with advisories including Hakluyt), focusing on complex industrial and energy sectors.
VSG works across the extractive value chain, positioning people who form the critical bridge to early-stage relationships and commercial access in complex markets.
