Competitive Globalization and Quest for Strategic Minerals: DRCs Cobalt at the Heart of New Global Stakes, towards the Resource,s Trap ?

This paper aims to explain why the rise of "competitive globalization" in the quest for so-called strategic minerals, to take a specific look at the new global stakes of the energy transition, affecting the automotive sector, and to elucidate the risk for DRC, with its cobalt, of falling into the "resource’s trap". At this beginning of the twenty-first century, the control and supply of so-called strategic minerals continues to be a major stake of various global actors. Until further notice, these minerals are essential for the projection’s realization of a more sophisticated and ecological world to come. The rise of a “competitive globalization” is thus observed around these minerals. As for the energy transition’s stakes, affecting the automotive sector, thus in transformation, cobalt — a mineral that DRC possesses in quasi-absolute advantage — is well hooked as "strategic food" in the productive chain of lithium-ion batteries — until proven otherwise, an indispensable PHEVs’ component. DRC's cobalt is thus at the heart of new global stakes of the energy transition, and in this manner attracts the various global actors in its vicinity. A ruthless competition is in this way shaping up around this strategic mineral [cobalt]. A competition that still projects itself as virulent with the rise of "conservatives-progressives’ competition". This presents itself not only as an opportunity for DRC to accumulate more revenues and rethink its industrialization process — favorable for its sustainable development, but also as a risk for it to fall once again into the "resource’s trap". On this, DRC's better survival will thus depend on the effectiveness of its “internal balance” vis-à-vis various global actors