Congo’s move to impose export quotas on cobalt is shaking the global metal market, highlighting the hidden vulnerability in China’s supply chain.
The DRC has rewritten the rulebook in the battery market by imposing export quotas on cobalt, highlighting the dependence of China, the global metal powerhouse, on the rest of the world for its raw materials. While China dominates the global refined metal market with close to 80%, the reality is that China lacks indigenous supplies of the metal, making its industrial machine highly susceptible to the ebbs and flows of its national strategy in the DRC, its main source of the metal.
The situation had been escalating since the end of 2025, through 2026, after the DRC shifted its stance from an outright ban on the metal’s export to an export quota regime. For the export year 2026, Kinshasa set an export limit of 96,600 tonnes per year, half the maximum, with 10% allocated for strategic use by the state. Administrative issues had held the export permits in limbo towards the end of 2025, prompting Chinese refineries to rely on their home supplies, thereby pushing the price of refined cobalt from $10 per pound to over $25 per pound.
In the squeeze, the geopolitical manoeuvring over the DRC’s mineral wealth has been fast-paced. The United States has filled the power vacuum, supporting the Lobito Corridor, a rail connection to the Atlantic that bypasses Chinese-controlled supply lines. In securing first-refusal rights to new mineral projects for American consumers, the US is directly confronting Chinese dominance that had been entrenched in the region.
The restriction on cobalt is a stark reminder that Chinese dominance over the green energy revolution is not without its weaknesses. Chinese strength in processing is matched by a weakness in security that countries like the DRC are using to their advantage. As the market transitions into a structural deficit, the global race for critical minerals is no longer a competition of manufacturing capabilities but one of who will control the supply.
