Africa is a key mining destination for a range of critical minerals across the energy transition supply chain. However, the majority of these minerals are exported for processing outside of the region. Most notably, Africa is the largest source of mined cobalt, where the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the subject of a previous Regional Spotlight, is the world’s leading supplier. The continent also leads global supply of mined manganese ore; it was responsible for three quarters of this in 2025.

Hakainde Hichilema was declared president-elect of Zambia on 18 August. Hichilema was re-elected after securing nearly 3 million votes, more than 1.1 million votes ahead of his opponent, Brian Mundubile of the NRPUP, and comfortably above the 50% threshold required to avoid a run-off. "The result is expected to deliver policy and geopolitical continuity, including the continuation of the beneficiation agenda set out in Zambia's 2024 critical minerals strategy," said Benchmark's lead policy and geopolitical analyst Bryan Bille. Copper is a crucial export for Zambia, accounting for around three-quarters of the total value of the country’s exports. Mined production in 2026 is estimated at 901kt, a healthy growth of 11% over last year, as assessed by Benchmark’s Copper Service. The Zambian government is aiming to increase output to 3Mtpa by 2031.

Producers in Qinghai's Qaidam Basin have sharply lifted how much lithium they recover from brine, yet the province's output is not increasing as a result. The disconnect points to feedstock and water, rather than technology, as the real bottlenecks on China's largest lithium-brine region. Benchmark visited the basin in August, allowing us to verify our China salt-lake forecast against the work of producers on the ground.

The greater deployment of drones is having a profound impact on the modern battlefield and has put the geopolitics of the battery supply chain into a new spotlight. In 2025, drones accounted for 39.2% of defence demand for batteries, according to Benchmark. This is up from just 20% in 2020. Soldier power and bases are the two next largest drivers of defence demand for batteries. "Drones have clearly risen to be the most influential aspect of modern military battery demand,” said Will Roberts, Benchmark’s automotive research lead.  “Major militaries are still just getting started in their strategic investments relating to them which is about to set off a flurry of activity to domesticate supply chains, something which is getting significant attention from major battery manufacturers and new entrants alike."