For decades, African countries have exported vast quantities of valuable minerals in a raw, unprocessed form, only to later buy back the finished products made from them. Increasingly, this dynamic is seen as unacceptable if economies are going to grow.

“A situation in which the raw minerals are extracted from our countries, exported, refined, and sold to us as finished products merely consolidates the foundations of our misery and pushes us further down the depths of underdevelopment,” said Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu recently. “We must end the cycle of exporting rocks and importing finished goods.”

“African minerals must leave our ports as EV batteries, as electric cables and transformers, as finished aluminium parts, as rare earth magnets, and value-added products,” added Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama earlier this month.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Washington’s new approach to African minerals under Trump has been drawing accusations of exploitation and resource colonialism. “We’re getting, for the United States, a lot of the mineral rights from the Congo,” Trump said as he brokered a peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda. In Zambia, a draft deal that would have given US mining companies “preferential access” in return for continued funding for HIV treatment was described as “shameless exploitation”.

Is there a way of squaring these two positions to provide a path forward? Observers tell The Independent that they may indeed be closer than you might think.

Deals with Zambia and the DRC are among a growing tally of deals pushed by Trump for minerals from the continent, with others to be found in Nigeria, Rwanda, Guinea, Kenya, and elsewhere. They are one expression of Trump’s “America First” vision of international development: while the Kennedy-era US Agency for International Development (USAID) treated aid as a tool of goodwill and soft power, now it must deliver clear economic returns.

This mineral deal-making agenda has been criticised for its lack of transparency, limited congressional oversight, and the direct involvement by commodity traders and private firms in their design and oversight.

“What is strange about the Trump deals is that this is not how big Western multinationals do minerals: they have their own way of going into countries, assessing risks and financing mines,” suggests Olena Borodyna, from the London-based development think tank ODI Global. “Instead it seems much more to be about continuing a model we have seen throughout the second Trump administration of opportunities being offered to people and companies who are reportedly close to his government.”

At the same time, it would be wrong to assume that African negotiators will have the terms of these deals dictated to them. Recent years have seen a surge in calls for the continent’s vast mineral wealth to not be – as is the case right now – 96 per cent exported in an unprocessed form, but instead form the basis of an industrial pathway that could put countries on a footing to sustainable growth.

According to Dan Ford, from the Washington-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, it is hugely significant that Trump’s deals have come at a time when countries including Zimbabwe, the DRC, and – just last week – Ghana have introduced rules banning the export of unprocessed ore. These moves show how African governments are increasingly bullish when it comes to pushing for the best kind of foreign investment, says Ford.

“The US might be driven by great power competition and a feeling that it needs to catch up with China, which is long-established as a mineral player in Africa,” he says. “But African nations are now taking much more initiative in demanding local benefits than they have done in the past, and the US does not have the power it once had to just make countries give up their demands.”

In the DRC – which is considered to have the most established and comprehensive mineral deal – a Congolese-led committee is essentially listing mining sites and locations where US investment is most desired, says Ford, and is a clear example of how recipient nations are dictating terms far more than they have done in the past.

Ongoing negotiations over Kenya’s deal have specifically focused on establishing refineries and processing plants, according to reports. A senior US official has also said Washington is ready to help Kenya develop its domestic mineral processing industry.

British Robinson, chair of Africa for the pro-market economic think tank Milken Institute, believes that the minerals deals announced by Trump reflects a positive graduation from an aid-based model to one based on real, sustainable business partnerships.

“We are starting to look at African countries as equal partners, and that is a hugely positive development,” she says, speaking to The Independent at the recent London summit of the African Private Capital Association (AVCA). “Africa is not a charity case. These are the kinds of deals that Africa wants.”

Having worked in numerous development roles under previous US presidents – including leading Joe Biden-era efforts to strengthen trade and investment ties between the US and African countries, and also working on George W Bush’s President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) programme – Robinson describes the present moment under Trump as “super exciting”.

“We saved 26 million lives under PEPFAR. And this is about getting those people we saved 26 million jobs. And that’s what development should be about,” she says.

On the specific matter of how Africa should be trying to retain the value of minerals in its economies rather than exported ores, Robinson suggests that developing infrastructure will be key. “You cannot process or manufacture unless you have the road, the water, or the electricity… it’s not about one thing or another, it’s about the overall ecosystem of opportunity to invest in,” she says.

Not everybody is convinced that developing that ecosystem will be so easy.

“Mining companies cannot provide all the infrastructure that’s needed to get these projects off the ground, and there remain massive gaps around things like energy supplies, “says ODI’s Borodyna. “Mineral processing, we have to remember, is also a heavily loss-making business that is highly subsidised by China to maintain its grip over the supply chains”.

Borodyna adds that we should not fall into the trap of overplaying the hand of countries on the receiving end of Trump’s deals. “A lot of other countries including Canada and Australia also have huge deposits, and these would likely be considered less risky partners to invest in,” she says.

“Ultimately, Trump is interested in securing supplies of materials that underpin US manufacturing and reduce China dependencies and less in creating jobs in Africa,” she adds. “I think for now it remains to be seen whether a lot of these promised projects in Africa will actually get off the ground.”

For African countries, long used to seeing promises of partnership fail to deliver, the challenge will be to turn the US’s hunger for minerals into a genuine pathway to the industrialisation they have long been denied.

The US State Department has been approached for comment.

This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project