Of the critical battery minerals, cobalt is the one which Africa captures the largest share of the upstream mining. Benchmark’s Cobalt Forecast shows that 75% of mined cobalt comes from the continent, with the vast majority of this coming from the DRC. Although Indonesian cobalt will eat into this market share, the region will maintain a strong 69% of the market in 2030.
Africa has rich flake graphite reserves, too, and is expected to grow production from 19% of global supply this year to 39% in 2030, according to Benchmark’s Natural Graphite Forecast.
In graphite, unlike cobalt and lithium, non-Chinese companies are the dominant investors on the continent.
Tirupati Graphite PLC (LON:TGR) is a fully integrated specialist graphite and graphene producer, with operations in Madagascar and India. The Company is delivering on this strategy by being fully integrated from mine to graphene. Its global multi-location operations include primary mining and processing in Madagascar, hi-tech graphite processing in India to produce specialty graphite, and a state-of-art graphene and technology R&D center to be established in India.