Japan has secured deals with five African countries in a move aimed at mitigating Tokyo’s reliance on China for critical minerals, which comes as strategic competition between Western allies and China for access to key raw materials used in high-tech industry heats up.
Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, accompanied by Ichiro Takahara, Chairman and CEO of Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security (JOGMEC), has recently spent a week visiting five countries in southern Africa, namely Namibia, DRC, Angola, Zambia, and Madagascar. Nishimura’s Africa tour was touted as aiming to secure access to important minerals including rare earths, cobalt, lithium, and nickel.
During the trip, the minister concluded a series of agreements with the five African states to explore and extract minerals that are critical to Japan’s high-tech industry.
In Namibia, Nishimura and Takahara signed an agreement to explore deposits of rare earth minerals. In Angola, a joint agreement was signed aimed at advancing cooperation in the fields of trade and investment and supporting opportunities for Angolan and Japanese companies. The Japanese delegation has also signed agreements aimed at mineral exploration in the DRC, a country “endowed with cobalt, lithium, copper, etc, which are expected to see rapid growth in demand in the future as key materials for electric vehicles,” JOGMEC notes.
Source : North Africa Post