Expert: African Lithium Key to China’s Battery Supply Chain Dominance

With the global shift to electric vehicles (EVs) accelerating, China is cementing its dominance over the lithium supply chain by pouring investment into African mines, creating a new center of gravity for the battery metal.

Speaking at a recent industry conference, Claudia Cook of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence offered a sweeping assessment of how China is reshaping global lithium flows and why Africa will be crucial in the next decade.

Cook laid out in detail how China’s lithium strategy is evolving. As the world’s largest EV market, China needs a consistent, low-cost supply of lithium — but its domestic production is increasingly insufficient.

“China needs growing feedstock to supply its chemical demand,” Cook explained at Fastmarkets’ Lithium Supply & Battery Raw Materials event, “and Africa is of growing importance in fulfilling this gap.”

Between 2025 and 2035, lithium production across Africa is projected to increase by a staggering 127 percent, driven by new mines in Zimbabwe, Mali, Ethiopia and Namibia. Cook highlighted that against that backdrop Africa’s share of global lithium supply will surge from a small fraction today to around 80 percent by 2030.

The motivation for China is clear: the Asian nation cannot meet demand by tapping domestic sources alone. China’s hard-rock lithium supply has a growing deficit that will multiply fivefold by 2035.

“That deficit is growing and is said to be a five times increase from 2020 to 2035,” Cook said, pointing to forecasts of rising chemical demand from Chinese battery producers. As a result, Chinese firms have aggressively invested in African lithium projects, locking up supply in countries with looser regulatory controls and cheaper production costs.

In Zimbabwe and Mali, Chinese ownership of lithium mines is expected to remain significant, even if the share of Chinese-owned production in Africa declines modestly from 79 percent in 2025 to 65 percent by 2035.

“In 2025, African output is set to have 79 percent of it being China owned, and that percentage reduces down to 65 percent in 2035,” Cook stated, adding that overall output will still nearly double.

As a result, total Chinese-controlled volumes will keep rising.