Stranger Things…. ❓

Parting with money is causing utter confusion among cobalt exporters in the DRC

🤷‍♂️ The Congolese Chamber of Mines — a major association of the country's mining companies — is complaining about ambiguities in the new quota system that the country introduced in October for cobalt exports.

💸 The main source of bewilderment for cobalt producers is the requirement to pre-pay a portion of royalties, which the new rules supposedly oblige them to do under the oversight of the regulator ARECOMS.

📉 However, the logic of the move is perfectly clear: after a February–October export ban, global prices jumped, and Kinshasa now wants to skim off as much revenue as possible. If royalties were collected the usual way — after shipment to Chine which takes 2-3 months — record prices might already fall by then.

💬 Naturally, exporters would prefer to pay taxes and duties based on lower prices at the moment of delivery — but Tshisekedi’s team also knows what it’s doing and will take its share while prices are high.

Exporters will not resist for long. After all, 10% of royalties is not the kind of sum worth suffering losses from a complete halt in sales.

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🛢 Nigeria’s Black Friday

The Nigerian government is rushing to hand out oil concessions for nothing

🛒 Nigeria's oil regulator NURPC reduced the signature bonus for bidders in the oil licensing round to $3–7 million. The bidding process for 50 licenses was launched in London on 1 December.

A signature bonus is a non-refundable payment made by a contractor to the government when a petroleum agreement is signed. Firms awarded oil or gas assets are expected to pay this bonus to the government.

💵 The bonus was already reduced last year — from $200 million down to $7–10 million. Now Nigeria's government has apparently judged that oil companies are too poor to pay even that. Maybe it should consider paying Shell and Chevron itself.

⏩ Selling off as much oil as possible has become an idée fixe in Abuja. In 2025 the country exceeded its OPEC quota 3 times, while government officials boasted of producing 1.8 million barrels per day and demanded higher limits.

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New Get-Rich-Quick Scheme of Côte d’Ivoire

At the very moment when strange boys in helmets were staging a coup-theatre performance in Benin, Côte d’Ivoire managed to establish a lucrative gas alliance with Benin and Togo

🇧🇯🇹🇬 Benin and Togo have agreed to join forces with Côte d’Ivoire and create, with World Bank support, a regional gas alliance. The main goal is to secure supplies to Togo and Benin, where electricity generation depends heavily on gas.

✌ The ultimate winner here is Côte d’Ivoire: it is the only one of the 3 that has its own gas production and will serve as an entry point for international gas imports — one of the aims of the initiative is joining markets to bargain with international commodity traders.

🇳🇬 At the moment, Benin and Togo receive gas through the West African Gas Pipeline, which carries gas from Nigeria to Benin, Togo, and Ghana. The reliability of WAGP supplies has been in question for years: there have been breakdowns, pirate activity, and persistent supply issues within Nigeria itself.

🔸 As a result, the Ivorian oil and gas players win a jackpot - they will expand the gas sales and earn on gas transition, through which the World Bank's funds will also flow into the pockets of gas importers.

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Trump Seems to Have Found the Map of Africa 🗺

After signing the deal with the DRC and taking aim at Tanzania, the US has now set its sights on Zambia.

🗽 An American delegation arrived in Zambia to promise President Hakainde Hichilema financial support in exchange for reforms and “collaboration in the mining sector”. According to reports, the financial assistance will also be directed toward social needs.

🤝 It is clear what kind of cooperation Washington wants from Zambia: the country has huge copper-mining operations and reserves, but the sector is crowded with Chinese companies, which also recently secured an official concession to modernise the TAZARA railway linking Zambia’s deposits with ports on the Indian Ocean.

💰 As usual, Zambia will receive American "financial aid" only after meeting criteria set by Washington. Given that the Chinese typically offer investments and financing with almost no conditions, this offer may be considered to be not worth the effort .

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Enigmatic Noises from Zimbabwe 🌟

Analysts are puzzling over the reshuffle in one of Zimbabwe’s most important ministries

🌐 On 8 December, President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa unexpectedly replaced the country’s top mining official — now former minister Winston Chitando — with his former deputy, Polite Kambamura.

📄 Since the government didn't bothered to explain, people are reading the move from opposite angles: either Chitando was caught in corruption or failing to meet targets, or, on the contrary, he stood in the way of the president’s family members enriching themselves through mines.

🗳 A third version is political — that he did not show enough enthusiasm in supporting the planned extension of Mnangagwa’s presidency to 2030.

⚙️ The most plausible explanation is that Chitando obstructed some murky deals — although this does not necessarily imply the Mnangagwa family/ It may simply have been a desire to indulge "investors" in general.

❓ The corruption/ineffectiveness version seems unlikely, given that his ministry’s policies clearly aimed at local processing of ore (especially lithium) and at raising gold royalties. While the idea that he was removed for insufficient political zeal seems hardly relevant to the role of a mining minister.

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Nationalising Ambition

Senegal has announced the nationalisation of a project that is yet to be built

🌐 Senegal’s minister of energy declared plans to nationalise the Yakaar-Teranga gas field — one of the largest in the world — which is currently owned by the American company Kosmos Energy.

⛽️ The project in question is still on paper. The field was discovered in 2016, but construction has never effectively started, and in July 2026 Kosmos’s current licence will anyway simply expire. In practice, nothing has been built at the site.

⚔️ A dispute on the future use of its gas has been the main obstacle. The government constantly reiterates its desire to see the project as the main source of gas for domestic industry — Senegal recently announced plans to to create a domestic supply system. Meanwhile, license holders want higher revenues in foreign currency. In 2023 this dispute even made BP leave the project.

🔸 The government itself takes up a serious challenge: even if production does begin, the temptation to sell gas abroad for hard currency and thereby mitigate inefficiencies of economic policy will always be strong.

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How to Earn on Geopolitics 🤝

True entrepreneurs never miss a chance to profit from someone's national interests

🇺🇸 US lawmakers accuse the State Department of advancing China’s economic agenda. Representative John Moolenaar, Chairman of the Select Committee on China, criticised Secretary of State Rubio for supporting the bid of the American company Ivanhoe Atlantic to gain control over the Yekepa–Buchanan railway in Liberia.

🌟 Suddenly it "turned out" that the company (called Ivanhoe Atlantic, once again) is linked to another mining company, Ivanhoe Mines — through its head, Robert Friedland, who, as if by surprise, is the founder of and one of the chairs in both firms. Ivanhoe Mines, in turn, is at least 33% owned by the Chinese — Zijin Mining and the state-owned CITIC — and operates copper projects in southern DRC.

🗽 Remarkably, while one third of one of Friedland’s assets is held by the Chinese, Ivanhoe Atlantic sells its projects to general public as a way to reduce China’s control over critical minerals in West Africa.

🔸 For years such schemes — telling everyone you are defending their interests while collecting money from all sides — could work. But Washington and Brussels are now increasingly suspicious of any form of Chinese involvement, even if the Chinese were merely breathing air somewhere near the project.

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Money: Connecting People 🫂

Sudan, South Sudan and the RSF have united to preserve their oil assets

🌐 The anti-government RSF handed over the Heglig oilfield on the Sudanese-Sudanese border to the South Sudanese army — all to prevent a key asset from falling into ruin.

💋 Sudan, South Sudan and the RSF may love or hate each other as much as they like, but they all share one important thing: a poor region dependent on oil exports. So, the 8 December capture by the RSF of the Heglig oilfield on the border between the two official Sudans inevitably triggered negotiations between all 3 sides, unwilling to lose the infrastructure.

🛢 The field is most important for South Sudan who sends a lion's share of its exports through Heglig. When the engineers were switching everything off ahead of the RSF’s arrival, South Sudan had already stepped in, launched talks and secured the control of Heglig in exchange for neutrality.

🔸 But preserving the infrastructure does not mean preserving the status quo. It is likely that the RSF’s withdrawal was contingent on a share of the oil profits — a new source of funding for their operations, while the Sudanese government, in turn, loses one.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow