The Africa Battery Metals Forum is a convening initiative that brings together DRC and Zambia government officials, mining operators, battery manufacturers, and international investors to discuss the conditions under which the Central African battery-metals corridor could supply a larger share of processed rather than raw mineral output to global battery supply chains.
Context
The DRC and Zambia share the Central African Copperbelt and together hold the majority of the world's cobalt reserves and a large portion of copper reserves. Both governments have expressed interest in capturing more processing value within their borders before copper and cobalt leave for Chinese or European refineries. The Forum provides a structured setting for those conversations with industry participants.
The Forum emerged partly in response to the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the DRC and Zambia in 2022, which committed both governments to exploring a joint battery-materials development corridor with ambitions to attract downstream investment in processing and eventually cathode manufacturing.
What participants discuss
Forum sessions typically cover: the policy and regulatory changes needed to attract refining investment; infrastructure requirements (power, roads, rail); downstream buyer demand signals; the Kamoa-Kakula smelter as a model for in-country value addition; and the terms under which IRA-qualifying supply chains and EU battery regulation-compliant supply chains could source more processed product from the DRC-Zambia corridor.
International development finance institutions — the US Development Finance Corporation, European Investment Bank, and African Development Bank — participate in Forum discussions as potential funders of corridor infrastructure.
Where it stands
As of 2026, the Forum has produced several joint statements and working group reports but has not resulted in concrete commitments of refining or cathode-production investment within the DRC at commercial scale. The Kamoa-Kakula smelter project, which was developed independently by Ivanhoe and Zijin rather than as a Forum output, is the most tangible near-term value-addition development in the corridor.
