An African nation emerging from decades of conflict and corruption holds the key to greening the global economy.
That’s the view of mining magnate Robert Friedland, whose Kamoa-Kakula venture just started producing copper in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
After scouring 59 countries over more than three decades, the Canadian billionaire says Congo has the world’s best deposits of the metal used in everything from electric cars to solar panels and power grids.
Governments and companies are embracing electrification to wean the world off fossil fuels, but shortages of metals loom as a major bottleneck unless miners can crank up output at an unprecedented rate. Congolese deposits are taking the spotlight as growth in top supplier Chile slows amid deteriorating ore quality and huge investment burdens.
“If we came from Mars and we were sent in our flying saucer to orbit the Earth to find copper, we would definitely go to Katanga in the southern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as the richest place on the planet for copper,” Friedland said in an interview.
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