Opinion: why South Africa must guard its own cobalt future with smart export rules

As the Democratic Republic of Congo moved from an outright cobalt export ban toward a quota system in September 2025, an opinion piece published by Mining Review Africa on 23 September argued that South Africa should take note — and build similar safeguards into its own critical minerals policy before it develops meaningful cobalt production of its own.

The argument

The piece pointed to South Africa's Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, under Minister Gwede Mantashe, and its emerging critical minerals strategy, which introduces what the article described as a "balanced export strategy" aimed at limiting the unrestrained export of unprocessed minerals such as cobalt. The core argument: South Africa holds only modest known cobalt resources today, largely as a by-product of other base-metal mining, but demand for battery metals is rising fast enough that any future discoveries or expansions should be developed with beneficiation and export discipline built in from the start, rather than retrofitted after the fact as Congo has had to do.

The comparison to the DRC was explicit and cautionary. Congo's cobalt export ban and subsequent quota system were, in this reading, a reactive scramble to correct years of unmanaged, unprocessed mineral exports that left the state with limited leverage over pricing and little domestic refining capacity to show for decades of production. South Africa, the argument went, has the chance to design smarter export rules before it faces the same problem at scale.

Why it matters

The piece reflects a wider mood shift across mineral-rich African states in 2025 and 2026, as governments watched Congo's experiment with export controls and began asking whether similar tools — export permits tied to local beneficiation, or quotas that reward domestic processing — could help them capture more value from their own deposits rather than exporting raw ore or concentrate. South Africa's own cobalt endowment remains small next to Congo's, but its broader critical minerals strategy, of which cobalt is one strand, signals a policy direction shared increasingly across the region.

For an industry watching Kinshasa improvise its way through export bans, royalty disputes and a strategic reserve, the piece's underlying message was that reactive policymaking carries real costs — in lost revenue, damaged investor confidence and market disruption — that a more deliberate framework could avoid.

What happens next

South Africa's critical minerals strategy remained a work in progress at the time of writing, with the specific mechanics of any cobalt export rules yet to be finalised or tested against an actual mine development.

Sources

• Mining Review Africa: Why South Africa must guard its cobalt future with smart export rules, 23 Sept 2025