Zambia Critical Minerals: Copper, Cobalt & the 2031 Plan

• Zambia critical minerals strategy names eleven official minerals
• Copper output targets 3 million tonnes annually by 2031
• KoBold Metals breaks ground on $2.3bn Mingomba copper mine
• Lobito Corridor rail links Copperbelt directly to Atlantic coast
• Vedanta spins off Konkola Copper Mines into CopperTech Metals
• Cobalt sulfate refinery targeted to diversify battery supply chains

Zambia critical minerals policy has moved from ambition to active construction over the past year. Backed by its National Critical Minerals Strategy, produced with the British Geological Survey, the country is scaling up eleven designated minerals it considers essential to its own development and to the global clean energy transition, while courting the tech billionaires, Gulf sovereign funds, and Chinese state groups now competing for a stake in its geology.

Zambia Critical Minerals: The Official Eleven-Mineral List

The Zambian Ministry of Mines and Minerals Development, working with the BGS, has catalogued eleven minerals as critical to the country’s future: copper, cobalt, lithium, nickel, manganese, graphite, columbite-tantalite (coltan), rare earth elements, sugilite, tin, and uranium. Copper remains the anchor of the economy and the reason Zambia is Africa’s second-largest producer of the metal, but cobalt and lithium are drawing the fastest-growing interest as battery demand accelerates. For the rare earth elements on this list, CMN covers the Zambia angle in policy and supply-chain context; readers wanting REE-specific pricing, project, and company coverage should see Rare Earth Mining, the dedicated site for that lane.

Copper Strategy: The Road to 3 Million Tonnes by 2031

Zambia produced 890,346 tonnes of copper in 2025, an 8% increase on the year before, but that is still well short of the government’s stated target of 3 million tonnes annually by 2031 — a target the Ministry of Mines has codified in its National Three Million Tonnes Copper Production Strategy. Independent analysts have called the trajectory required to hit that number structurally ambitious, and it depends heavily on a handful of large projects reaching planned output on schedule. For the metal itself, current benchmark pricing sits on CMN’s copper price tracker.

The single project most closely tied to the 2031 target is KoBold Metals’ Mingomba mine, backed by investors including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman. KoBold has broken ground on the estimated $2.3–2.5 billion development and is targeting around 300,000 tonnes of annual copper production once the mine reaches full output in the early 2030s, with shaft sinking scheduled for 2027. First Quantum Minerals remains the dominant private producer through its Sentinel and Kansanshi operations, and Barrick Gold operates the Lumwana open-pit mine in North-Western Province, both central to the brownfield expansion the strategy depends on.

Key Companies Driving Zambia’s Critical Minerals Sector

Ownership of Zambia’s flagship copper asset changed hands in a significant way in late 2025: Vedanta Resources spun off Konkola Copper Mines into a new, US-domiciled entity, CopperTech Metals, which plans to lift integrated production from around 140,000 tonnes in FY2026 to 300,000 tonnes by 2031, with longer-term ambitions of 500,000 tonnes a year. ZCCM-IH, the state investment vehicle, retains roughly a 20.6% stake — a pattern that repeats across the sector, since ZCCM-IH also holds minority positions in Mopani Copper Mines, recapitalised in recent years by the Abu Dhabi-based International Resources Holding, and in the Chinese-operated Chambishi complex run by China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group. Sinomine Resource Group, another Chinese group, has separately funded development of the Kitumba copper project.

The Lobito Corridor and Downstream Value Addition

Western and regional funders have committed over $1.3 billion to the Lobito Corridor, a rail project connecting Zambia’s Copperbelt and the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo directly to Angola’s Atlantic coast — a route intended to cut out slower, congested traditional export corridors. Alongside the rail investment, Zambia has been pushing local processing requirements, since a large share of mined copper still leaves the country only partially refined; the government’s Supplier Development Programmes are aimed at building domestic manufacturing capacity rather than leaving Zambia purely an ore exporter. A cobalt sulfate refinery has also been targeted to give the country a domestic foothold in lithium-ion battery supply chains, one of only a small number of such facilities planned outside China.

Geopolitical and Operational Challenges

Zambia has been willing to push back on great-power pressure over its minerals: in May 2026 the government publicly rejected a US proposal that would have tied critical health assistance, including PEPFAR HIV funding, to preferential American access to Zambian minerals, opting instead for strategic neutrality. Domestically, the risks are more structural. Around 85% of Zambia’s power comes from hydroelectric generation, which leaves mining and processing exposed to drought and grid strain in a changing climate — a vulnerability that has already disrupted operations in past dry seasons. Governance concerns, including corruption risk in mineral transaction chains, also remain a live issue for reformers inside the ministry.