The DRC, Zambia and industrialists record the study of a free zone to manufacture batteries

The location of the free zone in the Haut-Katanga region is strategic: the zone is very rich in cobalt, necessary for the manufacture of batteries. Here, a miner holds a cobalt stone at the Shabara mine, near Kolwezi, on October 12, 2022 (illustration). © Junior Kannah / AFP

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2 min

The Congolese, Zambian authorities and financial partners signed on Monday (March 27th) in Kinshasa an agreement for studies on a free zone that will house the manufacturing industry of electric vehicle batteries. On 2,000 hectares, the cross-border special economic zone will be erected in the province of Haut-Katanga. Rich in lithium and other necessary materials, such as cobalt and copper, the DRC wants to make the most of this market.

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With our correspondent in Kinshasa, Pascal Mulegwa

The pre-feasibility studies will be funded by the African Export-Import Bank and the results are expected to be available in five months.

For Congolese Minister of Industry Julien Paluku, the choice of the special economic zone is an attractive strategy:

« 

We put this project in a duty-free area that is considered a customs area because we often know a lot of investors who pack up, because only they are the subject of a lot of harassment. That is why we are isolating them in this space that the Congolese and Zambian governments have created to allow investment to be much more competitive with reduced costs. If we capture 10% of this market, that makes us 700billion! So it is up to us Africans to set up strategies to see how we capture.

 »

Faced with the great ambitions of the Congolese authorities, Jean-Luc Mastaki, the sub-regional director of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, warns: the market is certainly bubbling, but much more evolving.

« The debate on the batteries of the future requires the DRC not only to focus on the ability to produce the lithium ion battery today but to be able to continue to innovate in order to adapt to international evolution and technology. There is a lot of research and development going on that tends to substitute certain raw materials that we have a stronger hold in batteries. »

According to this expert, this project should benefit from the development of the continental free trade area.

► Read also: Fipadoc: Cobalt, the electric dream in the West and the reverse in Africa?

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  • DRC
  • Zambia
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