- Critical Mineral Access: India seeks to secure critical minerals like copper for manufacturing and renewable energy, facing challenges due to limited commercial presence in resource-rich countries.
- Africa as a Potential Source: India explores opportunities in Africa, particularly Zambia, but needs to address processing capabilities and evolving expectations of African nations.
- Strategic Partnerships: India’s mineral diplomacy in Africa involves collaborations with countries like Japan, Australia, and European nations, focusing on joint ventures and infrastructure investment.
India’s efforts to secure access to critical minerals abroad are beginning to acquire a significance that extends beyond the country’s immediate concerns over supply. As New Delhi seeks to expand manufacturing, accelerate the deployment of renewable energy and electric mobility, and develop more sophisticated defence and technology industries, access to mineral resources is becoming increasingly connected to questions of economic security and, ultimately, foreign policy.
The resumption of discussions between India and Zambia over potential investments in copper and other critical minerals provides an indication of how this process may develop. Indian and Zambian officials returned to negotiations in late August after earlier discussions had stalled over mining rights associated with an area of approximately 9,000 square kilometres. At the same time, Khanij Bidesh India Limited (KABIL), the state-backed company established to identify and acquire mineral assets overseas, has been examining opportunities in a range of resource-producing countries, while Indian officials have pursued discussions with governments including Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
None of these initiatives is sufficient on its own to constitute a coherent overseas mineral strategy. Taken together with the National Critical Mineral Mission launched in 2025, however, they suggest that the Indian government increasingly recognises that the country’s industrial ambitions will require a more systematic approach to resources located beyond its borders.
This is particularly apparent in the case of copper. India is already the world’s second-largest importer of refined copper, with its dependence on overseas supplies having increased substantially following the closure of Vedanta’s Sterlite Copper smelter in 2018. The longer-term outlook is considerably more demanding. Estimates cited by Reuters suggest that India could eventually need to import between 91 and 97 per cent of the copper concentrates required by its economy by 2047.
The implications extend well beyond the copper industry. Electricity networks, renewable energy systems, electric vehicles, construction and a broad range of industrial and defence applications all require substantial quantities of the metal. If India succeeds in expanding manufacturing and infrastructure at the scale envisaged by the government, demand for copper and other critical minerals will increase at the same time as other major economies are attempting to secure many of the same resources for their own energy and industrial transitions.
India’s mineral vulnerability is therefore, to some extent, a consequence of the economic transformation it is seeking to achieve. Domestic exploration, recycling and technological substitution can reduce that vulnerability, but they cannot eliminate the underlying geographical constraints. Many of the mineral deposits required by Indian industry are concentrated in countries where New Delhi has historically had a limited commercial presence in the extractive sector.
It is in this context that Africa is likely to assume greater importance.
Zambia and the changing geography of mineral security
Zambia is a useful case through which to understand both the opportunities and the limitations facing India. Already one of Africa’s largest copper producers, the country has set an ambitious target of increasing annual output to three million tonnes by 2031. Achieving this will require significant investment not only in new mining capacity, but also in electricity generation, transport infrastructure and processing.
The resulting opportunities have attracted investors from several countries. Chinese companies have established substantial positions in Zambia’s mining economy over a period of decades, while Western and other international investors have also expanded their presence. KoBold Metals, whose investors include Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, is developing the Mingomba project, which could eventually become one of the country’s major copper mines. Investors from Canada, the Gulf and elsewhere are similarly seeking exposure to Zambia’s mineral expansion.
India would consequently be entering neither an undeveloped market nor a geopolitical vacuum. Its prospective investments would form part of a much wider contest to secure access to resources that are expected to become increasingly important to the global energy and industrial economy.
The regional context is equally significant. The neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo is central to global copper and cobalt supply, while Zimbabwe has emerged as an important source of lithium. Other countries across eastern and southern Africa possess deposits of graphite, nickel, manganese and rare earth elements. For an India seeking to diversify its sources of supply, the attraction is therefore not limited to a particular Zambian concession. Southern and eastern Africa could become an increasingly important component of the external resource base required to sustain Indian industrialisation.
This does not necessarily mean that India is developing an African mineral strategy primarily in response to China. Competition with Chinese companies is unavoidable in several markets, given the scale of China’s existing position, but interpreting Indian activity principally through the framework of Sino-Indian rivalry risks obscuring a more consequential challenge.
The central issue is whether India can construct a viable mineral supply chain at all.
The limits of an upstream strategy
China’s position in critical minerals was not built solely through the acquisition of overseas mines. Over several decades, Chinese firms developed capabilities across extraction, refining, separation, processing and manufacturing, supported by infrastructure, finance and a large domestic industrial base. As a result, China occupies important positions at several stages between the extraction of mineral ores and their eventual use in manufactured products.
India’s starting point is considerably different. KABIL, which was established in 2019 by three state-owned enterprises, has begun to develop an international portfolio and has secured lithium exploration rights in Argentina. New Delhi has also expanded mineral cooperation with countries including Australia and has pursued agreements with other resource-producing states. These initiatives nevertheless remain relatively modest when measured against the scale of India’s prospective demand.
More importantly, the acquisition of upstream assets would address only part of the country’s vulnerability. Minerals extracted in Zambia, Argentina or elsewhere must still be processed and refined before they can supply Indian manufacturers. In several critical-mineral value chains, these intermediate stages remain highly concentrated, with China occupying an especially important position.
This creates a difficult policy problem. If India concentrates primarily on acquiring mining rights overseas without developing corresponding processing capabilities, greater access to mineral deposits may not translate into significantly greater supply-chain resilience. The geography of dependence would change, but some of the underlying vulnerabilities could remain.
This problem has begun to receive greater attention within the Indian strategic debate. Analysts have argued that KABIL and other institutions may need to look beyond exploration and mining towards equity participation in overseas processing facilities, joint ventures and long-term offtake arrangements. Such an approach would require a considerably broader conception of mineral security than one focused on the ownership of deposits.
It would also require India to determine where different stages of these value chains should be located. Not all processing needs to take place within India. Indeed, the political economy of mineral-producing countries may increasingly make such an approach difficult.
African producers are seeking a different bargain
Across Africa, governments are placing greater emphasis on domestic value addition and are becoming less willing to accept an economic model based overwhelmingly on the export of unprocessed commodities. The precise policies vary considerably between countries, but the direction is clear: access to mineral resources is increasingly being linked to expectations concerning processing, infrastructure, employment, skills and technology transfer.
This shift will shape India’s room for manoeuvre. New Delhi may find that securing reliable access to African minerals requires investment in the economies where those resources are located rather than simply agreements to export ores or concentrates to India.
There may be advantages to this constraint. India does not possess the financial capacity to reproduce the infrastructure-heavy model associated with China’s earlier expansion in Africa, nor is it likely to compete successfully by attempting to do so. A strategy based on joint ventures, processing facilities, technical training, long-term purchasing arrangements and selective infrastructure investment could be more compatible with both India’s capabilities and the priorities of African governments.
India’s longstanding political relationships across Africa could provide a useful foundation, particularly given New Delhi’s effort to present itself as an advocate for the interests of the Global South. The African Union’s admission as a permanent member of the G20 during India’s 2023 presidency was an important diplomatic expression of this approach. Yet political goodwill should not be confused with commercial advantage. African governments have become increasingly experienced in negotiating among competing external partners and will judge Indian proposals according to the investment, technology, infrastructure and market access they provide.
The effectiveness of Indian mineral diplomacy will therefore depend less on its ability to distinguish itself rhetorically from China or Western countries than on whether it can assemble credible commercial propositions.
This is likely to require partnerships beyond Africa itself.
Mineral security as a field for minilateral cooperation
India’s resource requirements intersect with the economic-security strategies of several of its principal partners. Japan has long experience in securing overseas mineral supplies and possesses capital and processing technologies. Australia combines significant mineral resources with mining expertise. European governments are seeking to reduce concentrated dependencies and develop more diversified supply chains, while the United States has made critical minerals an increasingly important element of its economic-security policy.
There is consequently scope for arrangements in which India does not attempt to construct an entirely national supply chain, but instead participates in a more distributed system linking resource-producing countries with different sources of capital, technology, processing capacity and industrial demand.
Africa could become an important testing ground for such arrangements. A project combining African mineral production and local value addition with Indian demand, Japanese or European financing and technology, and long-term access to several markets would reflect the increasingly networked character of economic-security policy.
Whether such arrangements can move beyond diplomatic declarations remains uncertain. Financing is a persistent constraint, as are differences among partner countries over environmental standards, trade policy, local processing requirements and the allocation of commercial risk. India itself will also need stronger institutions capable of coordinating government policy with state-owned enterprises and private industry.
Nevertheless, the logic behind such cooperation is becoming stronger as governments discover how difficult and expensive it is to recreate complete mineral value chains within national borders. For India in particular, partnerships may offer a more realistic path towards diversification than attempting to reproduce domestically every capability currently concentrated elsewhere.
From Africa to the Indian Ocean
An overseas mineral strategy would also have implications for India’s conception of the Indian Ocean.
Minerals extracted in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo must reach international markets through transport corridors connecting inland mining regions to ports on the African coast. The commercial viability and strategic resilience of these supply chains therefore depend on railways, electricity networks, ports, shipping services and maritime routes as much as on the mines themselves.
This places mineral security within a broader geography stretching from the African interior through the western Indian Ocean to India’s industrial centres and, potentially, onwards to manufacturing networks in East and Southeast Asia.
The connection deserves greater attention because policy debates frequently treat African resource competition, Indian Ocean strategy and Indo-Pacific economic security as separate issues. In practice, they are becoming increasingly difficult to disentangle. The infrastructure that determines whether a copper project in Central or Southern Africa is commercially viable also determines which ports and maritime corridors will carry its output and which processing and manufacturing centres will capture the subsequent stages of the value chain.
For India, this creates an additional reason to view relations with eastern and southern Africa as part of a wider economic geography of the Indian Ocean. New Delhi’s maritime strategy has understandably concentrated on naval competition, freedom of navigation and the growing Chinese presence across the region. The requirements of mineral security suggest that commercial infrastructure and industrial supply chains will become an increasingly important part of the same strategic environment.
This may eventually have implications for India’s partnerships with countries in the Gulf, which are themselves expanding investments in African mining, ports and logistics. It could also connect Indian initiatives in Africa with the broader development of economic corridors linking the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean and Europe. These possibilities remain at an early stage, however, and should not obscure the more immediate challenge of turning India’s existing mineral partnerships into commercially viable projects.
Towards an Indian foreign policy for critical minerals
The renewed discussions with Zambia should therefore be interpreted cautiously. Negotiations over individual mining projects are often protracted, and previous talks have already encountered difficulties. There is no guarantee that the current discussions will result in substantial Indian investment.
Their broader significance lies in what they reveal about the changing requirements of Indian economic policy.
For much of the past decade, New Delhi has concentrated on expanding domestic manufacturing capacity through initiatives such as Make in India, production-linked incentives and sector-specific industrial policies. Critical minerals expose the external limits of that approach. A country can encourage semiconductor production, electric vehicles, renewable energy equipment and defence manufacturing domestically, but it cannot determine where copper, lithium, cobalt, nickel or graphite deposits are located.
The next stage of Indian industrial policy will therefore have an unavoidable international dimension.
Developing it will require New Delhi to integrate several areas that have often been treated separately: relationships with mineral-producing countries, overseas investment by Indian companies, development finance, processing capacity, maritime connectivity and partnerships with other advanced industrial economies. It will also require a more precise understanding of which dependencies India needs to eliminate, which it can diversify and which it can manage through cooperation with trusted partners.
This is a more complicated objective than securing individual mines, and India remains at an early stage in pursuing it. Yet the direction of travel is increasingly visible.
As competition over critical minerals intensifies, the ability to influence the networks connecting extraction, processing, transport and manufacturing will become an important component of economic power. For India, whose industrial ambitions are likely to increase rather than reduce its exposure to imported resources, participation in those networks will become correspondingly important.
The discussions underway in Zambia are a relatively small development within that larger transformation. They nevertheless illustrate a strategic adjustment that New Delhi will find increasingly difficult to avoid: if India intends to become one of the principal industrial powers of the coming decades, securing the material foundations of that ambition will have to become part of its foreign policy.
