Notes

Race beneath the Earth. As Hurricane Milton threatened heavily populated areas of Florida in early October, U.S. President Joe Biden postponed a planned trip to Angola until December. It will be Biden’s first (and last) visit to Africa as president. Last year, Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to neighboring Zambia, while the U.S. plans to make its largest railroad investment in Africa ever: a line connecting Angola’s Atlantic coast to Zambia’s central rail line.

But the Americans aren’t the only global superpower building railroads in sub-Saharan Africa these days: China has pledged billions to build a new rail line linking Tanzania’s Indian Ocean coast with Zambia’s central line. Why are the world’s two biggest powers doing this—and why are they doing it here?

Minerals.

The new railways will give Washington and Beijing access to 70 percent of the world’s cobalt and 12 percent of the copper, along with enormous reserves of lithium, nickel, manganese, and chromium. These are all elements that go into critical military and computing technologies, including the semiconductor chips in cellphones and most home appliances.

Last year, Nicholas Kumleben explored why these minerals were now one of the few areas of competition where China had a distinct advantage over the U.S., as Washington scrambles to build a supply chain for them outside Beijing’s reach.

—Michael Bluhm