How Saudi Aramco’s Century-Long U.S. Strategy Offers a Roadmap for the DRC’s New Minerals Partnership

In December 2025, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the United States signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement focused on critical minerals—a deal hailed as a milestone for securing cobalt, copper, and other resources vital to clean energy and technology. As implementation begins in 2026, with the first Joint Steering Committee meeting already underway, the DRC faces a pivotal question: how to turn this agreement into lasting economic transformation rather than another raw-export dependency.

Saudi Aramco provides a compelling model. Over nine decades, the Saudi oil giant has built deep, resilient ties with American companies, evolving from simple extraction to diversified, interdependent partnerships worth billions. Here are the key lessons the DRC can apply.

Build for the Long Haul

Aramco’s U.S. relationships have weathered political shifts since the 1930s through consistent institutional engagement. The DRC should treat its biennial Binational Economic Partnership Forum and Joint Steering Committee as permanent platforms for measurable progress, not ceremonial events.

Diversify Beyond Raw Exports

Aramco remains an oil powerhouse but has aggressively expanded into LNG, chemicals, AI, and advanced manufacturing. In 2025 alone, it signed 51 memorandums of understanding with U.S. firms totaling over $120 billion in potential value. The DRC, the world’s top cobalt producer, must prioritize domestic processing, battery manufacturing, and downstream industries to capture more value from its minerals.

Create Mutual Stakes

Aramco’s investments generate high sunk costs that make disruption costly for both sides. The DRC should negotiate equity stakes, joint ventures, and long-term offtake contracts that tie U.S. companies’ success to Congolese stability.

Insist on Skills and Technology Transfer

Aramco partnerships include systematic workforce training and R&D collaboration. The DRC’s agreement already includes scientific and educational provisions; these must become concrete programs training Congolese engineers and technicians.

Secure Reciprocal Ownership

Aramco owns the Motiva refinery in Port Arthur, Texas—the largest in North America—ensuring permanent market influence. The DRC should push for equity in U.S.-based processing facilities using Congolese minerals.

Expand Across Sectors

Aramco engages broadly in procurement, finance, and technology. The DRC can leverage its forum to extend cooperation into renewable energy, infrastructure, and agriculture alongside mining.

The DRC starts from a different position. Ongoing eastern conflicts, limited governance capacity, and incomplete geological mapping—only about 20% of the country surveyed—demand urgent reforms in transparency, anti-corruption, and regulatory predictability.

Aramco’s success took nearly a century of patient institution-building. The DRC’s 2025 agreement offers a rare opening, but only disciplined diversification, mutual interdependence, and domestic reforms will convert mineral wealth into sustained prosperity.

Gedeon Baleke

MGA, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy

SG ,African Coalition for Development