The United States says it will help Kenya build a domestic critical minerals processing industry, a pledge that lands right as Washington and Beijing jockey for position across Africa’s mineral-rich ground. It comes at a pointed moment: Kenya is currently weighing bids for Mrima Hill, a coastal deposit thought to hold tens of billions of dollars’ worth of rare earth minerals and niobium.
What Happened
Frank Garcia, the US assistant secretary of state for Africa, told a gathering of the American Chamber of Commerce in Nairobi this week that critical minerals sit near the top of the Trump administration’s priority list. “We are ready to work with Kenya as it becomes a regional leader in this space,” he told the room.
What Garcia emphasized wasn’t just access to the minerals themselves, but where the processing actually happens. He described the kind of mining sector Washington wants to help build: one that “attracts legitimate businesses, respects communities and helps secure global supply chains.” He also drew a pretty clear line between that approach and what he called a rival model, one built around pulling minerals out of the ground and shipping them offshore, with most of the value captured somewhere far from where the minerals came from.
Kenyan President William Ruto welcomed the offer at the same event, arguing that keeping processing onshore would translate into real jobs for Kenyans. The country, he said, is “accelerating the responsible exploration and development” of rare earth elements, along with titanium, graphite, lithium and niobium.
Why Mrima Hill Is the Project Everyone’s Watching
Mrima Hill is really the deposit driving all of this. Estimates put its rare earth and niobium content at tens of billions of dollars, and niobium in particular is valuable stuff, used heavily in aerospace manufacturing. Kenya hasn’t put out an official shortlist yet, but according to Harry Kimtai, principal secretary for the state department of mining, six companies are in the running, two of them American.
Two of those names are already public. US-based Critical Metals Corp and Australia’s RareX said back in July that they’d made the shortlist to compete for development rights. And Chris Kulukundis, the US acting deputy assistant secretary of state for Southern Africa and critical minerals, described the tender process as “moving forward in a transparent manner,” adding that he believes the American consortia involved are positioned to develop the project the right way, assuming they’re chosen.
There’s also an unresolved thread here worth flagging. Back in June, Ruto told Reuters that Kenya and the US were close to sealing a critical minerals deal. Neither government offered an update on that this week, so it’s still an open question whether that agreement actually materializes.
The Bigger Picture: A Continent Caught Between Washington and Beijing
Kenya isn’t an isolated case. The US International Development Finance Corporation has been quietly backing a pipeline of rare earth projects across Africa, part of a broader effort to cut America’s reliance on China, which still dominates global rare earth processing and has been tightening export controls in recent years.
Garcia didn’t dance around the competitive framing either. “If we are serious about rare earths minerals, energy and a stronger America, we do it in partnership, not alone,” he said. For its part, China has pushed back on criticism from other governments and advocacy groups over its practice of exporting raw minerals for processing elsewhere.
What to Watch
Two things will decide whether this pledge amounts to anything real. First, Kenya’s tender for Mrima Hill still needs to produce an actual winner, and there’s no public shortlist yet, nor any confirmation of the deal Ruto mentioned back in June. Second, whatever US-backed investment eventually shows up will need to prove it genuinely keeps more value inside Kenya, since that’s the exact distinction Garcia is drawing between Washington’s approach and everyone else’s.
Right now, what exists is a policy commitment and a tender still working its way through the system, not a signed agreement. Kenya’s mineral wealth has both Washington and Beijing paying close attention. What actually gets built, and who builds it, is still very much unsettled.
