Kenya Nears U.S. Critical-Minerals Deal That Keeps Processing and Jobs at Home

President William Ruto says Kenya is close to concluding a critical-minerals agreement with the United States under which rare earths and other strategic resources would be processed inside the country rather than shipped abroad raw. Speaking at the G7 summit, Ruto said the terms were “mutually beneficial” and that the U.S. administration was satisfied with them.

The deal mirrors a continent-wide push, echoed by Guyana and Ghana, to keep more value from natural resources at home. Kenya holds untapped deposits of niobium, lithium, graphite, copper, and nickel. Ruto argued Africa is “not short of capital” but constrained by access to it, calling for risk-sharing mechanisms from wealthy nations. For the Kenyan diaspora, domestic processing promises jobs and value addition, the test being whether the framework survives contact with implementation.

Source: NTV Kenya / Reuters; KenyaMOJA.