Russia’s increasing influence in African countries and its focus on critical minerals pose significant challenges for the West. In a historic announcement on March 16 this year, Niger declared the immediate termination of its military cooperation with the US. The country nullified a military agreement that permitted US bases on its territory.
Critics argue that Russia’s resource-driven approach may exacerbate existing governance challenges, including corruption, environmental degradation, and social unrest.
As reported by Oregon News, Niger’s military junta and US officials, had a crucial meeting during which the latter conveyed apprehensions regarding Russia’s growing military involvement in the nation. Niger made the “announcement” immediately after the meeting. Additionally, concerns were raised about attempts by the junta to renegotiate mining contracts with potential implications for energy leverage against Western interests.
Let’s learn how Russia’s pursuits for Africa’s critical minerals can impact the country and its global resource acquisition efforts.
Russia’s Quest for African Mineral Resources
One of the focal points of Russia’s interest lies in rare earth elements (REEs), essential components in various high-tech applications, including electronics, renewable energy technologies, and defense systems.
Africa boasts 30% of the world’s mineral reserves, making it an attractive target for resource-hungry nations like Russia.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) emerges as a prime target in Russia’s mineral quest, given its abundant cobalt reserves, a crucial element in lithium-ion batteries powering EVs and smartphones. Russia’s interest in cobalt aligns with its ambitions to establish a stronger foothold in the rapidly expanding electric vehicle market.
In addition to cobalt, Russia has set its sights on other critical minerals such as lithium, vanadium, and platinum group metals. All these REEs are indispensable to modern industries involved in energy storage, battery and catalytic converters, etc.
Furthermore, Russia had always weighed minerals as a currency. They have intervened in Africa to bolster their control through paramilitary means. By providing security and employing intimidation tactics, Russia grabbed lucrative mining agreements. Furthermore, it offers military support to sustain the weaker regimes.
Russian tactics are in absolute contrast to the Western nations. The country operates ruthlessly without considering human rights, democracy, or legal frameworks.
Russia Intensifies Use of Private Military Companies (PMCs) in Africa
According to media reports, in recent years Russia has increased deployment of private military contractors (PMCs) to put a tight foothold on the continent. PMCs are for-profit organizations that provide combat, security, and logistical services for hire.
Russian PMCs first arrived in Africa under a contract with the Libyan Cement Company in 2017.
One notable example of Russia’s use of PMCs in Africa is its involvement in the Central African Republic (CAR). In 2018, the Russian government signed a military cooperation agreement with the CAR, leading to the deployment of the Wagner Group, the most famous Russian PMC.
Subsequently, the PMCs have swiftly extended their presence into Sub-Saharan Africa. They operate in Sudan, the Central African Republic (CAR), Madagascar, Mozambique, and Libya.
The group trains local armed forces to use Russian-supplied arms, protects Russian-operated gold, uranium, and diamond mines, and acts as bodyguard and advisor to the Central African president.
Africa’s Share of Critical Mineral Wealth
A few years back the World Bank projected that a ~ 500% rise in the production of key minerals and metals like lithium, graphite, and cobalt by 2050 is needed to meet global demand for REEs.
With a focus on revenue within Africa, the McKinsey Group has conducted an evaluation. It states:
- Africa could generate between US $200 million and US $2 billion of additional annual revenue by 2030 and create up to 3.8 million jobs by building a competitive, low-carbon manufacturing sector.
- Additionally, minerals could play a crucial role in meeting African citizens’ huge housing and transport needs by driving the sustainable development of these sectors.
Africa holds 40% of the world’s gold and up to 90% of its chromium and platinum reserves. The continent also possesses the largest cobalt, diamonds, platinum, and uranium globally. Zimbabwe has huge lithium potential while Zambia’s copper reserves are capable of substantial revenue generation.
Despite owning 30% of the world’s mineral reserves, Africa accounts for less than 10% of global mining exploration spending. For instance, untapped raw mineral deposits in the DRC are estimated to be worth more than US$24 trillion.
Therefore, accessing Africa’s abundant resources is imperative to achieve these ambitious goals.
Image: Distribution of Africa’s shares of global production of selected critical minerals.
Russia’s Engagement in Africa: Understanding Strategic Motivations
1. Bypassing sanctions: Gold and diamonds provide Russia with a means to circumvent economic sanctions enforced since the invasion of Ukraine. Africa, boasting 40% of the world’s gold reserves and the largest diamond reserves, serves as a key resource hub.
2. Geopolitical influence: As already explained, Russia has established fresh military and political alliances to reduce Western influence in African nations. Specifically, Russia offers “regime survival packages” in exchange for natural resource extraction rights, bolstering its geopolitical standing. This serves as a huge vantage point for native Africans.
Moreover, Russia’s engagement in African mineral extraction extends beyond traditional mining operations. The Kremlin has forged strategic partnerships and investment deals with African nations, leveraging its resource extraction and infrastructure development. These partnerships often come bundled with political and military agreements, bolstering Russia’s influence in Africa.
A stark example is the Blood Gold Report’s Findings that stated,
“The Kremlin has earned more than US$2.5 billion from trade in African gold since Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.”
Is Russia’s Intervention Loosening the West’s Grip on Africa?
The intensification of Russia’s mineral scramble in Africa has raised concerns among Western powers and regional stakeholders. They anticipate worse implications from the geopolitical dynamics and local governance. Critics argue that Russia’s resource-driven approach may exacerbate existing governance challenges, including corruption, environmental degradation, and social unrest.
Furthermore, Russia’s expanding presence in African mineral extraction poses a potential challenge to Western dominance in resource markets. It prompts calls for increased vigilance and strategic engagement from Western policymakers.
Niger’s Recent Decision: A Threat to the West
Niger, the world’s seventh-largest producer of uranium, supplies France this vital resource for nuclear power generation. Apart from uranium, Niger has abundant natural resources of coal, gold, iron ore, and phosphates.
However, Niger’s recent decision to temporarily halt the issuance of new mining licenses highlights the challenges faced in maintaining stable supply chains.
Niger’s situation exemplifies the broader concern regarding Russia’s increasing influence in African nations.
It poses a looming threat to the West in securing its critical mineral supply chains. The withdrawal of US troops from neighboring Chad is another testament to the burgeoning geopolitical tensions.
Jack Watling, land warfare specialist at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) has examined the situation and commented,
“While lithium and gold mines are clearly important, in Niger the Russians are endeavoring to gain a similar set of concessions that would strip French access to the uranium mines in the country.”
Image: Share of Africa’s critical minerals and their global demand projections
As Russia continues to deepen its involvement in Africa’s mineral sector, the geopolitical implications will likely reverberate far beyond its borders. Balancing the economic opportunities with the geopolitical risks inherent in this mineral scramble will be paramount for both African nations and the broader international community.
The post Russia Power Plays: Deploys Military Might Over Africa’s Critical Minerals appeared first on Carbon Credits.
The accounting differences that decide whether your nature investment shows up in inventory, in BVCM, or nowhere at all.
The question reaches a procurement team about three weeks before the next sustainability committee meeting. Someone has read about insetting. Someone else has just signed off on an offset purchase. The CSO wants to know if the two are interchangeable. The answer is no, and the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard is the reason why.
This article walks through what each term means at audit-grade specificity, what the standards actually say about how each gets counted, and how to decide which tool fits which target. The insetting vs offsetting question is one of the most-searched in corporate climate strategy, and one of the most poorly answered. By the end of this piece, you should be able to brief a committee on the difference without notes.
The two definitions, in plain English
Offsetting means buying carbon credits generated outside your value chain and retiring them against your residual emissions. The reduction happens somewhere else, financed by you, and the credit is the receipt.
Insetting means investing in emission reductions or removals inside your own value chain, typically with suppliers, where the reduction is directly linked to the products and services you buy. The reduction happens inside the boundary of your Scope 3 inventory, and the accounting treatment is fundamentally different.
The shorthand from the University of Oxford’s Nature-based Insetting Initiative is useful: insetting is what you do with the supply chain you have; offsetting is what you do with the supply chain you do not have.
What the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard actually says
The GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard, finalised in 2024 after a multi-year pilot, sets the rules for how land-based emission reductions and removals enter corporate inventories. The Standard distinguishes between inventory accounting (Scope 1, 2, and 3) and project or intervention accounting (a separate methodology for crediting).
For insetting, the practical implication is that supplier-level interventions, when properly measured and attributed, can reduce your Scope 3 category 1 (purchased goods and services) emissions in your inventory. The reduction is not a credit retired against the inventory; it is a lower inventory number, period.
For offsetting, the credit is retired separately. It can be reported as a contribution toward a net-zero claim under the SBTi Beyond Value Chain Mitigation framework or as part of a VCMI Carbon Integrity claim, but it does not lower the inventory number.
A practical consequence: if your Science Based Target requires a 50% absolute reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030, insetting moves you toward the target. Offsetting does not. This single point of difference reshapes the procurement decision.
When insetting counts toward Scope 3 (and when it does not)
Insetting counts toward Scope 3 only when several conditions are met:
- The intervention must occur with an entity in your value chain.
- The emissions reduction or removal must be measured against a defensible baseline.
- The reduction must be attributed to your share of that supplier’s output, not double-counted with other buyers.
- It must follow the inventory accounting rules in the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard, not the project accounting rules used to generate credits.
The most common failure mode is double counting. If your supplier sells the same reduction as a credit on the voluntary market and also reports it to you as a Scope 3 reduction, the math breaks. The Standard requires you to address this risk, typically by purchasing and retiring the supplier-issued credit as part of your inventory or by contractual provisions that prevent the supplier from selling the reduction twice.
When insetting does not count toward Scope 3: when the intervention sits with a supplier you do not buy from, when the baseline is not defensible, when the attribution is unclear, or when the documentation does not survive audit. Those cases default to Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, which is still useful but operates on a different ledger.
The procurement and supplier engagement question
Insetting is harder than offsetting. That is the unfashionable truth most buyers eventually confront. Offsetting is a transaction; insetting is a relationship.
To run an insetting program, you need supplier mapping precise enough to know which farms or facilities sit at which Scope 3 boundary. You need an engagement model that gets suppliers to participate, which usually requires multi-year commitments and shared economics. You need an MRV architecture that measures the right things and produces audit-ready documentation. And you need a contractual structure that prevents double counting and protects both sides.
The trade-off you receive in return is significant. Reductions count against your inventory rather than your residual. Supplier relationships deepen, which protects sourcing continuity. Yield and quality improvements often follow regenerative interventions, which reduces your input cost over time. And the regulatory file, under CSRD, CSDDD, EUDR, and the SBTi FLAG Guidance, is materially stronger.
Choosing the right tool for the right target
A practical decision rule. If your target is a science-based Scope 3 reduction and you operate in a FLAG sector or source FLAG commodities, insetting is the structurally correct tool. If your target is a net-zero claim that includes neutralising hard-to-abate residual emissions outside your value chain, BVCM via high-integrity offsets is the structurally correct tool. Most companies with material Scope 3 exposure need both, in different proportions, sequenced over time.
The sequencing matters. Insetting takes longer to stand up but produces a permanent reduction in the inventory. Offsetting can be transacted faster but does not change the inventory and now sits under tighter claim restrictions. Treat them as complementary tools with different jobs, not as substitutes. The Accountability Framework Initiative and the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions both provide useful guardrails for the insetting side, with biodiversity, human rights, and benefit-sharing requirements that go beyond carbon math.
If you are mapping a Scope 3 reduction roadmap and need to scope which interventions count toward your inventory versus which sit in Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you structure a nature-based supply chain investment program that fits your FLAG exposure, your target architecture, and your audit horizon. Schedule a consultation.
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