The 6th Scenario: When the supplier says no
In response to Noémie Aubron’s “5th Scenario: La guerre des modes de vie”
“What about the people who actually own the stuff under the ground?”
That’s the question I couldn’t stop asking as I read Noémie Aubron’s “5th Scenario”a sharp take on how the green transition could become a new arena for global rivalry. Her three imagined futures map how Europe might position itself as Exemplar, Enforcer, or Outsider. But something kept nagging: the scenarios begin with Europe, and end with Europe.
What if the real story begins elsewhere?
Aubron asks how Europe can protect its “mode de vie.” But Europe’s way of life has always depended on the extraction of others’.
What happens when the countries holding the world’s transition minerals, namely cobalt, lithium, nickel, decide they’re no longer just terrain in someone else’s game?
What happens when that extraction is no longer granted?
That’s the missing scenario. One that’s already unfolding. One where the center of gravity shifts, not by force, but by refusal. By leverage.
Beyond the Mining Colony Mindset
The Democratic Republic of Congo holds 70% of the world’s cobalt. The so-called lithium triangle : Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, contains nearly 60% of known lithium reserves. Indonesia leads the world in nickel production.
By 2040, global demand for these minerals is expected to spike: lithium by 4,200%, cobalt by 2,100%, nickel by 1,900%. The World Bank estimates the total market could exceed $12 trillion. And yet, most exporting countries capture just 10–15% of that value.
That’s not just inequality. It’s design. It’s a supply chain built to extract value, not share it. Even Aubron’s forward-looking analysis largely frames the Global South as the ground over which others compete, not as the ones deciding the rules.
But what if that’s changing?
In 2023, Indonesia defended its nickel export ban at the WTO and won. Zimbabwe broke ground on Africa’s first lithium processing plant. Morocco used its phosphate wealth to build one of the world’s largest solar complexes.
And in West Africa, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, now part of the Alliance of Sahel States have begun reclaiming control over their resources. Last year, Niger revoked uranium mining permits held by the French company Orano (the FT talks abouta terrifying crackdown), insisting on new terms that serve national development, not foreign stockholders.
It’s a shift in posture. Quiet, but seismic. It’s resource sovereignty gaining ground.
From Extraction to Value Creation
Why sell ore for pennies when the refined product sells for dollars?
Processed cobalt can be worth five to seven times more than raw exports. Lithium batteries, ten times the value of lithium carbonate. Chile has captured that value by partnering strategically with foreign companies, while maintaining national control. Bolivia’s more state-led approach has faced challenges, but its intent is clear. The DRC is now mandating that 30% of cobalt be processed domestically by Congolese-owned firms.
This is no longer about taxes or royalties.
It’s about owning the entire chain from rock to product and deciding where the benefits go.
Governance Is Also Social
Almost half of Africa’s artisanal mining workforce is made up of women. Yet women are still largely excluded from formal mining jobs, licenses, and decision-making.
Rwanda is challenging that. Women there hold 30% of mining licenses. It’s led to less conflict, stronger cooperatives, and better environmental outcomes.
A reminder that governance isn’t just technical. It’s personal.
And structural change begins with who gets to participate.
Triple Sovereignty and the Levers of Power
Economist Fadhel Kaboub talks about “triple sovereignty”: food, energy, and monetary independence. Without these, even resource-rich countries stay vulnerable, locked into debt cycles and foreign currency dependencies.
Here’s how the trap works: the DRC exports $50 million in raw cobalt. It imports finished products made with that cobalt for $500 million. The result? A structural deficit. The solution? Borrowing, usually in dollars. Cue dependency.
Since 2010, Africa’s external debt has more than doubled, now topping $700 billion. Most of that is tied to this exact dynamic.
A New Strategy: The Africa Green Minerals Framework
In March 2025, the African Union launched the Africa Green Minerals Strategy (AGMS) a continent-wide framework to do things differently.
AGMS isn’t just about extraction. It’s about building entire green value chains that stay in Africa, from battery components to electric vehicles.
Its four pillars:
Responsible extraction that respects ecosystems and communities
Technological capacity and local workforce development
Regional infrastructure for processing and manufacturing
Transparent governance and equitable profit-sharing
Africa has the minerals, but also the sunlight, the wind, the hydropower potential (over 500 GW), and the ambition. AGMS sees these not just as resources, but as leverage.
As Hannah Ryder of Development Reimagined has said:
“African nations are increasingly aware they can demand better terms.”
A Structured Multipolar World Emerges
The old story went like this: the West leads, the rest follow. But that story is cracking.
The BRICS bloc now accounts for more of global GDP than the G7. The dollar’s share of global reserves has dropped from 70% in 2000 to 58% in 2023.
Economist Michael Hudson calls the global reserve system an “imperial tribute,” where countries exchange real goods for foreign-held reserves they don’t control.
Between 2005 and 2022, China invested $44 billion in African mining, often bundling extraction with infrastructure and processing. But this isn’t a switch from Western to Chinese dominance, it’s a more negotiated, multi-aligned landscape.
As Radhika Desai puts it:
“What we’re witnessing isn’t the decline of order. It’s the end of domination.”
The 6th Scenario, 2035
Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia form the backbone of a new economic bloc, not built on free trade, but fair extraction. Export quotas are coordinated. Processing is done locally. Green-backed currencies are issued, tied to mineral reserves and renewable capacity.
European manufacturers adapt, reluctantly at first. China and India secure long-term deals with Sahel and Andes countries, trading infrastructure and technology for stable mineral access. “Battery wars” break out not in combat, but in contracts. Europe, long aware of its raw material dependence, accelerates circularity and urban mining but now on terms set elsewhere. Access to critical inputs requires joint ventures, tech sharing, and value-added commitments.
Former IMF borrowers become net creditors. Africa’s share of global battery production rises from 1% to 14%. Sovereign wealth funds begin investing in regional electricity grids, green manufacturing hubs, and cross-border research universities.
A Pan-African Green Tech Campus opens in Dakar.
Battery startups in Lusaka and Kigali export to Europe on equal terms.
A structured multipolar world.
Not just new players, but new rules.
The transition continues no longer on Europe’s timeline alone.
Europe’s Position: No Longer the Protagonist
Three choices remain:
1. Partnership not paternalism
Morocco’s Noor solar project shows what’s possible: European capital, local ownership. But technology must flow both ways. Germany holds 18,000 renewable energy patents. All African nations combined? Fewer than 700.
2. Neo-extractivism will fail
When Niger cancelled uranium contracts with France, it didn’t blink. The world didn’t fall apart. It watched and took notes.
3. Rethink growth
Europe recycles less than 1% of its critical minerals. But models exist. Finland’s Battery Passport. France’s Right to Repair law. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates circular approaches could reduce mineral demand by up to 70%.
This isn’t about shrinkage. It’s about redesigning prosperity.
From Resistance to Reinvention
Kenya’s geothermal boom trained thousands of engineers. Namibia’s hydrogen plan mandates majority national ownership and local workforce development. Indigenous communities from Brazil’s Kayapo to the Sápara of the Amazon to the Sami of the North offer enduring lessons in stewardship, not extraction.
As Leila Salazar-López says:
“Resource sovereignty isn’t just national. It’s Indigenous. And it’s ancestral.”
Countries are also rethinking money.
In 2022, Bolivia signed a lithium deal backed by yuan not dollars. The African Export-Import Bank now offers $3 billion in mineral financing, denominated in African currencies.
Ndongo Samba Sylla goes further:
Why not issue currency backed by verified mineral reserves and solar potential? Not speculative. Just sovereign.
This Is Already Happening
In Washington, critical minerals are now treated as national security assets. Trump’s White House is striking new deals including a proposal that Ukraine hand over half its future resource revenues in exchange for support.
The age of extraction isn’t over. But the rules and the players are changing fast.
Nigeria is reforming its oil sector. The Sahel bloc is nationalising uranium. Namibia is building out hydrogen supply chains. These aren’t symbolic gestures. They’re structural moves.
A 2023 World Bank study found that sovereignty-driven mineral policies could unlock $1.7 trillion in value and 14 million jobs by 2050.
This is how the transition works: fairly, structurally, and lastingly.
Reframing the Ending
Most people don’t lack knowledge.
They lack power. They lack options.
Because real change especially in global systems comes at a cost.
So where does this leave Europe?
In Aubron’s fifth scenario, Europe must choose between exemplar, dominator, or decline.
But the 6th scenario reframes the question.
What if Europe isn’t the protagonist?
What if the choice is no longer Europe’s alone?
In this new world, Europe isn’t leading the transition it’s negotiating its place in it. The future no longer hinges on whether Europe “sets the example.” It hinges on whether it can recognise the shift in time to collaborate, rather than scramble.
Because the old map, the one where the Global South supplied and the Global North transitioned isn’t holding.
It’s being redrawn.
The 6th Scenario isn’t a prediction. It’s already happening quietly, structurally, and globally. The question isn’t whether the rules of extraction will change. It’s whether those who once wrote them are ready for a world where they no longer can.
Postscript from Europe, 2035
It came slowly, then all at once.
At first, it was just contracts expiring without renewal. A few shipping delays. Then came the refusals. The new terms. The silence.
By 2032, the cobalt stopped arriving. Lithium prices tripled. New cars sat half-built in Belgian factories, waiting for parts that never came. Germany’s largest battery plant closed for six months. The restart came with a catch: half its inputs now came from urban mining and disassembled e-waste. The other half? Negotiated on someone else’s timeline, under someone else’s conditions.
The language in Brussels changed. So did the tone. “Partnership” replaced “leadership.” “Adaptation” replaced “ambition.” The continent once poised to guide the green transition now faced a harder task: managing its dependence. Europe’s lifestyle wasn’t just cultural. It was material. Built on fuel, minerals, land, and labour it didn’t fully own. When the tap ran dry, it wasn’t just the transition that stalled, it was the story.
Circularity moved from talking point to necessity. A generation raised on abundance learned to repair, reuse, downshift. Repair cafés became employment hubs. Scrap yards became gold mines. Designers stopped asking what new materials could do. They started asking what old ones were still around.
Migration slowed not from increased border control, but from perception. Europe no longer felt inevitable. The story had changed. Talent stayed closer to home. In Lagos, Dakar, Jakarta, young engineers built what their parents were told to wait for. And many Europeans, facing long recessions and shortened supply chains, began to look outward themselves not as colonisers, but as workers, as learners, as applicants.
The transition didn't end. But it ceased to be European.
A few saw it coming. Fewer prepared. What changed was not just the flow of minerals, but the direction of imagination.
In 2035, Europe is still here. Just not where it thought it would be.