Major world powers are competing for control of Central Asia's critical mineral resources, marking a new geopolitical struggle in the region. This competition reflects the global demand for minerals essential to modern technology and energy transition.
In mid-February, the U.S. government struck an agreement with Uzbekistan to gain better access to the Central Asian country’s critical minerals. The Joint Investment Framework between the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. (DFC) and Central Asia’s most populous country sought to advance cooperation between the two nations by prioritizing investments across the critical mineral value chain, including exploration, extraction, and processing. The deal, described as “historic” by the DFC, also proposed a new U.S.-Uzbekistan Joint Investment Holding Co. for future minerals and infrastructure projects.
The move was the result of U.S. efforts since Trump’s return to the White House to court the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia and increase U.S. influence in a resource-rich region long dominated by Russia and, more recently, where China is striving to play a leading role.
But the United States is not alone in its courting of Central Asian nations. If Russia’s legacy presence in the region has been receding, overtaken by China, the European Union and the United Kingdom have strengthened their ties with the region, while Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have built important business partnerships in this field.
“It looks like the ‘Great Game,’” said Karim Dahou, the deputy director of global relations and cooperation at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), referring to the political and diplomatic confrontation that existed for most of the 19th century between the British and Russian empires over these areas. “There is intense competition over these region’s mineral resources amid a global race to access these resources.” Central Asia has emerged as a key battleground in the global scramble for critical raw materials, including rare earths, whose reserves are significant but largely untapped.
China, which has made significant inroads in these countries, is currently both a globally dominant supplier and a refiner of these elements. For instance, it controls the supply chains for vital minerals such as manganese sulphate and phosphoric acid, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its 2025 critical minerals outlook. China is also the leading refiner, with an average market share of around 70 percent for 19 of the 20 important strategic minerals analyzed in the IEA report.
Against this backdrop, the world’s major economies are competing for a slice of the vast treasure troves of countries such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Central Asia holds 39 percent of global manganese ore reserves, 31 percent of chromium, 20 percent of lead, 13 percent of zinc, 9 percent of titanium, 6 percent of aluminum, 5 percent of copper, 5 percent of cobalt, and 5 percent of molybdenum, according to the OECD.
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Kazakhstan can export 21 of the 34 raw materials that the EU has listed as critical. Kyrgyzstan holds the world’s third-largest antimony reserves and Uzbekistan the 11th-largest copper reserves. Tashkent has already started developing lithium and molybdenum production.
These materials are vital for a broad spectrum of clean energy technologies, from solar panels and wind turbines to battery storage systems, as well as for digital and defense technologies. As a result, demand for these elements is set to accelerate considerably. For instance, demand for lithium and graphite is projected to grow by 353 percent and 131 percent, respectively, by 2040, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said recently.
Before the February deal, Trump hosted the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan in Washington last November for talks about partnerships on critical minerals. The United States later held a minerals summit that resulted in initial memorandums of understanding on critical mineral supplies with 11 countries, including Uzbekistan.
In parallel, the EU renewed efforts to bolster its ties with the region. Late last November, the 3rd EU-Central Asia Economic Forum, held in Uzbekistan, delivered six major deals. These included the financing of projects to modernize geological data to attract private investors and build transparent supply chains for critical raw materials as well as a 3 million euro (about $3.4 million) agreement with the EU and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to develop sustainable mining of these minerals across Central Asia.
In June, Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan signed an MOU aimed at strengthening cooperation in the mining sector, exchanging knowledge in mineral exploration and related technologies, and encouraging joint mining investments. For its part, Russia has expressed concerns about the U.S. and EU efforts to secure access to rare earths and critical minerals in Central Asia, which it considers in its sphere of interest, at a time when China has also been increasingly turning its attention to the region.
“We are concerned by the intensity with which Washington is pushing agreements on critical minerals and rare earth metals,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin said in May. “This is not merely about economic competition but about an attempt to push Russia out and create a Western-controlled infrastructure in the immediate vicinity of our borders.”
The rising interest in the region’s mineral resources is generally seen as an opportunity by these countries to spur growth and diversify their economies. However, the exploitation of these resources comes with several challenges.
“Potential investors lack reliable and up-to-date data on resource endowments, owing to a lack of geological exploration since independence and the use of legacy reserves reporting systems. The predominance of domestic state-owned enterprises … in the sector and past disputes with foreign investors have also discouraged investment,” the OECD said in a March report.
Aruzhan Meirkhanova, a senior analyst at the consultancy Outpost Eurasia, said modernizing exploration is a crucial first step. “Foreign technical assistance in adopting advanced technologies, such as using artificial intelligence for geological mapping and digitizing data, will help improve resource management while building local capacity,” she said. She added that foreign investments should come with “developmental dividends” such as technology transfer and the establishment of some degree of processing capacity locally.
A key issue facing Central Asian countries is whether the critical minerals business will help drive economic growth or perpetuate the dependency of the region on the world’s larger and richer nations. “In emerging economies, the extraction of critical minerals can exacerbate commodity dependence, lead to environmental degradation, and deepen socioeconomic inequalities,” Meirkhanova said. “Central Asia risks these pitfalls if investments remain focused solely on resource extraction.”
As countries around the world try to counter China’s global dominance in the sector, the Asian giant enjoys a relatively high level of self-sufficiency. However, it faces a set of looming challenges, especially on rare earths, according to a recent report by the Hague Research Institute.
Beyond the efforts by rival powers to reconfigure supply chains away from China, it also faces resource depletion and intensified global technological competition. A possible answer to these challenges is establishing stable strategic partnerships with key emerging regions, such as Central Asia. The report’s authors argue that Chinese cooperation could focus on supporting these countries in developing vertically integrated industries, from exploration and extraction to separation and advanced manufacturing, building on the existing model adopted by China and Kazakhstan on uranium mining.
The Chinese approach would contrast with Western resource firms’ attitude, which frequently prioritize short-term shareholder value and regulatory de-risking, the report said. Instead, China could partner with Central Asian countries to build vertically integrated industrial models linking mining with midstream processing and downstream applications. “China’s bilateral agreements often incorporate components such as technology transfer, vocational training, and infrastructural investment—framing cooperation as a developmental project rather than a transactional extraction scheme,” the report said.
As a further sign on how Western countries are looking for ways to wean themselves off China, the Trump administration resurfaced a proposal at the G-7 meeting in France last month to create a Western trading bloc for critical minerals, with coordinated price floors for these materials. Currently, these minerals are generally traded over the counter with minimal transparency and linked to Chinese prices, which tend to set the global market due to China’s dominant production of them.
The plan was met with caution by both the EU—whose officials expressed concerns on several aspects of the proposal, such as future governance of the trading bloc—and mining companies wary of regulating prices, with several prominent firms and mining trade groups recommending against price-setting. At the end of the summit, G-7 countries agreed to coordinate on reducing reliance on China for critical minerals, with plans to launch a new platform for data sharing and boost joint stockpiling.
That means Central Asia will likely remain at the center of the competition for the sourcing of these elements. And the many partnerships launched with the region in recent months and years will likely be followed by many more to come.
