The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) supports partners in key critical mineral regions who are working to strengthen transparency and accountability across the sector, from extraction to investment, trade, and public oversight. Their work comes at a pivotal moment: materials such as cobalt, copper, and lithium are essential to emerging technologies, renewable energy, and national security. Yet many of these resources are concentrated in countries where governance systems remain weak, leaving them vulnerable to capture by corrupt elites, opaque business networks, and firms backed by authoritarian governments.
Instead of benefitting local communities, revenues often fund efforts to strengthen oppressive regimes and even criminal enterprises. At the same time, uneven competition for critical minerals has favored actors willing to deploy bribery at the expense of American companies who play by the rules, undermining U.S. economic interests. Furthermore, coercive and exploitative labor practices used by authoritarian actors to minimize production costs undercut American workers and businesses. In FY2026, NED supported partners across Africa, Latin America, and Asia working to strengthen transparency and accountability in the critical minerals sector through direct grants and programs led by NED’s Core Institutes. This includes efforts by the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, and the Center for Private International Enterprise to help civic actors and legislative bodies strengthen mining laws and improve their enforcement.
NED Prioritizes Three Key Areas:
1. Detect Corruption and Illicit Capture: Supporting civic groups and independent journalists to investigate corruption risks, expose opaque contracts, and identify networks and tactics used to divert public resources.
2. Strengthen Oversight and Accountability: Working with civic and political actors to improve transparency and oversight for the mining sector, strengthen legal and regulatory safeguards, and increase public visibility of mining-sector governance.
3. Disrupt Illicit Financial and Governance Networks: Backing efforts to identify and challenge the systems that enable stolen assets, hidden ownership structures, and illicit critical mineral gains to move beyond public view.
How NED Support is Making a Difference
- Bolivia: With support from NED and the Center for International Private Enterprise, civic groups played a critical role in the cancellation of $2 billion in opaque contracts that would have transferred much of the country’s lithium reserves to firms backed by China and Russia. Through reporting that exposed these murky deals to citizens and lawmakers, democratic actors helped ensure that Bolivia’s lithium wealth would be subject to greater public scrutiny, more accountable governance, and decisions that better serve the Bolivian people.
- Venezuela: With NED support, an advocacy group is documenting illegal gold and critical mineral mining in southern Venezuela and exposing its role fueling regime corruption, organized crime, and armed groups. Interactive geospatial maps tracking mining expansion, detailed reporting on armed group activities, and analyses of proposed natural resources legislation have equipped advocates and policymakers with evidence to confront illicit mining in the Amazon Basin.
- The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC): Investigative reporting published by a NED partner exposed major oversight failures in a DRC-China venture overseeing cobalt reserves, helping spur a national audit of the country’s mining sector and a new certification process for mineral sales to Chinese firms. Another NED-backed civic group exposed questionable mining discounts benefiting Chinese companies that deprived the DRC treasury of more than $500 million in revenue, triggering a government inquiry into related mining agreements. The International Republican Institute continues to work with local actors and officials to develop stronger standards for governance of critical minerals.
- Zimbabwe: A NED partner helped locals from mining communities across Zimbabwe participate in consultations on proposed mining legislation aimed at strengthening transparency, labor protections, and community safeguards. The group has also raised public awareness of the costs associated with irresponsible resource extraction by Chinese-led mining ventures in the country.
- Zambia: A NED-backed media organization uncovered widespread damage to public health and land degradation linked to irresponsible critical mineral mining in Zambia, including flooding, water and air pollution, and the destruction of farmlands that provide food and income to entire communities. The reporting prompted the government to take corrective measures, strengthen accountability mechanisms in the extractive sector, and support victims in affected communities.
As competition over critical minerals intensifies, NED partners are helping ensure that resource wealth strengthens citizens and communities rather than entrenched elites or authoritarian-backed networks that drive instability. By advancing transparency, accountability, and public oversight, their work supports U.S. interests in creating a fairer economic playing field for responsible companies while giving communities a greater voice in how their own resources are developed and used.
