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Zambia and Zimbabwe are facing new US trade agreements that critics say exploit Africa’s minerals, data and health systems, raising urgent questions about sovereignty and SADC’s response.
By ASHRAF PATEL
African nations are currently facing a new triple blow to their development agenda – one that is even more extractive and exploitative, straddling the entire economic value chain and social life of Africans, from minerals to digital data.
Despite the laudable communiqué of ‘Africa’s G20’ in 2025 on sustainable AI and green industrialisation, African nations face ground zero in realpolitik with extractive ‘free trade agreements on steroids’ with the US Trump administration in 2026.
The misuse of Section 301 trade tools against 60 countries is also in motion. The latest developments – the new US–Zambia and US–Zimbabwe trade deals – are attracting considerable pushback.
A leaked draft of a five-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two countries, seen by The Guardian, reveals that Zambia may accept terms worse than health financing agreements the US has reached with 16 other African countries.
The terms include a commitment to give Washington access to its health data for ten years – far longer than other countries have negotiated. Zambia’s deal also predicates any health financing on even more covert conditions.
According to Asia Russell, director of the HIV advocacy organisation Health Gap: ‘These terms are vastly worse than other deals. [The US] is conditioning life-saving health services on plundering the mineral wealth of the country.
‘It’s shameless exploitation, which is immoral. It’s also dangerous – when health programmes are treated like a bargaining chip by a rapacious administration, everyone suffers.’ (The Guardian, March 19, 2026)
Critical minerals: extractive, insatiable energy needs driver
The use and abuse of open science is undermining national health systems, opening new frontiers of exploitation – of resources, knowledge, and unequal IT trade and tariffs.
Zambia and Zimbabwe are meant to be gaining from the mining boom, with huge inflows of foreign reserves. Alas, they remain dependent on foreign aid as well as high debt repayments. This contradiction is stark: Zambia is facing a mega copper boom and Zimbabwe has a lithium opportunity, yet both face huge debt crises, with the highest debt-to-GDP ratios in decades.
Quite interestingly, Zambia is close to the US and an anchor of the US-led Lobito Corridor, but none of these geopolitical considerations seem to play any part in Trump’s FTA calculations. Africa is once again seen through an old-world colonial gaze – one of vast geological resources, with African citizens viewed as mere customers for global multinationals, and African governments and legislators as the managerial class of global capital.
Other blocs such as the EU are too occupied with geopolitical disruptions, and Africa is again seen from a colonial perspective – one where unbridled access to oil, gas and hydrogen defines EU–AU trade and investment agreements.
Furthermore, the generative AI revolution is moving at breakneck speed, with cloud computing consumption growing exponentially. According to The Guardian, it is only a few years on from the release of ChatGPT, but the race to plug artificial intelligence into everything has sparked a surge in data centres, with escalating environmental costs. Globally, data centre power demand is growing four times faster than all other sectors, according to the International Energy Agency, and is on track to exceed Japan’s electricity use by 2030.
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Digital data extractives and monetisation – need for African data sovereignty
In the commercial domain, Big Tech extracts data through monetisation models. Workers in the global South – such as Kenyan content moderators – occupy the bottom of the value chain, earning below living-wage levels and working in environments that cause severe mental health challenges.
Fintech models further extract foreign exchange from the financial ecosystems of African nations. In the absence of adequate consumer and privacy rights, most Africans are left vulnerable to the Big Tech ‘digital vulture’ model.
Attack on health systems and unfair IP laws
The same big pharma corporations that practised Covid nationalism and denied Africans access to vaccines are back to extract African health data for their own R&D and product development, which is then exported globally. Covid nationalism on steroids.
Another plank of the US FTA with Zambia and others comes against the backdrop of the ending of the PEPFAR HIV and TB programmes across the continent. Health data access clauses in US trade agreements undermine sovereignty.
In this context, unregulated access to African health and science data represents a new frontier of this extractive model across industries. This data is needed as input for new-generation vaccines and pharmaceutical R&D. Once again, African data is monetised without compensation. This goes against the grain of WHO, WTO and WIPO intellectual property guidelines on health equity.
The Trump administration’s disengagement from the WTO, along with its defunding of WHO and UNESCO – key UN institutions safeguarding the SDG agenda – further undermines global governance.
SADC and AfCFTA – what is to be done?
The AU and regional groupings are too weak or donor-dependent to make any meaningful impact.
Every year, the SADC Summit circus comes to town with no real plan to deal with the grave polycrisis African citizens face. SADC leadership has long been seen as a ‘big, slow elephant’ that tramples upon human rights across the region. It must now confront a new spectre – Donald Trump’s 2.0 extractive and neo-imperialist world.
We have had SADC’s indicative industrialisation plan (RISDP) – a vision largely confined to paper – discussed ad nauseam for well over a decade. SADC summits continue with lip service given to bold ideas, but with little implementation.
For Africa to leverage its critical minerals and move towards green industrialisation, SADC leaders need a common, integrated economic agenda. Civil society, economic justice networks and unions must play a robust role in co-shaping a new Southern African region and demanding real leadership for African interests.
This year’s SADC summit in South Africa needs to prioritise the following:
- Demand fair trade and real WTO reform to protect African nations from exploitative FTAs with the US and others;
- Demand a new green critical minerals for development treaty;
- Establish a charter on data sovereignty for development in line with the UN;
- Enhance youth and gender programmes in the AI economy.
For starters, SADC is donor-funded and therefore has very little policy sovereignty. African nations are now caught between a new inter-imperial rivalry for critical minerals, raw extractives and digital data. Big Tech cloud centres guzzle energy, while global powers devour lithium, cobalt and copper.
Current global wars have pushed food prices to all-time highs, yet African nations remain major agricultural exporters. Diabolical.
Is another SADC possible? Dream on.
Ashraf Patel is a senior research associate at the Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD) in South Africa, specialising in global governance, multilateralism, the political economy of the Global South, developmental justice and international relations.
