Continental Africa
Citi maintains bullish copper price targets on structural supply pressure
Citi reaffirmed its bullish copper price targets on 28 July, citing persistent structural supply pressure across the global market as the primary driver of its constructive outlook. The call carries direct implications for the African copper belt, where the DRC and Zambia together constitute the largest single contributors to narrowing the world's copper supply gap and where Zambia is targeting a quadrupling of output to three million tonnes per annum by 2031. Sustained elevated copper pricing strengthens the investment case for the Lobito Corridor, the TAZARA rehabilitation, and the domestic processing capacity that both the Zambian and Congolese governments are attempting to mandate through local content and equity requirements. The pricing environment also raises the stakes on power availability: copper mining already consumes roughly one-third of Zambia's electricity, and output expansion at the scale targeted will require several additional terawatt-hours of annual generation that does not yet exist.
