China restricts tellurium: Canary Islands emerge as a strategic point for EU autonomy

Tropic is the seamount that holds Spain’s tellurium hopes to lead the global market for this strategic component
An OECD report from April 2026 analyzes the dependence on critical minerals. The architecture of the global commodity market faces a structural asymmetry that the OECD accurately documents in its recent April 2026 report. Africa, despite its vast geological inventory, only capitalizes on 10.6% of global exports of critical minerals.

Cobalt
The inefficiency in value capture is the most eloquent data of this analysis: 96% of what the continent sends abroad comes out unprocessed or in intermediate states, divided into 24% raw ore and 72% in the form of concentrates. This export structure shows the dependence on external refineries, mainly located in China, where 60% of the cobalt extracted on African soil ends up. The OECD report ‘Regional Note on Critical Minerals in Africa’ was published in April 2026 on the occasion of the OECD Forum on Critical Minerals held in Istanbul, consolidating itself as a strategic document prepared by the authors Theophilus Acheampong, Sarah Logan, Maddalena Procopio and Alex Vines, from the European Council on International Relations (ECFR). The study underlines how China’s structural dominance and its recent restrictions on the export of metals such as tellurium force the EU to look for its own sources so as not to be excluded from the energy transition.

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