Afghanistan’s Taliban government accepted a $10 billion investment in the country’s mines last year. The funds came from a Chinese company, part of a years-long effort by the world’s second-largest economy to get its hands on Afghanistan’s metals and minerals. Beijing wants lithium, a key input for the new economy of smartphones and EVs. Some experts estimate that Afghanistan’s lithium, as well as other metals, could be worth as much as $1 trillion, a lifeline for a country that for years has labored at the lowest end of the UN’s measures of human development.
It wouldn’t be the first time that natural resources have revived Afghanistan’s prospects. Not that long ago, Afghanistan was a booming trade hub. Its prosperity was primarily based on a single strategic commodity: the horse.
