Cobalt Governance and Strategic Power: A Hamiltonian Intertemporal Analysis of Export Suspension in the DRC

In a context of sustained price decline and heightened volatility in the global cobalt market, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)—the world’s leading producer—suspended its cobalt exports in February 2025. This decision aimed to recalibrate international prices, reinforce mineral sovereignty, and initiate a structural transformation of the domestic value chain. Against this backdrop, the objective of this article is to assess the economic sustainability of such a strategy by employing a dynamic framework of intertemporal trade-offs between short-term losses and long-term gains. The adopted methodology relies on a rigorous analytical model grounded in the Hamiltonian formalism, allowing the modeling of economic flows weighted by the policymaker’s time preference factor. The findings suggest that while the suspension generates a negative welfare balance in the short term, a favorable reversal remains attainable in the medium term, provided that local transformation, institutional reforms, and bilateral cooperation are rapidly activated. Accordingly, it is recommended that the DRC adopt a strategy of patient statecraft, characterized by a low discount rate, accelerate the implementation of industrial reforms such as local refining and supply chain traceability, establish a contract-based governance framework through structured dialogue between the state and mining operators, and formalize a bilateral partnership with Indonesia to exert coordinated influence on global pricing. In this perspective, cobalt must no longer be viewed as a mere strategic commodity, but rather as a sovereignty lever to be governed intertemporally through coherent and forward-looking economic policy.