World Mineral Resources: Cobalt, Lithium, Nickel and Diamond

This chapter, in GC Leong's own world-economic-geography half, is a country-resource matching exercise more than anything else, and UPSC has drawn on it twice with exactly that format: name a mineral and ask which country dominates its production, or give several country-mineral pairs and ask how many are correctly matched. The minerals worth fixing by name are the ones the world's electric-vehicle and battery supply chain has made newly prominent, cobalt, lithium and nickel, alongside diamond, a much older resource-geography staple.

Cobalt: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, by a wide margin

The Democratic Republic of the Congo dominates world cobalt mining more completely than almost any other country dominates any other major mineral. USGS's 2025 Mineral Commodity Summaries puts the DRC's 2024 mine production at 220,000 tonnes out of a world total of 290,000 tonnes, roughly three-quarters of everything mined, and its share of world reserves is even larger, 6 million of the world's 11 million tonnes. That dominance comes from the exceptionally rich copper-cobalt deposits of the Katanga (Copperbelt) region in the country's south, where cobalt occurs as a byproduct of copper mining rather than being mined in its own right. Indonesia is a distant second producer, its cobalt itself arising as a byproduct of nickel laterite mining rather than a dedicated cobalt industry, which is why Indonesia appears twice in this chapter, for nickel in its own right and for cobalt as a byproduct of that same nickel mining.

Lithium, nickel and diamond: three more pairings worth fixing

Chile and lithium is a well-founded pairing even though Chile is not the single largest producer by tonnage (Australia mines more from hard-rock spodumene deposits): Chile holds the world's largest lithium reserves by a clear margin, 9.3 million of the world's 30 million tonnes, extracted from brine deposits in the Atacama salt flats rather than from hard rock, and is consistently a top-two producer by volume alongside Australia.

Indonesia and nickel is the most lopsided of these pairings after cobalt's own: Indonesia mined 2.2 million of the world's 3.7 million tonnes of nickel in 2024, about three-fifths of global output, from laterite deposits that also happen to be rich in cobalt, which is the direct link between Indonesia's nickel dominance and its position as the world's second cobalt producer above.

Botswana and diamond rests on a different kind of dominance, by value rather than by tonnage. The US International Trade Administration's own country guide describes Botswana as the world's second leading diamond producer by value, built on Debswana, a fifty-fifty joint venture between the Botswana government and De Beers running the country's major mines (Jwaneng, Orapa and Letlhakane). Diamonds account for the large majority of Botswana's export earnings and roughly a third of government revenue, making this one of the clearest examples in world economic geography of a single mineral resource defining a national economy.

Quick revision points

• Cobalt: Democratic Republic of the Congo, roughly three-quarters of world mine production (220,000 of 290,000 tonnes, 2024) and over half of world reserves, from the Katanga copper-cobalt belt. Indonesia is a distant second, its cobalt a byproduct of nickel mining.
• Lithium: Chile holds the world's largest reserves (Atacama brine deposits) and is a top-two producer by volume; Australia mines more by tonnage from hard-rock spodumene.
• Nickel: Indonesia, roughly three-fifths of world mine production (2.2 of 3.7 million tonnes, 2024), from laterite deposits that also yield cobalt as a byproduct.
• Diamond: Botswana, the world's second leading producer by value, via Debswana, its fifty-fifty joint venture with De Beers; diamonds are the large majority of the country's exports.
• The recurring exam trap is treating "largest reserves," "largest production by volume" and "largest producer by value" as interchangeable; Chile and Botswana are each correctly matched on a different one of those three measures, not on tonnage alone.