ArcelorMittal Liberia chief executive Michiel van der Merwe told the Liberia International Mining and Energy Conference that the company has invested nearly 4 billion dollars in the country, including about 800 million dollars on the government owned railway and port, and is ready to operate for another 40 years or more. The company reopened Liberia’s iron ore sector in 2011 and has operated through three presidential administrations.
The expansion numbers are the substance. Phase II, including Liberia’s first large scale iron ore concentrator, is expected to lift exports to more than 20 million tonnes in 2027, from under 5 million tonnes in 2024, with planning for future mine production of 30 million tonnes. Under the third amendment to its mineral development agreement, ratified earlier in 2026, other companies can access the 245 kilometre Tokadeh to Buchanan railway, with the government deciding users, and an independent operator will run the railway from 2030.
On the same stage, China’s ambassador Yin Chengwu pitched Beijing as Liberia’s partner for what comes next. He said a Chinese funded geological survey, the most comprehensive in more than five decades, had identified lithium, neodymium, nickel, cobalt, tantalum, niobium, manganese, copper and uranium beyond Liberia’s traditional iron ore, gold and diamonds, and he called for local processing and a stable investment climate, rejecting the weaponization of critical mineral resources as leverage in geopolitical games. The US chargé d’affaires also addressed the conference, on a Millennium Challenge Corporation compact focused on mining and electricity reform.
Read together, the two speeches price Liberia’s position. The incumbent’s value is delivered tonnes and a multi user railway; the challenger’s offer is geological knowledge and processing. Which deposits get developed, and on whose terms, is the decision Liberia’s new mining framework, covered on this site yesterday, now has to govern.