The US finally caves to Zambia’s demands to desist from its indirect strategy of gaining access to its critical minerals, as it commits $1.5 billion to a data-sharing deal

Zambia and the United States have signed a Memorandum of Understanding and a data-sharing deal worth around $2 billion.

• Zambia and the United States signed a $2 billion Memorandum of Understanding to enhance healthcare, epidemic preparedness, and data-sharing.
• The agreement commits $1.5 billion from the US and $975 million from Zambia toward health initiatives, totaling approximately $2.5 billion.
• Negotiations overcame concerns about US access to Zambian medical data, ensuring that privacy rights were addressed.
• The final health deal is completely separate from any agreements related to Zambia’s critical minerals, following Zambia’s insistence on decoupling the issues.

The agreement is designed to provide financial and operational support for HIV/AIDS and malaria initiatives, maternal and child healthcare services, and measures aimed at enhancing Zambia’s capacity for epidemic preparedness and disease outbreak response.

Per the deal, the United States has committed $1.5 billion, while Zambia will allocate $975 million to its health budget, bringing the two governments’ combined commitments to about $2.5 billion.

The health agreement was signed after Zambia was able to resolve concerns over Washington’s demands for access to medical data, the country’s health minister said.

Outside of data-sharing concerns, governments across Africa have been skeptical about US health deals, owing to their suspicious stipulations concerning mineral access.

As a result, Zambia and the US have agreed on a critical-mineral deal that is detached from the health deal.

History of health deal between the US and Zambia

Back in May, Zambia revealed that the US health deal, which had been proposed months prior, was stalled because the US proposed to link its health funding to access to critical minerals.

At the time, Zambia’s Foreign Minister Mulambo Haimbe revealed that the United States had offered up to $2 billion in support over five years under a proposed health agreement.

However, he noted that certain data-sharing provisions raised concerns about potential violations of citizens’ privacy rights.

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He also revealed that Zambia had raised objections to a separate proposed agreement on critical minerals.

According to Haimbe, one of the key sticking points is the U.S. effort to tie both agreements together, making progress on the minerals deal conditional on the signing of the health memorandum of understanding.

Zambia’s firm position caused growing frustration among U.S. officials, following multiple unsuccessful attempts to secure the country’s commitment to a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) prior to an April 30 deadline.

According to outgoing US ambassador Michael Gonzales, the lack of a formal agreement has resulted in continued support working without a structured framework, thereby jeopardizing the delivery of essential interventions addressing HIV, malaria, maternity and child health, and epidemic preparedness.

“Instead ​of continuing to languish without engagement, the actual funding under our Health ⁠MOU should have started this month,” Gonzales said at the time.

This issue has been resolved as the US finally caved to Zambia’s request to separate its health deal from its intent to gain access to Zambia’s critical minerals, as reported by Bloomberg.

“What had been the position previously was that the two were coupled, and we as a government requested that we decouple the conversation on critical minerals on the one hand and the health MoU on the other,” Haimbe said on Thursday after Zambia inked the health MoU with the US.

“This has been done following our extensive consultation with each other and in keeping with how friends deal with matters and how partners deal with matters,” he added.

The transparency of the health deal was corroborated by US Embassy Chargé d’Affaires Mich Coker, who noted that the new agreement was solely focused on health.

“This agreement is entirely about health outcomes, health financing and health systems strengthening, period,” Coker said.

“There is nothing at all in this agreement anywhere that speaks to critical minerals, that speaks to any commercial matter or commercial arrangement whatsoever,” he added.