Investors are rushing back into Africa’s copper country

Mining investors are stampeding back into a region many had seemed determined to leave. Straddling the border of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, a vast forested area roughly the size of Portugal contains one of the world’s richest caches of minerals: copper for wires and cables, and cobalt for rechargeable batteries. At the intersection of the two African nations, trucks queue for about 53 km along a cratered road snaking past giant mounds of mining residue and villagers selling stacks of watermelons — most of them carrying metals vital to the global energy transition.