The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) supplies most of the world’s cobalt, but exporting semi-finished or finished products rather than raw materials would better help the country capture the value of the metal used in high power lithium-ion batteries.

A new report has found that the export of raw materials is not economically beneficial to the DRC and other countries with significant resources in the long-term, compared to exporting products like battery cathode precursor materials.…