Europe cannot build the battery recycling capacity its regulations demand without deeper cooperation with African supplier states, according to a new analysis published by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

The report, titled "Power up: How EU-Africa cooperation can drive Europe's battery recycling future," frames battery recycling not as a waste-management issue but as a raw-materials security question — one where the jurisdiction that controls feedstock and refining links controls the outcome.

Takeaway: the story here is feedstock politics, not bin collections.

Why does recycling depend on Africa?

The ECFR argument runs through the material stream. Batteries for electric vehicles and grid storage depend on critical raw materials — lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite — much of which the EU imports, with African producers occupying key positions in several of those chains.

Recycling recovers those metals from end-of-life batteries and production scrap, cutting import exposure. But a European recycling industry needs two things at scale: collected end-of-life volume, which arrives slowly as today's EV fleet ages, and industrial scrap, which flows through battery gigafactories and their supply chains from the start.

The analysis contends that how the EU structures its partnerships with African mineral producers will shape where refining, precursor production and ultimately recycling capacity actually land.

Takeaway: he who controls the material chain decides where the recycling plants get built.

What does the EU's own regulation require?

The backdrop is the EU Battery Regulation, adopted in 2023, which set binding recovery and recycled-content obligations for battery makers operating in the European single market. Those requirements give recyclers a guaranteed demand signal — recycled content must go into new batteries — but they also put a clock on capacity build-out across the bloc.

The ECFR analysis positions EU-Africa cooperation as a decisive variable in whether European recyclers can meet that demand with a reliable, competitively sourced material base rather than a fragmented one.

Takeaway: the regulation creates the market; diplomacy decides whether Europe can supply it.

What does ECFR propose?

The report argues for structuring EU-Africa relations so that battery value chains — extraction, processing, recycling — develop as connected systems rather than separate bilateral deals. Its core claim is that Europe's green industrial policy and its Africa policy have been running on separate tracks, and that recycling capacity is where the two tracks have to meet.

The ECFR is a pan-European think tank; the analysis is a policy argument, not a corporate announcement. No tonnage, plant capacity or investment figure accompanies the publication itself.

Takeaway: this is a framework paper — the projects it calls for have not been announced yet.

What happens next?

The milestones to watch are regulatory and commercial at once: implementation of the EU Battery Regulation's recovery and recycled-content targets, the pace of gigafactory scrap generation in Europe, and whether any joint EU-African battery-material ventures materialize with named facilities behind them.

Until a company or government puts a tonnage figure and a site against this agenda, it stays a commitment on paper — one with a deadline attached.