Africa Mines: Dentons and Clifford Chance at African Mining Week 2026 to Shed Light on Legal Frameworks for Mining Investment

In June 2026, Dentons opened a new office in Kolwezi, the mining capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, reinforcing its presence in one of Africa's main copper and cobalt markets. According to Africa Newsroom (APO), this expansion is part of the development of the firm's mining practice, which now covers 17 African countries and handles transactions, regulations, and mining project development. At African Mining Week (AMW) 2026, scheduled in Cape Town from October 14 to 16, Iyunola Adekanye, partner at Dentons, and Ope Osinubi, senior associate at Clifford Chance, will speak on the panel "Accelerating Mineral Production: The Energy, Water & Waste Nexus". They will examine the legal and policy frameworks structuring investment in the African mining value chain, as governments and companies increasingly focus on energy, water, and infrastructure constraints determining project commissioning. Meanwhile, Clifford Chance advises institutions such as Deutsche Bank, the African Development Bank, the West African Development Bank, Standard Bank, and Stanbic IBTC Bank on infrastructure and extractive project financing, and structured a 250 million dollar financing for Aradel Energy in Nigeria. For the DRC, which seeks to increase domestic value capture from its resources, and for international investors, the clarification of regulatory frameworks and legal structuring directly conditions the ability to transform copper, cobalt, and other critical mineral deposits into bankable projects. Dentons' establishment in Kolwezi illustrates the physical proximity of major firms to production basins, amid a backdrop of mining code revisions in Southern Africa and still-high global interest rates, which increase financing costs.