ASCENDANCE INTELLIGENCE | EXPLAINER

What Is a Qualifying Strategic Project (QSP)?

The ownership test that decides which Congolese projects get the agreement’s benefits, and the twenty-year clock written into it.

To qualify, an American investor does not need to own the project outright. Forty percent is enough, if it comes with control. The US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement is built to care less about how much of a project American capital owns than about who decides where its output goes.

A Qualifying Strategic Project (QSP) is a Congolese mining or infrastructure project that meets the ownership, control, and offtake criteria set out in Article VIII and Annex 1 of the agreement. Meeting them gives the project access to the SPA’s benefits, including preferential treatment and the fiscal incentives the Congo committed to enact. A project becomes a QSP when either government, or the US Ambassador, notifies the Joint Steering Committee.

Key takeaways

• A QSP is a project that qualifies for the SPA’s benefits by passing ownership, control, and offtake tests. It is not the same thing as a Strategic Asset Reserve asset.
• Qualification needs either majority US ownership, or at least 40 percent US and allied ownership paired with effective control: a board majority, veto rights, or offtake rights.
• Competing equity is capped at 40 percent today, stepping down to 30, then 20, then 10 percent over twenty years. The clock lives here.
• A qualifying project must direct its output to agreed buyers and use the Sakania-Lobito Corridor where geography allows.
• Qualifying types span new and existing mines, processing and smelting, infrastructure, and tailings reprocessing.

What makes a project a QSP?

Article VIII sets the gate. Any Congolese project that is not majority-owned by the Congo or its state enterprises, and that meets the Annex 1 criteria, becomes a QSP once either government or the US Ambassador notifies the Joint Steering Committee. The exclusion of state-controlled projects is built in: the QSP track is for privately and foreign-led projects, not for assets the Congolese state already controls.

How much does an American investor need to own?

This is the part most readers get wrong, and it is the more interesting rule. There are two routes to qualification. The first is straightforward majority: at least 51 percent held by a US person. The second is the one that matters in practice: at least 40 percent held by US and allied investors, paired with effective control.

Effective control is defined three ways. A majority of the board. Veto rights over key decisions. Or offtake rights, control over where the project’s production is sold. So a 40 percent stake with a board majority qualifies, and a 51 percent passive stake is the fallback, not the standard. The agreement is built around control of decisions and output, not headline equity. The inclusion of offtake rights as a form of control is the tell: the SPA treats the power to direct where the metal goes as equivalent to owning the mine.

What happens to competing investors over time?

They are counted down. Equity held by non-aligned parties, which in practice means Chinese capital, is capped at 40 percent today, then steps to 30 percent after five years, 20 percent after ten, and 10 percent after twenty. This is the clock referenced across the whole framework, and this is where it is anchored. Any project that wants the agreement’s benefits, or wants to keep them, faces a schedule that shrinks competing ownership over two decades.

What does a project owe once it qualifies?

Qualification is conditional, not a one-time stamp. A QSP must meet the offtake guidelines set by the Joint Steering Committee, directing its production toward the US market and agreed buyers, and it must use the Sakania-Lobito Corridor where that is geographically feasible. The benefits come with standing obligations on where the output flows and how it leaves the country.

What kinds of projects qualify?

The types are broad: greenfield and brownfield mining, beneficiation, integral infrastructure, and tailings reprocessing. Annex 1 puts particular weight on remote and landlocked sites, post-conflict and fragile areas, refining and smelting, and new greenfield development. The list is built to pull capital toward processing and toward hard places, not only toward the easy, already-producing mines.

QSP or SAR? What is the difference?

They are routinely confused. The Strategic Asset Reserve (Article IV) is the list of assets the Congo reserves for US-first access. A QSP (Article VIII) is a project that qualifies for the agreement’s benefits by passing the ownership and offtake tests. One answers which assets American investors get to see first. The other answers which projects get the SPA’s advantages. A reserve asset can be developed into a QSP, but they are different mechanisms answering different questions.

Why QSP status is the lever that shapes ownership

The QSP rules are how the SPA actually changes who owns and controls Congolese projects over time. The control test and the twenty-year clock work together to convert a starting position, in which Chinese firms held an estimated 80 percent of mining output when the agreement was signed, into a managed decline, project by project, for any project that wants the agreement’s benefits. Which projects have been designated QSPs, and on what terms, changes constantly and is tracked in our ongoing analysis.

The bottom line

QSP status is where the SPA’s ambition becomes a balance-sheet question. A project does not have to be American-owned to qualify. It has to be American-controlled in the ways that decide where the metal goes. The number that matters is not the equity split on signing day. It is whether the control rights, and the twenty-year clock, point the project’s output where Washington wants it.

Sources: US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement, Article VIII and Annex 1, with Articles IV, IX, and XII, signed Washington, December 4, 2025. Chinese share of Congolese mining output: contemporaneous market reporting, 2025-2026. Last reviewed: June 2026.

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