When Copper Breaks the Model: Three Futures No One Planned For

Written By: Mutisunge Zulu 

Chief Risk Officer | Global Executive PhD Cand. Business Mgt, AI & Strategy at ESCP Business School | Global Executive MBA (Manchester)

Copper’s breach above $11,000/MT didn’t just surprise markets, it invalidated the analytical architecture many of us have used for decades. What the industry long regarded as a cyclical industrial metal has morphed into a strategic asset class, now central to Artificial Intelligence (AI) capacity expansion, global grid hardening, and the accelerating electrification cycle. Its price action increasingly reflects geopolitical tension, structural supply deficits, and technological demand curves that do not behave like anything in prior commodity history.

For producers like Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, copper’s price trajectory has become inseparable from sovereign creditworthiness. It dictates fiscal space, debt-servicing viability, and the pace of economic reform. And while Goldman Sachs continues to highlight that momentum may be stretching beyond fundamentals, the market has forced risk officers, investors, and policymakers to confront futures well outside traditional scenario envelopes.

Below are the three futures that matter now – the bull, the base, and the bear – each representing a regime shift that legacy models never contemplated.

🟢 1. Bull Scenario: The Market That Outgrows Reality

Copper: $13,000–$15,000+/MT (2027-2028) Probability: approximately 25%

In this upside regime, copper becomes the defining bottleneck of the 21st-century economy. Structural mine underperformance persists, ore grades deteriorate, and greenfield projects fail to scale. At the same time, AI, EV penetration, and national-grid modernization create nonlinear, compounding demand.

For Zambia and the DRC, this is the scenario that rewrites the sovereign balance sheet. Elevated copper prices:

• Lift fiscal revenues
• Strengthen reserves and FX buffers
• Compress sovereign risk premia
• Improve debt-service capacity under International Monetary Fund programs

This is the only future where price does the heavy lifting, turning macro vulnerability into temporary fiscal strength.

Key Drivers: Persistent supply deficits, Exponential AI-driven electricity demand, EV/renewable acceleration, Investor inflows and weaker USD

Why it breaks the old model: Legacy models assume copper demand is cyclical. The future suggests it is exponential.

🟡 2. Base Scenario: High Floors, Thin Margins, Constant Tension

Copper: $10,000–$12,000/MT (2026–2028) Probability: approximately 50%

This is the most probable path: a market that stays structurally tight but avoids meltdown. Supply improves, but slowly. Demand remains firm. Inventories remain chronically thin. Copper shifts from a volatile commodity to a strategically priced input, embedded into the architecture of global growth.

For Zambia and the DRC, this is the world of stability without resolution. Revenues improve and become more predictable, but debt trajectories do not fully reset. The sovereign risk premium narrows, but not enough to eliminate structural vulnerability without deeper reform.

Key Drivers: Gradual supply normalization, Stable global demand, China stabilizing, not expanding and moderately softer USD

Why it breaks the model: It introduces the idea of a permanently elevated floor – a fundamental departure from historical mean reversion.

🔴 3. Bear Scenario: The Unlikely Calm After the Storm

Copper: $7,500–$9,000/MT (2027–2028) Probability: approximately 25%

Here, the supply response arrives earlier than expected. Major mines recover. New African and South American capacity ramps up. Recycling expands. Meanwhile, China slows more decisively, EV adoption plateaus, and AI-related data-center rollout hits energy constraints.

For Zambia and the DRC, this is the stress scenario. Lower copper prices squeeze fiscal revenues, pressure currencies, widen sovereign spreads, and complicate refinancing. Policy optionality narrows, and debt-restructuring timelines risk slipping.

Key Drivers: Mine recovery and new capacity, Higher recycling flows, Slower China and EV demand and Stronger USD / tighter financial conditions

Why it breaks the model: It challenges the assumption that a structural breakout necessarily locks in high-price persistence.

Strategic Implication: Copper Is Now a Signal – Not a Material

Risk teams who treat copper as a traditional commodity will mis-estimate exposures. Copper now functions as a forward indicator of technological scaling capacity, grid resilience, global liquidity conditions, and sovereign fragility.

For producers: Don’t hedge away the upside tail – it may be the only balance-sheet repair mechanism available in the next decade.

For manufacturers, utilities, and data-center operators: Copper risk is operational risk. Price volatility translates directly into capex uncertainty and scaling delays.

For sovereigns like Zambia and the DRC: High-price windows are political and fiscal capital. Use them decisively, they rarely last.

For stress testing purposes you cannot model copper at a single price point anymore. You must stress outcomes at $15,000/MT and $8,000/MT simultaneously.

For policymakers: Copper’s trajectory increasingly dictates how fast the energy transition and digital infrastructure can advance.

Copper has broken the model because the world that produced the model has changed. The real risk now isn’t the volatility; it’s the failure to adapt before the next break arrives.