When US President Donald Trump boasted that he had stopped the conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) — though fighting persists in the DR Congo, at appalling human cost — he made clear that his goals went beyond a long-sought Nobel Peace prize.
“They said to me: ‘Please, please, we would love you to come and take our minerals.’ Which we’ll do,” the US president said.
Now he is following through. On Monday last week, he launched a new strategic reserve plan, “Project Vault,” worth almost US$12 billion. Two days later, US Vice President J.D. Vance hosted a summit seeking to create a trade zone for critical minerals.
The US — and others — are trying to counter the dominance of Beijing, which was far quicker to grasp the strategic importance of such resources. Key to its plan is a deal touted as a way to bring the DR Congo’s wealth and create incentives for peace. Few on the ground are convinced. The deal does nothing to help the DR Congo build processing capacity and requires it to freeze its tax and regulatory regimes for a decade. The EU likes to portray itself as taking higher ground, but in December last year, the parliament and council agreed to weaken key due diligence rules.
The incredible resources of the DR Congo have been violently plundered over centuries for the benefit of richer nations and a handful of individuals on the ground. Four-fifths of the population live below the poverty line. Extraction has meant exploitation and danger. The week before the Washington gathering, at least 200 artisanal miners were crushed to death or suffocated when a coltan mine in Rubaya in the eastern DR Congo collapsed. It became a tomb, one survivor said.
As the journalist Nicolas Niarchos writes in his new book, The Elements of Power, “tech profiteers, politicians, and battery-makers have made a trade-off: Cleaner power at home for pollution and suffering elsewhere.”
Meeting climate goals would require many times the current production of materials such as lithium and cobalt. However, environmental despoliation, the eviction of communities and the exploitation of laborers, including children, are not the inevitable results of the necessary shift away from fossil fuels. The non-governmental organization Global Witness suggests that Trump’s mineral-hunger is better explained by their use in military technology. Tantalum, extracted from coltan, is essential to jet engines and missiles, as well as smartphones and laptops.
Just as growing conflict helps to drive demand, so demand is fueling conflict. Rubaya is part of the swathes of land seized by M23 rebels in the eastern DR Congo in the past few years, with mines there generating an estimated US$800,000 monthly, funding the insurgency. The group is backed by Rwanda (although Kigali denies it) and experts say Rwanda is selling far more coltan than it can produce, with smuggling across the border reaching unprecedented levels. The EU minerals deal with Kigali has been rightly criticized.
Natural resources are increasingly intertwined with security policies across the continent via Russian private military companies, the US promise of peace brokering and China’s infrastructure-for-resources model, the African Policy Research Institute said recently.
Its report suggests that resource demand could give African states leverage to negotiate more equitable partnerships that benefit their populations. However, that depends on institutional strength, regional coordination and transparency in deal-making — as well as determination not to compromise human rights, environmental standards or national sovereignty, it said. The DR Congo’s example is not encouraging.
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