Given the uncertainty on Ukraine’s mineral potential as well as the prospects of a realistic deal for the United States, the Trump administration has turned its attention to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Unlike Ukraine, DRC has proven reserves of critical minerals from cobalt to copper to rare earths in massive quantities with functional large-scale mines as well as hundreds of thousands of artisanal miners. However, the country poses a dilemma for Trump as well. In exchange for preferential minerals access, the DRC is asking for US military assistance to fight the M23 rebel groups who are supported by Paul Kagame – the authoritarian leader of Rwanda. Mr. Kagame is credited for making his country a developmental powerhouse. Yet he is also blamed for financing a proxy war in DRC with mineral fortunes to keep potential tribal conflicts away from his border. Kagame is also one of the few African leaders to have approved of President Trump’s austere severance of foreign aid to many parts of the continent. As the Trump administration ponders the prospect for mineral diplomacy with DRC, it is important to go down memory lane with prior US engagement in the country during its Belgian colonial period and after independence when it was known as Zaire.
I first visited DRC on invitation from Professor Dieudonne Musibono at the University of Kinshasa in 2002. Traveling around the DRC, one finds reminders of the country’s latent wealth in strange ways. Kinshasa has its share of tall buildings, many of which are now abandoned or in varying stages of disrepair. The city’s Stade des Tata Raphael stadium, which hosted the famed “rumble in the jungle” boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in 1974, boasts a capacity of a 100,000, but rarely sees many crowds these days for international events. The University of Kinshasa, supported during the Cold War with American financial assistance as the largest center of higher learning in Africa, still has over 29,000 students, but meager resources to support young Congolese who aspire for the same hopes and dreams as us all. Amazingly enough, the university has a small experimental nuclear reactor that was first built during the Belgian colonial period by the American firm General Atomics in 1958. The United States supported additional servicing of the nuclear facility here in the 1970s through the “Atoms for Peace” program. Our government recognized that Congolese uranium mines had fueled the Manhattan project, and hence was highly protective of the mineral wealth of the region. A new Oscar-nominated documentary has revealed, America musicians and politicians alike played a role in the coup that led to the demise of the country’s first democratically elected leader Patrice Lumumba.
In the northern jungles of Congo bordering the Central African Republic are the ruins of a city called Gbadolite, which are another sinister reminder of how the country’s wealth was wasted within generational memory. While much of the country languished in abject poverty, President Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country for almost four decades (1965- 1997) with U.S. support, focused on developing this remote corner of the country from where he originally came to power. An airport was built with a runway to accommodate a Concorde and a terminal building embellished with choicest European frescoes. The town had clean water and reliable electricity during its heyday in the nineteen seventies. One of the finest high schools in Africa was built to educate the population of the Equateur province that had supported the regime. The hospital facilities and roads were comparable to those in a developed country. Grand palaces were built to accommodate the ruling elite, and the city is still remembered by many who saw its glory days as “Versailles of the Jungle.” Yet the prominence of Gbadolite was short-lived as such asymmetries of wealth were clearly unsustainable. The Mobutu regime finally fell to rebels in 1997, and the despot who had looted over $5 billion in wealth from his land was forced into exile to Morocco. Almost three decades later, peace has still not returned to Congo, and country remains trapped in one of the most excruciating series of civil wars in history that has taken nearly six million lives since Mobutu’s exit.
What went wrong with the erstwhile Zaire and subsequently the DRC’s development trajectory? Were Mobutu and his supporters in the West to blame for all of the DRC’s woes? Even if he was the proximate cause, we are still confronted with the question of how he was able to assume power and retain it for 37 years. How did a country with so much potential languish and atrophy into what Paul Collier has called “the bottom billion.” Economists, political scientists and sociologists have all puzzled over this phenomenon of how a country that is rich in resources can be so abysmally underdeveloped and stricken by conflict? Some have termed this observation a “resource curse,” which should make mineral extraction for new states taboo. Is a scramble for resources to blame for conflict, or are incipient inequalities and economic injustice the primary cause; or perhaps the two are related in some way? Poetic alliterations such as “greed versus grievance” or “the paradox of plenty” have animated the literature and caught the public’s imagination.
The mines of DRC are the ultimate poster image of the hidden material costs of technology. Even Joe Rogan gave a two-hour interview to Pulitzer-prize nominated author Sidharth Kara, who has lamented the despair at many of the cobalt mines of Congo. Since Rogan is among the most favored media hosts for both President Trump and his close advisor Elon Musk, the minerals deal with DRC should consider some of the concerns raised by Kara. No doubt minerals have the potential to bring rich and poor countries together for mutual benefit through diplomacy, but for this to be meaningful, there needs to be long-term engagement towards sustainable economic pathways. As President Trump considers the nomination of Lebanese-Nigerian business tycoon Massad Boulos as his Special Envoy to Africa’s Great Lakes region, he should also consider a trip to Burundi which has one of the highest grade rare earth deposits and fewer conflict encumbrances than DRC. We must learn from the sordid history of transactional politics around minerals in Central Africa. Mineral diplomacy by the United States in Africa should ensure that any future deals do not exacerbate conflicts or perpetuate poverty for short-term instrumental gains that will come back to haunt us.
