Congo at the intersection of mineral diplomacy?

Given the uncertainty about Ukraine’s mineral potential, as well as the prospects of a realistic agreement for the United States, the Trump administration has turned its attention to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Unlike Ukraine, the DRC has proven reserves of critical minerals from cobalt to copper to rare soil in massive amounts of large -scale functional mines, as well as hundreds of thousands of craft miners. However, the country also presents a dilemma for Trump. In exchange for the preferential mineral approach, the DRC is seeking US military assistance to fight the rebellious M23 groups supported by Paul Kagame – authoritarian leader of Rwanda. Mr. Kagame has been credited to make his country a development power plant. However, he is also blamed for financing a power of power in DRC with mineral wealth to keep possible tribal conflicts from his border. Kagame is also one of the few African leaders who has approved for the fierce secession of President Trump’s help for many parts of the continent. While the Trump administration thinks of the perspective on DRC mineral diplomacy, it is important to subtract the memory lane with the previous US engagement in the country during its Belgian colonial period and after independence when it was known as Zaire.

For the first time I visited DRC with invitation from Professor Dieudonne Musibono at the University of Kinshasa in 2002. TRAVELING around DRC, one finds memories of the country’s latent wealth in strange ways. Kinshasa has its share of tall buildings, many of which have now been abandoned or at various stages of mismatch. Stada des Tata Raphael Stadium of the city, which hosted the famous boxing match “Rumble in the Jungle” between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in 1974, boasts a capacity of 100,000, but rarely sees many crowds for international events. The University of Kinshasa, supported during the Cold War with American financial aid as the largest high lesson center in Africa, still has over 29,000 students, but poor resources to support Young Congolese that aspires to the same hopes and dreams as all of us. Quite surprisingly, 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 nuclear facility here in the 1970s through the “Atoms for Peace” program. Our government acknowledged that the mines of the Congolese uranium had prompted the Manhattan project, and thus was very defender of the region’s mineral wealth. A new documentary nominated by Oscars has revealed, American musicians and politicians alike played a role in a coup that led to the destruction of the first elected leader instead of the country Patrice Lumumba.

In the northern jungles of Congo on the border with the Central Republic of Africa are the ruins of a city called Gbadolite, which are another bad memory of how the country’s wealth was spent within the generating memory. While much of the country left the Poverty of Abjekt, President Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country for nearly four decades (1965-1997) with US support, focused on the development of this distant corner of the country from which he originally came to power. An airport was built with a track to accommodate a concomonte and a terminal building decorated with the most selected European frescoes. The city had clean water and reliable electricity during its day in nineteen seventy. One of the best high schools in Africa was built to educate the population of the Equateur province that had supported the regime. Hospital facilities and roads were comparable to those in a developed country. Large mansions were built to accommodate the ruling elite, and the city is still remembered by many who saw the days of his glory as “jungle verses”. However, the importance of gbadolite was short -lived as the asymmetry of wealth were clearly unstable. The Mobutu regime finally fell to the rebels in 1997, and Despot that had looted over $ 5 billion of wealth from his land was forced to exile to Morocco. Almost three decades later, peace has not yet returned to Congo, and the country remains trapped in one of the most harassing civil wars in history that has received nearly six million lives since Mobutu’s exit.

What went wrong with the current Zaire and then the DRC development trajectory? Were Mobutu’s fault and his supporters in the West for all DRC problems? Even if he was the near cause, we have still faced the question of how he was able to seize power and guard it for 37 years. How did a place with so many atrophy and atrophy possible in what Paul Collier has called “lower billions”. Economists, political scientists and sociologists have all doubted about this phenomenon that a country that is rich in resources can be so underdeveloped and struck by conflict? Some have described this observation a “source curse”, which must make taboo mineral extraction for new states. It is a clash for resources to blame for conflict, or they are initial inequality and economic injustice the main cause; Or maybe both are connected in some way? Poetic alliterations such as “greed against the complaint” or “many paradox” have animated literature and captured the public’s imagination.

DRC mines are the latest image of the poster of hidden cost materials of technology. Even Joe Rogan gave a two-hour interview to Pulitzer-Prize nominated author, Sidhaarth Kara, who has mourned despair in many of the Congo cobalt mines. Since Rogan is one of the most favored media hosts for both President Trump and his close advisor Elon Musk, the minerals dealing with the DRC should consider some of the concerns raised by Kara. Undoubtedly, minerals have the potential to unite rich and poor countries for mutual benefits through diplomacy, but for this to be significant, there must be long -term commitment to sustainable economic paths. While President Trump considers the appointment of Lebanon-Nigerian business tycoon Massad Boulos as his special messenger in the Great Laka region of Africa, he should also consider a trip to Burundi which has one of the rare deposits of the highest degree land and fewer enclosures than DRC. We need to learn from the history of the transactional policy of transaction about minerals in Central Africa. Mineral diplomacy from the United States in Africa must ensure that any future agreement does not exacerbate conflicts or perpetuate poverty for short -term instrumental benefits that will return to follow us.