Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo – In the eastern city of the mineral-rich Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), home to some of the world’s largest cobalt and copper reserves, all eyes are on the outcome of a conference thousands of kilometers away.
On Wednesday, in Washington, D.C., U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will host the first Critical Minerals Ministers Meeting, where delegations from 50 countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, will discuss efforts to strengthen and diversify mineral supply chains as the United States seeks to counter China’s global dominance in the sector.
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As part of a “Resources for Security” agreement reached last year, the United States entered into a mining agreement with the government of Kinshasa to ensure the supply of essential components for technological innovation, economic strength and national security.
Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi has touted the economic benefits of the initiative, but many people in the country’s mining heartland, caught between poverty and armed violence, see only further repression on the horizon.
“We are being exploited by mineral extraction,” said Gerald Bunda, an economics student from Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, an important source of the world’s coltan, tin and gold resources. “There are investors who force us to work. Sometimes they force us off the land and force us to work in the mines for their own personal gain.
“We don’t want to be exploited any more.”
Bounda, 28, who was born near the mineral-rich city of Rubaya, accuses foreign multinational corporations of endangering Congolese lives by exposing people to poverty, low wages, child exploitation and environmental destruction.
He worries that Donald Trump’s administration’s greed for critical minerals could increase socio-political instability in many parts of the world.
“Here in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, those who finance mineral development, when they find new mines, collude with their leaders to buy land from local communities and evict them. This is the root cause of insecurity,” Bunda said.
He called on African leaders, particularly those in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to avoid becoming a “drop-in” and instead focus on their country’s rare earth future.
“They said, ‘Come and get our minerals.’
Congolese authorities are promoting the DRC as an energy transition solution because of the country’s large reserves of cobalt and lithium, which are essential for electric vehicle batteries and renewable technologies.
The United States has shown interest in brokering a peace deal between the conflict-ridden neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda last year, linking security guarantees directly to resource extraction.
President Trump claimed in December, “I actually stopped the wars in the Congo and Rwanda.” “And they said to me, ‘Please, please, we want you to come and take our minerals.’ We’ll do it.”
Koko Broko Gloire, a Congolese international affairs commentator based in Kenya, doubts whether the Democratic Republic of Congo can get anything concrete out of a deal with the United States. He believes the market for critical minerals is attracting the “greediness” of major world powers engaged in “increasingly geopolitical” battles.
But in the end, Coco says, whether the move will benefit the Democratic Republic of the Congo or not will depend on the will of the Congolese leadership.
“If this deal gives us the Congolese people access to roads from point A to point B, clean water, hospitals and water, then I think it’s a good deal,” he told Al Jazeera, calling on Democratic Republic leaders to ensure that the country does not leave empty-handed.
Before President Trump took office, former US President Joe Biden visited the region to discuss the Lobito Corridor rail infrastructure project. The Lobito Corridor rail infrastructure project, currently in disrepair in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is planned to link Angola with mining areas along the Atlantic coast, an important port for mineral exports from Africa to the United States.
Up to 6,500 people could be affected by displacement related to the development of the Lobito Corridor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to satellite imagery analysis conducted by Global Witness.
The campaign group said it conducted interviews with various social groups in Kolwezi, Democratic Republic of Congo last year, and also visited the railway line that will be removed during rehabilitation.
The report said the line was found to run through vulnerable communities that have benefited little from Kolwezi’s mining boom, highlighting a “complex” legal situation where the status of homes and buildings along the line is contested, as is the size of the area to be cleared.
For Global Witness, the Lobito Corridor will be a “litmus test” for Western partners, who argue that the project is a more equitable model for resource development.
Local communities will be ‘adversely affected’
Gentil Murmeh, 35, is an activist in Goma, working on issues of transparency and good governance. He stressed that the Washington conference was not a dinner party, but a call to demonstrate seriousness, especially regarding compliance with environmental standards, transparency in mine governance, and industrialization.
He believes that the importance of the mining agreement between the DRC and the United States cannot be assessed solely in terms of its geopolitical or international economic importance.
“This type of agreement risks turning the DRC into a mere supplier of strategic raw materials for Western interests and continuing a structurally imbalanced partnership,” he suggests.
John Katikomo, a Congolese environmental activist, says the foundations of a fair partnership between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the United States are already off to a bad start because the deal is “opaque” and Kinshasa authorities have not disclosed details to the public.
“Many people are misunderstood and resources related to these important minerals are under-allocated. Will the public benefit from this?” he asked.
Kuda Manjonjo, Just Transition Advisor at Kenya-based think tank PowerShift Africa, says Africa remains marginalized in global value chains despite accounting for the majority of critical minerals essential to the energy transition.
“This disparity reflects an unfair model of exploitation that hinders local development,” he said, underscoring the importance of rebalancing the situation, calling for more equitable governance, local investment in mineral processing and transformation, and improved African representation in strategic decisions regarding these resources.
Daniel Mukamba, another Goma resident, accused many multinational companies of trying to keep countries rich in natural resources suffering from the “resource curse”. He believes this curse will become a “cancer” that will be difficult to treat.
“If you look at the example of Walikale and Rubaya, these cities produce a lot of minerals such as coltan, gold, cassiterite and tourmaline, but the population is still poor,” Mukamba told Al Jazeera.
Both of these resource-rich eastern cities are currently held by the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group, which took control of much of the country’s east last year.
In the eastern province of South Kivu, opaque gold supply chains continue to be linked to conflict, human rights abuses and environmental destruction, according to a January report published by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.
War means illegal exploitation of resources.
Despite a U.S.-brokered peace deal between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda and another Qatar-brokered peace deal between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the M23 rebel group, fighting continues in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, close to areas rich in vital minerals.
In December, M23 captured the city of Uvira, about 300 kilometers (190 miles) from the lithium-rich province of Tanganyika. They have since retreated, but observers say clashes are occurring near Tanganyika province.
Many are concerned that escalating fighting could risk “unregulated” exploitation of mineral resources and are calling for a swift resolution to the conflict.
“When there is war, minerals are illegally exploited,” said Chirac Issa, an environmental activist based in Tanganyika province. “There are no government orders regulating the work of miners. From an environmental perspective, we are concerned that uncontrolled mining could cause environmental pollution and endanger the ecosystem.”
After the US-brokered “Resources for Security” agreement with Rwanda was first agreed in June, Congolese President Tshisekedi was optimistic about the deal, saying it aimed to “promote our strategic minerals, especially copper, cobalt and lithium, in a sovereign manner” while “ensuring a more equitable distribution of economic benefits to the Congolese people.”
He also said it would “pave the way for local transformation, the creation of thousands of jobs and a new economic model based on sovereignty and national value-add.”
However, Corneille Nanger, leader of the Fleuve Congo Alliance (AFC), an alliance with M23 that currently controls the capitals of North and South Kivu provinces, said the mining partnership between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the United States is “seriously flawed and unconstitutional.” He said there was a lack of transparency in the plan and last week criticized the “opacity surrounding the negotiations”. At a press conference in August, he also condemned the “sale” of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s natural resources.
Tshisekedi said last year that “the resources of the Democratic Republic of the Congo will never be sold or handed over to opaque interests” and that the country “will not sell its future or its dignity.”
He asserted that the DRC’s resources “will benefit the Congolese people first and foremost.”
But for those same Congolese in Goma who this week watched suit-clad foreign officials discuss plans for their country’s resources at official events thousands of kilometers away, the future is not as secure as the president would like to believe.
