Column: After Ukraine deal, US turns its critical minerals gaze to Africa
Away from the headlines around the minerals deal with Ukraine, the United States has pursued a potentially even more significant critical metals deal in the Great Lakes region of Africa.
The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo reached out to the Donald Trump administration with a Ukrainian-style proposal in February in response to the rapid advance of the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group in the east of the country,
The US government has responded enthusiastically with a flurry of negotiations aimed at ending a decades-long conflict born out of the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
The political momentum is building towards a potential peace deal between Congo and Rwanda as soon as May, to be accompanied by bilateral minerals deals between both countries and the United States.
At stake are the mineral riches of North and South Kivu provinces, a major but highly problematic source of metals such as tin, tungsten and coltan.
Saving the Bisie tin mine
The M23 rebels seized control of Goma and Bukavu, eastern Congo’s two largest cities, in February. By early March, they had advanced rapidly westwards to Walikale, the location of the Bisie tin mine.
Bisie is a poster child for ethical mining in the Congo, having transitioned from an artisanal site to a fully-modernized operation that is the world’s fourth largest producer of tin concentrates.
Bisie’s operator, Alphamin Resources, quickly shut down and evacuated the site as M23 rebels closed in, sending tin prices into a frenzy and threatening the Congolese government with the loss of a major source of revenue.
The fall of Walikale seems to have accelerated direct talks between the US government, Congo and Rwanda, resulting in M23 fighters withdrawing in what they presented as a goodwill gesture ahead of Qatar-brokered peace talks.
Alphamin resumed operations at Bisie on April 15.
Armed riches
Bisie is the only official-sector mine in North and South Kivu provinces. Everything else is artisanal.
Researchers from The International Peace Information Service have mapped over 2,800 sites in eastern Congo since 2009 and collected information from 829 active sites that it estimated employed some 132,000 miners between 2021 and 2023.
Of the sites surveyed, 85% were mining gold and most of the rest digging for the 3T minerals – tin, tungsten and tantalum, the latter occurring as coltan ore.
The IPIS estimates that 61% of miners at these sites were affected by “armed interference”, defined as coercive rent-taking, from one of the many armed groups operating in the region, not least the Congolese army.
This has been a problem for many years. Indeed, Congo was the template for what became known as “conflict minerals” legislation such as the 2010 Dodds-Frank Act requiring US companies to adhere to responsible sourcing rules.
Sadly, not much has changed on the ground.
The M23 rebels themselves are involved in the minerals trade. Artisanal producers of coltan in the town of Rubaya pay a 15% tax to the group, Reuters journalists found on a visit to rebel-controlled areas.
The seepage of metals across Congo’s eastern borders is a major problem, not just for the Congolese government, but also for Western buyers due to the threat of conflict minerals contaminating the official supply chain.
The great railway game
Congo’s minerals wealth is undisputed and its potential rewards far more immediate than from the deal with Ukraine.
A peace deal between Rwanda, Congo and the M23 rebel group would be an important first step to restoring order to the troubled Kivu provinces.
But there are plenty of other armed groups actively operating in the region and it is unclear how far the United States would want to commit to any military presence to deter them.
The prize, however, is tantalizingly large.
Congo is also one of the world’s richest sources of copper and cobalt, which are produced far away from the Great Lakes region in the southern province of Katanga.
This part of Congo’s mineral wealth is largely controlled by Chinese operators, which ship both raw materials and finished metal back to China.
The West would love to loosen China’s grip.
A lot of investment is going into the Lobito Corridor project, which will rehabilitate and extend a railway line linking the Angolan port of Lobito with Congo’s copper-belt mines.
The aim is to use the railway as a generator of economic development and also open up a western transport route for Congo’s metals.
China’s response is a $1.4 billion deal to upgrade the Tanzania-Zambia railway line that transports Chinese-produced metals eastwards to the port of Dar es Salaam.
Railways have until now defined the great minerals game being played out between East and West in the heart of Africa.
A minerals-for-security deal in the north of the country would open a whole new front in that strategic competition and a new chapter in Congo’s history.
(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters.)
(Editing by Barbara Lewis)
{{ commodity.name }}
{{ post.title }}
{{ post.date }}
Comments