After Ukraine deal, US turns critical minerals gaze to Africa

Away from the headlines around the minerals deal with Ukraine, the US has pursued a potentially more significant critical metals deal in the Great Lakes region of Africa.

The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) reached out to US President Donald Trump's 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 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 the DRC and Rwanda as soon as this month, to be accompanied by bilateral minerals deals between the two countries and the US.

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.

The M23 rebels seized control of Goma and Bukavu, eastern DRC'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 DRC, having transitioned from an artisanal site to a fully-modernised operation that is the world's fourth largest producer of tin concentrates.

Bisie's operator, Alphamin Resources, quickly shut down and evacuated the site when M23 rebels closed in, sending tin prices into a frenzy and threatening the DRC government with the loss of a major source of revenue.

The fall of Walikale seems to have accelerated direct talks between the US government, the DRC and Rwanda, resulting in M23 fighters withdrawing in what they presented as a goodwill gesture before Qatar-brokered peace talks.

Alphamin resumed operations at Bisie on April 15. Bisie is the only official-sector mine in North and South Kivu provinces. Everything else is artisanal.

Researchers from The International Peace Information Service (Ipis) have mapped more than 2,800 sites in eastern DRC since 2009 and collected information from 829 active sites that it estimated employed  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 61% of miners at thee 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 DRC army.

This has been a problem for many years. The DRC 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 the DRC's eastern borders is a major problem, not only for the DRC government, but also for Western buyers due to the threat of conflict minerals contaminating the official supply chain.

The DRC's minerals wealth is undisputed and its potential rewards far more immediate than from the deal with Ukraine.

A peace deal between Rwanda, the DRC and the M23 rebel group would be an important first step to restoring order to the troubled Kivu provinces. However, there are other armed groups actively operating in the region and it is unclear how far the US would want to commit to any military presence to deter them.

The prize, however, is tantalisingly large.

The DRC 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 the DRC's mineral wealth is largely controlled by Chinese operators, which ship 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 the DRC's copper-belt mines. The aim is to use the railway as a generator of economic development and open up a western transport route for the DRC's metals.

China's response is a $1.4bn (R25.64bn) deal to upgrade the Tanzania-Zambia railway line that transports Chinese-produced metals eastward 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 new front in the strategic competition and a new chapter in the DRC's history.

Reuters

The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.