Africa’s Recidivist Self-Enslavement: Mortgaging  DRC’s Sovereignty with Mineral Deals

Bola A. Akinterinwa 

To which world will Africa belong in the foreseeable future? Many people strongly, but wrongly, believed that the time Africa belonged to the primitive world has been thrown into the garbage of history. However, we observe that, sooner than later, a new world cannot but be created in order to accommodate Africa alone in the world. It should be recalled that many worlds exist based on different criteria. Which world will there be for Africa?

Firstly, the world has been geo-politically divided by the equator. The equator, at the point of Kiribati, divided the earth into two hemispheres: Northern and Southern. This is one world of two hemispheres. There is also the world defined by politico-economic factors which divided the world into three: First, Second, and Third, Worlds. Politically, it was a Cold War era definition in which the United States, the NATO and its allies were considered as the First World. The usage of the Second World was reserved for Soviet Union and its allies (the Communist Bloc: Soviet Union, China, Cuba and allies). The countries that claimed non-alignment policy were referred to as the Third World. In the three cases, the definienda for the classification was political alliance or the camp to which one belongs. Put differently, economically, the first world is the developed world in terms of industrialisation and level of democratic freedoms, while the Second World referred to the Communists with centrally-planned economies. The Third World is made up of countries that were considered poor or under-developed. Even when the notion of ‘developing nations’ was introduced to replace ‘Third World’ because of its ambiguity, some observers still came up with the idea of a Fourth World. Whatever is the case, the first Cold War era has ended. Another one is in the making.

And perhaps more interestingly, there is still the World defined by regions and that is the UN-defined world of eight regions. In this regard, Africa is considered a region even though the 1991 Abuja Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community redefined Africa to be of Five Regions. With the deepening self-enslavement policies in Africa, and particularly in the DRC, Africa may no longer have a region peculiar to it except in terms of self-ruins.

Congolese Self-Enslavements 

The DRC is deepening self-enslavement with its natural and mineral resources by over emphasising the factor of immediacy to the detriment of long-term national survival. The DRC is believed to have about $24 trillion in untapped raw materials, and therefore, one of the richest in the world in natural resources. In other words, the DRC is potentially, but not yet manifestly, rich. The DRC does not have the capacity required to mine its resources and have to depend on friendly developed countries for the exploitation of the resources. As of 1960, the DRC had a GDP per capita of about $220 only. The per capita income declined to $197 in 1961 and increased to $235 the following year. It increased further to $376 in 1963. The years 1964 and 1965 witnessed a decline of about 4%. According to IMF sources, the per capita income declined from $380 in 1960 to $240 in 1990. This was making one step forward and two steps backward.

The DRC which could not boast of five medical doctors in 1960, has an economy that is almost entirely based on the extraction of minerals of which copper and diamonds were and still are the main export minerals. As of today, the DRC is still seen as a country plagued by decades of war, sexual violence, and widespread poverty. Should God be blamed for endowing the DRC with abundant natural resources? Should the Congolese leaders be blamed? Should the colonialists be held responsible? If the colonialists exploited Africa, enslaved Africans, and carted away their sources of wealth, how do we explain and understand the invitation to the United States of Donald Trump to come and perpetuate what the colonialists did that were annoyingly condemned? Why self-enslavement again? Is there any European ‘juju’ being used on Africa? Why is Africa a victim of Euro-American magic? It is against this background that the issue of DRC’s extension of a kind invitation to the United States to come and exploit Congolese mineral resources in exchange for military aid and assistance is explicated today. It is also against this same background that we raise the issue of conflict between DRC’s national sovereignty and African Union (AU)’s supranational sovereignty. In our view, the invitation is nothing more than self-re-enslavement even though many see it as a trade barter. Without jot of doubt, President Donald cannot but be happy with the DRC’s proposal because it falls under Trump’s foreign transactional policy. Besides, the United States needs the strategic raw material badly to be able to respond to current global challenges.

The development clearly points to a bleak future for Africa for various reasons. First, Nigeria’s Commissioner for External Affairs, Dr Okoi Arikpo, led African counterparts in the campaigns against the exploitation of African raw materials exclusively for the development of Europe. There is nothing wrong in exporting raw materials to earn foreign exchange. However, when the exportation is done to the detriment of Africa’s long-term development agenda, something must be wrong. Additionally, if Africa as a collective says emphasis should be on intra-Africa development, in terms of collective sovereignty, and the DRC, within the context of her national sovereignty, has little regard for the long term preservation of national resources, it means that national sovereignty is competing seriously with African supranational sovereignty. This also has the potential to antagonise the promotion of regional integration as a tool of evolving a United States of Africa in the mania of Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah.

As such, Africa’s future cannot but be bleak because of the disregard for public concerns. The reckless exploitation of Africa’s natural resources to the advantage of Africa’s elite, but to the detriment of the people’s interest, has increasingly been of major concerns to several observers. Kieron Monks of the CNN has explained ‘why the wealth of Africa does not make Africans wealthy.’ Even though the Katanga province in the DRC has enormous deposits of diamond, gold, tantalum, tin, tungsten, etc. the problem remains that it is still the elite that are always enriched with the mining of the resources. Consequently, African leaders should learn to first remove the impediments to peaceful co-existence, ensure good governance, and discourage the use of force in the DRC.  The war cannot be helpful to the purposes of regional and continental integration.

In the words of Monks, ‘Katanga saw a spectacular mining boom around the turn of the century, when President Laurent-Désiré Kabila and then his son, Joseph, licensed international mining companies to tap its treasures.’ We do not have any qualms with licensing some mining companies to exploit DRC’s natural resources if the dividends would also accrue to the ordinary Congolese. When the riches generated are only meant for the Congolese elite and the prospectors, there cannot but be problems, crisis and conflicts. In fact, Monks further explained the problem as follows: ‘from 1999 to 2002, the Kabila regime transferred ownership of at least $5 billion of assets from the state-mining sector to private companies or benefit for the state treasury, UN investigation found. The bonanza coincided with a ruthless crackdown on dissent.’

The crackdown of the dissent was to the extent that when, in 2004, a civilian group protested against an Australian firm, Anvil Mining, in Kilwa Village, accusing it of making much huge profit without rewarding the local workforce, the Congolese army ‘crushed the uprising and killed around 100 people, many by summary execution, according to a UN report. This situation was made possible because of the simultaneous wielding of commercial and political power by the prospecting Western governments. Tom Burgis of the Financial Times reportedly in his book, The Looting Machine, said the ‘Western governments are not supposed to wield commercial and political power at the same time, and certainly not to use one to benefit the other.’ However, both powers were consciously merged by the Western governments.

As explicated by Burgis, an investigative journalist that has served in Lagos and other African cities, ‘in colonial States… the British or Portuguese would cultivate a small group of local people who would fuse political and commercial power to control the economy. When the foreign power leaves, you are left with an elite that has no division between political and commercial power. The only source of wealth is mines or oilfields, and that is a recipe for ultra-corrupt States.’   

Burgis could not have been more correct in his observations. Are the Kabilas not colonial elites? Why should complaints by the people against an Australian multinational not be investigated and objectively addressed? Why should heavy weapons be used against the people to the extent of their summary execution, and 100 people being killed for asking for extension of mining dividends to the workforce? If the colonialists exploited and enslaved Africans, why should the same Africans accept to be used for the implementation of the same colonial policies of enslavement? Why condemn colonial exploitation but replacing it with African elite exploitation? Is it not better to condemn the act of exploitation than condemning the exploiter? If it is not better and there is the need to condemn both the act and the exploiter, shouldn’t the condemnation be in defence of the national interest of the people? 

Mortgaged National and Supranational Sovereignty 

Many people condemn the enslavement and colonisation of Africa. In fact, several scholars blame the colonialists for Africa’s development setbacks. Most unfortunately, however, never has there been any decolonisation. Colonisation has only been repackaged and represented to the colonised for re-evaluation and approval.

And true enough, Africa has only moved from political colonisation to technologized colonisation. Africa’s admiration for technology is to the extent that users of such technology cannot live without it. Mobile phones and personal computers are cases in point. Africans buy aircraft but the servicing is hardly done in Africa. The CKD (Completely-Knocked-Down) parts are made available outside of Africa. 

And perhaps more disturbingly, as far back as the 1960s, James Ngugi made it clear in his Weep Not Child, that a Whiteman is always a Whiteman but a Blackman is never a Blackman. What makes a Whiteman what he is always and why is a Blackman not what he truly is? Why is Nigeria fantastically corrupt? Why is it that Nigerians are always well trained at home, here in Nigeria, and they cannot perform well, but when they ‘Andrew’ or ‘Japa’ themselves out of the country, they end up always becoming the primus inter pares?  The Nigerian virus that always make the environment inclement for Nigerian professionals to thrive at home, and thereby compelling them to export themselves to developed countries cannot be different from the viruses in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) which has called for foreign exploitation of Congolese mineral resources.

As reported by The Telegraph (London), on Thursday, March 20, 2025, President Felix Tshisekedi wrote to congratulate Donald Trump on his re-election as US President. In the letter, the DRC leader said ‘the United States is able to use either pressure or sanctions to make sure that armed groups who are in the DRC can be kept at bay.’ More importantly, President Tshisekedi told President Trump that his ‘election has ushered in the golden age for America,’ and that DRC-US partnership would provide the United States with a strategic advantage by securing critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium, copper and tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo.’ 

In this regard, President Tshisekedi, who is under serious threats by the rebels waging war against his administration, has proposed the negotiation and signing of a ‘formal security pact with the United States in the hope that the pact would help to defeat the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels fighting to unseat the Tshisekedi government. But true enough, the rebels are on record to have captured many significant mineral-rich parts of eastern DRC, including the cities of Goma and Bukavu. Explained differently, the war between the rebels and the government of President Tshisekedi largely involves the quest to control the mineral resources of the DRC. Apart from the fact that Rwanda is reportedly backing the M23 rebels, it has also been rightly argued by Byron Cabrol, a Senior Africa analyst with the DragonFly, that ‘it would be a struggle to entice US mining companies to invest in Congo due to poor infrastructure, insecurity, corruption and the dominance of Chinese firms. 

The challenges identified by Byron Cabrol are valid but not to the extent of deterring the United States of Donald Trump from acquiring what will enable Making America Great Again or sustaining his ‘America First policy.’ These policies require acquiring all necessary mineral resources needed to boost industrial productivity in the US. The mere fact that it is the DRC that has reportedly written to the US president to consider the possibility of a formal agreement to enable US access to DRC’s mineral resources in exchange for military assistance in combatting the rebellion against Tshisekedi, it cannot but be suicidal for Donald Trump not to take advantage of the offer.

Tshisekedi’s offer is not only open to the United States, but also open to the EU countries. It is an open competition for strategic raw materials. For instance, The US has trade war with the Chinese who are omnipresent in the DRC. Consequently, the DRC’s offer provides an invited opportunity for the United States to compete openly with the Chinese and the Europeans. This also raises other questions on the extent to which a third country can interfere in the conduct and management of national affairs of a country. 

There is no disputing the fact that the AU, as a supranational authority, can interfere and intervene in any of its Member States. The 1963 OAU Charter that provided for non-interference in the domestic affairs of the Signatory States has been replaced with the Constitutive Act of the African Union which provides for intervention, if need be, in the domestic affairs of Member States of the Union. UN Charter, Article 2(7) prohibits intervention, and not interference, in the domestic affairs of UN Member States. Use of force is only allowed in the context of Article 51 which allows for collective defence.

True, the DRC is in a situation of war with the M23 rebels, so to say, but the so-called rebels are also Congolese. The rebellion started as an armed conflict in North Kivu. It was between the March 23 Movement and government forces, between April 4, 2012 and November 7, 2013. The problematic as of today is that the rebel leader has made it clear that neither sanctions nor any minerals deal with the United States would bring an end to the rebellion (vide the AP News, https://apnews.com).  In the eyes of the rebels, the United States is also an enemy target. Any other country perceived to be aiding the Tshisekedi government is similarly an enemy target. Consequently, instead of signing agreement to defeat the rebellion by use of force, the rebels can still be defeated by use of negotiations driven by mutual concessions.

The problematic is still that, even if the M23 rebels were to win the war, there is nothing to suggest that the new beneficiaries of the mineral mining would still not be the Congolese elites and whoever is coming to exploit and mine the minerals. And true enough again, today’s incumbent government will become the next rebels fighting the M23 rebels of today. Congolese people should learn how not to continue to kill themselves to no avail. 

The 1990 Franco-African Summit held in the coastal town of La Baule made democracy a conditionality for development aid. It was argued that democracy does not fight another democracy. Most unfortunately, the democracy that was made compulsory for Africa does not kill in Europe but it has been made an instrument of killing in Africa. The ECOWAS once threatened to wage war on the military junta in Niger Republic for changing government unconstitutionally. The Congolese are thinking of today but not about the implications for tomorrow. They never think of excessive or over exploitation that can quickly neutralise all the resources leaving nothing to mine in the next fifty years. If African countries want to be presenting their sovereignty as a commodity to be negotiated in the open market place, there may not be any need to continue to worry about African integration or unity.  All the good people of Africa should be opposed to it on grounds of being citizens of United States of Africa in the making. It has therefore become a desideratum for the whole of Africa to have a continental policy on the exploitation of mineral resources in the entire continent. The resources should be jointly protected and developed to the advantage of the peoples in the countries where any given exploitation is taking place. The DRC should invest more in peace-making at home, human capacity building, encourage and promote the Congolese Diaspora, as well as  enable a policy of settling Congolese dispute by Congolese people themselves. Exploitation of mineral resources is the most critical aspect of the DRC saga and should therefore be quickly addressed.

If not, how do we explain the fact that the mining sector has dominated the Congolese economy since 1910? The Katanga Copper Belt’s cobalt reserves were put at five million tonnes and Congo is still considered a terra cognita of poverty. How do we explain the DRC as having the largest diamond and gold deposits in the world, as well as possessing the second richest copper region, with 70 million tonnes, only coming after Chile, and the same DRC is yet to boast of world class development? The per capita income of the DRC in 2020 was put at $546.43. This is not commensurate with the country’s wealth. In 2022, it was $665 but declined to $649 in 2023, that is, a 2.32% decline. Unfortunately, the DRC is ranked among the five poorest nations in the world. Different reports have it that 73.5% of the people of the DRC lived on less than $2.15 per day in 2024. It is shameful. Shame on all African leaders. Shame on Congolese leaders for being divinely endowed, but selfishly engaging in what the French call ‘gaspillage’ (wastefulness). Instead of seeking an end to the rebellion and seeking national reconciliation devoid of self-arrogance, giving concessions to allow for national development, laying the foundations for fairness and justice in political governance, as well as sharing national or common patrimony on the basis of equity, force and manu militari approaches are being used. This cannot provide any lasting solution. There is nothing to suggest that any US military assistance can stop the quest for equity in the management of national resources. African leaders should not only have the fear of God but also seek to worship Him with common sense.