The United States has taken a major step toward breaking Beijing’s stranglehold on critical minerals by helping broker a cease-fire in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The United States is pushing the DRC and Rwanda to sign peace accords, along with bilateral minerals agreements in Washington, within two months.
The accords could bring billions of dollars in Western investment to the region, according to Massad Boulos, President Donald Trump’s senior Africa adviser.
Boulos added that the DRC and Rwanda will finalize bilateral economic agreements with Washington to support mining and mineral processing.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet the foreign ministers of both countries in mid-May to finalize the peace deal.
However, Boulos made it clear that before the White House signing ceremony can go ahead, Washington expects Rwanda to pull its troops out of the DRC and end its support for the M23 rebels, while the DRC must address Rwanda’s security concerns with militias.
The latest fighting has pitted rebels from the M23 group, backed by Rwanda, against DRC troops operating under President Felix Tshisekedi’s government in Kinshasa and U.N.-sanctioned forces from several southern African countries.
The sanctions extend to Kabarebe, M23 spokesperson Lawrence Kanyuka Kingston, and two of Kanyuka’s companies.
Critical Minerals
Jean-Pierre Okenda, director of DRC-based nonprofit Sentinel Natural Resources, told The Epoch Times that M23 rebels have seized mines across eastern DRC and are using profits from the sale of critical minerals and metals—mainly coltan, gold, tantalum, tin, and tungsten—to buy weapons and ammunition.
Another indication of continued American interest in the DRC, said Mike Smith, global trade specialist at the International Trade Institute of Southern Africa, is the Trump administration’s support for a scheme initiated by former President Joe Biden.
The Lobito Corridor Project, partly funded with $553 million from the U.S. International Development Finance Corp., will result in an 800-mile railway connecting eastern DRC to the port city of Lobito in Angola.
The United States will also construct a new harbor at Lobito from which minerals and metals will be shipped across the Atlantic.
But first, there must be peace. “Without peace this mission is dead in the water,” said Abraham Miniko, a senior researcher and policy analyst in peace, security, and conflict resolution at Istanbul University in Turkey.
He told The Epoch Times that war in the DRC “has been very kind to China for almost 40 years,” allowing the Chinese regime to control the region’s extractive industry.
While war in eastern DRC drove American mining firms out of the region, the conflict had the “opposite effect” on their Chinese competitors, said Umesh Bawa, foreign policy analyst at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.
“The instability brought to DRC was very good for China. It took advantage of the chaos by being the only player willing to operate in the area. Unlike others, it had no qualms sending its people into danger, and it didn’t pull out even when Chinese mining employees were killed in attacks,” he told The Epoch Times.
In July 2024, a militia attack on a gold mine in northeastern Congo killed six Chinese miners and two Congolese soldiers.
Smith told The Epoch Times that China’s “low” environmental and human rights standards and “paltry” labor costs had allowed it to control global supplies of critical minerals.
Countering China
“If the United States has a gateway into DRC, it has taken a huge step toward minimizing China’s power [in minerals markets],” Smith said.
“China is restricting exports of seven minerals in particular,” said David van Wyk, an independent mining and minerals consultant working in Africa.
He said these include terbium, dysprosium, holmium, and erbium—elements used in powerful magnets, lasers, fiber optics, and electric vehicles.
“These minerals are known as ‘heavy rare earths’ because they’re very difficult to refine. They are used a lot by the military and defense sectors, to make the heavy magnets needed for certain equipment in tanks and fighter jets and other military equipment,” van Wyk told The Epoch Times.
“The rest of the world hasn’t developed capacity to process these elements and so relies on China. That leaves the U.S. ... in a very vulnerable position.”
The Trump administration will also have to keep Rwanda happy, Miniko said.
“The war has brought Rwanda a lot of income through the sale of minerals, and if peace comes to eastern DRC and Rwanda loses all this money, it obviously won’t be happy. If Kagame is not appeased in some significant way, bad feeling will simmer and eventually things will explode again,” he said. “Rwanda will have to be included in a deal that benefits it economically, not just politically.”
Smith stated that Washington is “obviously confident” that its peace efforts will be successful, or else the “big guns” wouldn’t be about to invest in the region.
According to the International Trade Association, in 2022, the DRC was the world’s largest cobalt miner, producing nearly 68 percent of the world’s cobalt.
Some of the country’s copper mines contain significantly higher grades of metal than the global average.
With analysis of the DRC’s mining registry data showing that just 11 percent of the country is covered by mining activity, the material potential is evident.
“The Congolese people themselves don’t benefit from the riches that they walk over every day of their lives,” Okenda said.
Okenda said that should the United States reenter the DRC’s extractive sector, it should be careful not to make the same mistakes that China has made.
“American presence in eastern DRC must benefit the Congolese people. Otherwise, America’s stay in the region is going to be short, because anti-American rebel groups will emerge and a new cycle of conflict will begin,” he said.
