ANALYSIS
Minerals for security: Congo's peace has a price, and Congo doesn't set it
2 settembre 2026
The facts
In March 2025 the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo proposed to the US administration a deal exchanging American companies' access to the country's critical mineral reserves for military assistance against the offensive of the M23 rebel group, backed by Rwanda (PIIE, May 7, 2026). In June 2025 a pre-agreement on critical minerals was signed — cobalt and coltan, of which the DRC produces roughly 70% of the world's supply, 2024 figure (Newsweek, June 30, 2025). A Congo-M23 ceasefire mediated by the United States in Doha followed in July, described as fragile by observers (CSMonitor, December 1, 2025).
On August 8, 2025, three US Congress members — Sánchez, Davis, Sewell — formally wrote to President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio, complaining about the lack of congressional consultation on the deal and citing “the grave security, human rights, labor, and environmental situation” in the Congolese mining sector (official letter, August 8, 2025). In October the Oakland Institute published a report raising the suspicion that the rhetoric of peace was masking an extraction operation (Common Dreams, February 14, 2026, citing the report).
On December 4, 2025, Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Kagame signed the tripartite “Washington Accords” in Washington, with Trump, linking a regional peace framework to a Strategic Partnership on cobalt and coltan (PBS/AP, December 4, 2025). On January 21, 2026, Congolese lawyers and activists filed a constitutional challenge in Kinshasa, arguing that the deal should have required parliamentary approval or a referendum (AllAfrica, February 9, 2026) — a challenge still pending, with no ruling issued as of this piece.
On March 26, 2026, in Beijing, the DRC signed a separate memorandum of understanding with China on cooperation in geology and mineral resources, without any declared security component (official statement, DRC Ministry of Mines, March 26, 2026; Agence Ecofin, March 27, 2026).
On the arms front: since 2018 Rwanda has publicly fielded Chinese-made artillery and air-defense systems — PCL-09 self-propelled howitzers, HJ-9A anti-tank missiles, WZ551/“Yitan” air-defense systems built by Norinco and Poly Technologies — one of which fired on a UN observation drone in 2024 (Military Africa, 2024). An independent analysis from August 28, 2025, documents that after a Congolese aircraft was shot down by a Rwandan system of likely Chinese origin, China began selling drones and offering training to the DRC's own armed forces (FARDC) as well — Chinese weapons on both sides of the same conflict — in the same period Beijing announced a $7 billion investment in infrastructure tied to copper and cobalt extraction in the country (btl-research, August 28, 2025). No more recent confirmation of the Chinese origin of weapons used in 2026 was found: the most specific data available remains dated August 2025. On June 1, 2026, the UN Group of Experts, in report S/2026/466, confirmed direct and structured Rwandan military support for M23: 14,000–18,000 Rwanda Defence Force troops, drones, GPS-guided mortars, electronic jamming systems, mixed battalions with integrated command reaching Kigali; the report also estimates 3.4 million internally displaced people and over 60% of the population living in extreme poverty in the affected provinces, as of March 2026.
On May 14–15, 2026, the DRC's 17th Ebola outbreak in its history was declared, in Ituri province, caused by the Bundibugyo virus — a species with no specific vaccine (WHO/ReliefWeb, May 15, 2026). The affected area is the same one crossed by itinerant artisanal miners, including minors, whose mobility complicates contact tracing (Washington Post, August 19, 2026). On July 16, 2026, Reuters reported, citing four sources, that the outbreak was slowing negotiations to expand the US-DRC mineral partnership: site visits postponed, logistical difficulties for staff and consultants (Arab News/Reuters, July 16, 2026). As of August 31, 2026, the outbreak's toll rose to 6,041 confirmed cases and 2,911 deaths, a 48.2% fatality rate, the deadliest ever recorded in the country (Congolese health ministry data, reported by Rivista Africa, September 1, 2026).
Related news: The DRC takes Rwanda to the International Court of Justice — the same conflict, seen from the state-responsibility side of the use of force.
Related news: DR Congo: the Washington peace deal hasn't stopped the killing of civilians in the east — the same Washington peace deal, seen from the side of the war crimes documented by the UN.
Legal commentary
The principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources — enshrined in UN Resolution 1803 (XVII) of 1962 and reflected in Article 1(2), common to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, under which every people may freely dispose of its natural resources — is the yardstick against which to measure a deal that ties access to critical minerals to a security commitment in an internal conflict, when that deal is the subject of an unresolved domestic constitutional challenge over an alleged bypass of the parliamentary process.
Implications — the symmetry test
Would the condemnation hold if it were China, not the United States, tying access to cobalt and coltan to a security commitment against an internal armed group? Based on the available sources, the March 2026 China-DRC memorandum is technical and commercial, with no declared security clause and no documented domestic constitutional conflict — the asymmetry between the two cases is a verified fact, not an editorial choice, and should be stated as such.
Editorial judgment
Who pays the bill for this war and who profits from it are often two different groups of people — and that gap is worth telling plainly. In eastern Congo, a person can die of Ebola in the same village where another digs cobalt by hand that will end up in a phone sold somewhere else. In the same period, several powers move around those same resources, with different logics but a similar outcome: the war goes on, and the people fighting it are never the ones signing the deals at the table.
There is no proof that anyone designed things this way — no source gathered here shows it, and writing it as certainty would be as dishonest as the conspiracy theories this site has always rejected. But there is a verifiable fact, documented rather than imagined: China sells weapons to Rwanda, the same Rwanda that, according to the United Nations, provides military support to the M23 rebel group; and in the same period it negotiates with the government in Kinshasa its own access to that same region's raw materials, while also selling weapons to the Congolese army fighting that group. Supplying both sides of a war, and doing resource deals with the side enduring it, doesn't prove a design: it only proves that when raw materials are at stake, the same hand can end up on more than one side of the table without anyone needing to have planned it — it just has to be convenient.
On the deal between the United States and Congo, the underlying question stays the same, even though the answer today is different: who decides, in whose name, under what checkable conditions. The fact that this deal produced a letter from three US members of Congress and a constitutional challenge still pending in Kinshasa doesn't make it less important to watch — it just means that, in this case, someone inside the system had a real chance to challenge it. That's a genuine difference between the two cases, but it concerns who can check the decision, not what is being decided: the Democratic Republic of Congo's sovereignty over its own resources remains the underlying question, whoever sits on the other side of the table.
Sources: PIIE · Newsweek · CSMonitor · US Congress letter · Oakland Institute / Common Dreams · PBS/AP · AllAfrica · DRC Ministry of Mines · Agence Ecofin · btl-research · UN Group of Experts S/2026/466 · WHO/ReliefWeb · Washington Post · Arab News/Reuters · Rivista Africa