The African Mineral Rush

A story was reported in the Wall Street Journal outlining an intriguing offer from Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi that is right up President Trump’s alley. Essentially offering the US first access to the poor country’s mineral wealth in return for helping the DRC army kick out M23 rebel group.

The Europeans are fretting that the old order is disintegrating, but the old order, or the one before that, hasn’t done central Africa any favors. The Democratic Republic of Congo is poor country whose geographic lottery number has come up and is forced to play in the world as it is.

And as it is, the DRC is an African mineral bingo with rich deposits of cobalt, lithium, copper and tantalum; all needed for our world-at-our-fingertips technology currently ruining our lives. And EVs. And AI, which hasn’t ruined your life, but give it time. In return, the DRC gets a formal security pact with the US to help defeat M23 - a mostly Tutsi rebel group backed by mostly Hutu Rwanda, which strangely is a single party state run by the mostly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). There is a third major ethnic group in the country, the Twa: mostly forest dwelling pygmies who, for obvious reasons, try to keep to themselves. At any rate, according to the UN, some 4,000 Rwandan soldiers were sent over the border to help the M23 rebels out.

So, when President Trump launched a US Sovereign Wealth Fund in February after making access to rare minerals a cornerstone of his administration, the Congolese knew the makings of deal when they saw one. Living in that kind of squalor and violence makes people pretty practical. Someone, we’re sure, is going to gripe that this smells like Neo-colonialism but the Congolese are more or less begging the US to send soldiers and squeeze the concession because they prefer us to the Russian-backed Wagner Group.

Broadly, this isn’t too different from the deal “oil for security” the US has had with Saudi Arabia since World War II. Or, for that matter, minerals deal Volodymyr Zelenskyy was about to sign last month before the hazing started.

The 4717 shot: If we had to guess, this doesn’t mean US boots on the ground, but private security contractors from Blackwater. You may remember Blackwater from 2004 when four contractors drove past a US Marine checkpoint in Fallujah and stumbled into an Iraqi ambush. All four were killed dismembered and set on fire. Three years later Blackwater contractors killed 14 Iraqi citizens in Baghdad, forward convicted in 2014 but were pardoned by Trump in 2020. Erik Prince a former Navy SEAL, Blackwater founder and all around Trump chum is already in the middle of the deal.

The White House is considering.

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