Did you know that there's probably a piece of this country in your smartphone? The Democratic Republic of the Congo or DRC could be one of the richest countries in the world. That's because of what lies below the ground here.
Vast resources such as gold, cobalt and coltan. But the DRC is not rich. In fact, many Congolese people are among the world's poorest.
Congo. is basically a resource-endowed country, but it is also a resource-cursed country. And it's home to possibly the deadliest conflict since World War II.
While people are distracted by the war, others are profiting from the natural resources. We're going to look at how the DRC became a looting ground for the power-hungry and the corporate, and how even its neighbours have a hand in the exploitation. This is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, also known as the DRC, or sometimes just the Congo.
Not to be confused with its neighbor, the Republic of the Congo. The DRC is the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa, and it's bordered by nine countries. One of them, Rwanda, actually plays a big role in this tragedy.
We'll come back to that later. An estimated 110 million people live here in the DRC. Three out of four of them often don't have access to even the basics, shelter, clean drinking water and enough food.
One in 12 children here dies before the age of 12. The DRC is among the five poorest countries in the world. It's this misery that drives hundreds of thousands of Congolese to work in mining sites like this one. And that's where we want to start this story. This is dangerous work in dangerous conditions, and for just a few dollars a day. Child labor, threats and violence are often reported, not to mention the vast environmental damage.
All these things are happening because of the rush for riches under the ground. An estimated 24 trillion US dollars worth of minerals lie beneath the surface. You have a country that is effectively one of the richest countries in the world. Certainly the wealthiest country in Africa, with all kinds of resources that you can imagine, some of which have not even been discovered.
This is Paul Nantulia. He works at the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C. You talk of any resource, name it, it is in the Congo in plenty. For instance, gold, for jewellery and electronics.
Cobalt, used for batteries, like in electric cars. The DRC has more than half of the world's cobalt reserves. Copper, vital for solar panels.
And coltan. It's literally everywhere in electronic devices. For example, in your smartphone. An estimated 60 to 80% of global coltan reserves are in the DRC. So you can imagine, everybody wants a piece of this pie.
Be they militia groups controlling informal mines, or huge multinational companies that have set up massive industrial complexes. This map shows some of the DRC's major industrial cobalt, copper and gold mines. So who owns these mines?
Well, the DRC has a minority share in many of them, but almost all are majority foreign owned. Some by a Swiss company, Glencore. Then there are firms from Canada and the United Arab Emirates.
But the most important player here is China. The red dots are majority Chinese-owned mines. Since the 1990s, China has been forging ties with the DRC, gaining more and more control over the DRC's valuable natural resources.
By the way, this huge mine was owned by a US company until the 2010s, but was sold off to a Chinese firm, a step the US government now regrets because it could really use those resources to build electric cars. Chinese companies control 70% of the copper mining and 50% of the cobalt mining in the DRC. Let's take this huge copper and cobalt mining site.
It's been majority Chinese-owned since the DRC and China struck a deal in 2008, the Sikamines Agreement. The deal was about investment. In return for access to the mine, China pledged to build roads, schools and hospitals.
Sounds like a win-win situation, right? But not much of the promised investment has materialized. Congolese people still have to make do with roads like this. So where did all the money actually go?
Mostly lost in corruption, a key reason for poverty in the country. The DRC is ranked 162 out of 180 on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. This basically means corruption is everywhere in the country, including in deals with multinational companies, whether European or Chinese. But it's not just outsiders to blame. The Congolese...
people. have had governments thrusted upon them that are really of the worst type that one can ever imagine. So it's basically the DRC's leaders who have profited from the resources, and we're about to meet them. When it comes to the DRC's long history of exploitation, we kind of have to start with this man.
King Leopold II of Belgium. In 1885, he seized this territory as his personal property and named it Congo Free State. It was anything but. An estimated 10 million Congolese were killed or died from hunger or disease during Leopold's cruel rule.
Many were enslaved and forced to work collecting rubber used for making car and bicycle tyres. And the exploitation continued after 1908, when Belgium turned the Congo Free State into a colony. But in 1960, there was hope for a new start. This was the year the DRC gained independence and its first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba.
Even today, many in the DRC see him as a national hero. Lumumba had a vision for a just nation. The country's natural resources should be used for the benefit of its citizens. But just months later, Lumumba was captured by his opponents and murdered with the tacit backing of Belgium and the US. They wanted him out of the way, fearing he was getting too close to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
So the Congo has never recovered from that tragedy. And I think this is the first reason why the country is in repeated cycles of trauma and crisis. One of the issues that has constantly plagued the Democratic Republic of Congo has been political instability and chronic mismanagement by successive governments.
This is Beverly Oching speaking. A security expert based in Dakar, Senegal. And when she says governments, there haven't actually been many. That's because dictator Joseph Desiree Mobutu ruled for 32 years.
Mobutu, with his distinctive leopard print hat, renames the country Zaire. And he grew eye-wateringly rich, looting the national coffers at the people's expense. Western countries, including the US, were willing to turn a blind eye. They wanted to keep him close to them and away from the Soviet Union.
Because, you guessed it, they of course wanted priority access to the country's resources. Once, the U.S. even sent Mobutu several planes in a bid to secure mining rights. He demanded that one of them be loaded with 60,000 U.S. dollars worth of Coca-Cola.
The kleptocratic rule that was refined and perfected by Mobutu. Unfortunately, it became part and parcel of how the country is governed. And so it continued long after Mobutu.
First under Laurent Kabila, then under his son Joseph, who was notoriously corrupt. Again, the DRC's mineral wealth was sold off to foreign investors and at laughably low prices. When current president Felix Tshisekedi took office in 2019, he pledged to crack down on corruption. But both his elections were marred by fraud allegations. And for many people, not enough has changed.
I think there have been some small strides. Whether that government has actually met some of the campaign objectives that they have put in place is another question. So, we've seen how corruption and exploitation stand in the way of a brighter future for Congolese people. But there's another major hurdle. The biggest reason of the...
The poverty in the Congo, especially in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is due to the war. This is Ruth Olonga, a DW correspondent in Goma. The conflict she's talking about is happening in her region, in the east of the DRC.
More than 120 different militias are active here. Yes, you've heard right, 120. Some of them are small local groups. Others are larger militias with foreign backing.
Like the M23 and the FDLR. We'll come back to them. These militias have different aims and agendas.
And one way of financing those goals? Exactly. We're back to the minerals. Look at the provinces worst hit by the conflict. Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu.
That's also where many of the DRC's valuable natural resources are found. So it's a conflict belt, but it's also a resource belt. The minerals themselves do end up feeding into the conflict. Because that armed groups can take territories, make them their own, and run an entire operation there, which then undermines the possibility of them being used for the betterment of the community. Let's take this example.
In 2024, M23 militants took over these mining sites near the town of Rubea. This area is where most of the DRC's coal tan comes from. Remember that one?
It's one of the minerals needed in your smartphone. So, it's valuable and lucrative for any groups that can get their hands on it. But there's much more to this conflict.
The minerals have probably added to it. But the fact that there's been ethnic animosities which go way back from the colonial period are not necessarily about the minerals themselves. Those just fuel the situation but are not the underlying cause. To unpack that, we need to go back in time and head to one of the DRC's neighbours, Rwanda, where in 1994 a brutal genocide was unfolding.
One ethnic group had turned against another, the Hutu majority against the ruling Tutsi minority. In the end, extremist Hutus killed around 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. During that time, many Rwandans fled across the border into the DRC, among them some of the Hutu perpetrators. The aftermath of the Rwandan genocide still influences the conflict in eastern DRC today and the blame game that surrounds it. Two of the biggest militias are proof of that.
The FDLR started with those Hutu extremists linked to the genocide. Then there's the M23. Its members are mainly ethnic Tutsis, so the victims of the genocide. The DRC accuses Rwanda of supporting the M23.
And the other way around. Rwanda says the DRC is working with the FDLR. Both governments deny that. It's messy but bear with us.
There is another key group, the ADF. It's very difficult to find pictures of them. Just of what they leave behind. A trail of destruction. The Islamist militia originated in Uganda and has ties to the so-called Islamic State.
Decades of fighting by these groups and many others have left around 6 million people dead since 1996. Today, a further 7 million people in the DRC are internally displaced, the UN reports. Those people have lost everything. The Congolese army is supposed to contain the conflict, but they, like it seems everyone else, have faced allegations of human rights abuses and corruption. And maintaining an army is costly. We also absorb financial resources that could be used for maybe developing infrastructure, education and healthcare and so on.
So many people keep on suffering while others profit. Congo has had neighbors that have not been good neighbors, neighbors that have exploited Congo's governance gaps. There is no doubt that Rwanda benefits massively from the instability in the DRC.
Most of the gold Rwanda exports is believed to be Congolese gold, smuggled across the border. And while the DRC is the world's biggest coltan producer, the biggest coltan exporter is Rwanda. But despite the smuggling, the European Union struck a controversial mineral deal with Rwanda. Local NGOs say this deal even fuels the conflicts. Rwanda is not the only place these resources get to.
UN experts found gold and other minerals from the DRC were also being smuggled to Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania and even the United Arab Emirates. From there, you know, they make their way into international markets or into the international black market. And again, possibly into your smartphone.
So, where are we at? International efforts to tackle these problems haven't worked. Ceasefire agreements have broken into pieces.
The UN's biggest ever peacekeeping mission has largely failed. And the fact that many of the initiatives that are being driven to ensure a level of stability or a level of political goodwill keep on coming undone each and every time means that there are fairly bleak prospects for DR Combo. So, is there at least a little hope for the Congo?
Congo needs a democratic, legitimate government that is respected and given legitimacy by the people. To hope for a better future, a bright future, the government has to involve the local population in managing these resources. That seems like wishful thinking for now.
One of the longest-running conflicts on Earth looks set to continue. And others won't stop profiting from the country's riches.