Who really profits from DR Congo’s minerals?

For more than three decades, the world has been told a familiar story about the conflict in the eastern DR Congo: armed groups seize mines, smuggle minerals across porous borders, and finance endless wars. It is a narrative repeated in diplomatic communiqués, media reports and international conferences. Yet it deliberately tells only part of the story. ALSO READ: Who sanctions the sanctioners? The missing accountability in international affairs If armed groups alone were responsible for the illicit mineral trade, the problem would likely have been contained long ago. Instead, despite successive United Nations resolutions, sanctions, certification schemes and peacekeeping operations, the illegal exploitation and trafficking of Congolese minerals has become increasingly sophisticated and profitable. The reason is simple: the true beneficiaries extend far beyond the men carrying guns. ALSO READ: Global Witness in service of a new scramble for Congolese minerals The illicit mineral economy is sustained by an intricate transnational network linking armed actors, corrupt officials, commercial traders, transporters, refiners, financial intermediaries and, ultimately, multinational industries whose appetite for strategic minerals continues to grow. It is this broader ecosystem – not merely the more than 200 rebel groups set up by Congolese politicians and high-ranking military officers – that deserves greater scrutiny. ALSO READ: ‘Blood minerals’ in DR Congo: Myth or reality? DR Congo possesses some of the world’s richest deposits of gold, coltan, cassiterite, wolframite, cobalt, lithium, copper and other rare earth elements. These so-called critical minerals are indispensable to the manufacture of smartphones, computers, electric vehicles, renewable energy technologies and sophisticated military equipment. Demand from the global West and China has never been higher, particularly as countries compete to secure critical mineral supply chains for the energy transition and strategic industries. ALSO READ: What are the motivations of Burundi’s military intervention in South Kivu? Ironically, the extraordinary wealth beneath the Congolese soil has become one of the country’s greatest vulnerabilities due to blatant recurring governance failures since King Leopold II until today’s reign of Felix Tshisekedi. At the lowest level of the supply chain are millions of artisanal miners who work in difficult and often dangerous conditions. Their earnings are modest, while the greatest profits accumulate further along the chain. Minerals change hands several times before leaving the mining areas, often passing through intermediaries who mix production from different sites, obscure its origin and arrange transport to border towns and Kinshasa. ALSO READ: Rwanda’s efforts to comply with international conflict minerals frameworks debunk false narratives over DR Congo minerals Armed groups certainly exploit this system. They levy taxes, control transport routes, intimidate miners or seize productive mining sites. In some cases, they participate directly in extraction. Yet numerous studies by the United Nations and independent researchers have consistently shown that armed groups capture only a fraction of the total economic value generated by illicit mineral trade. ALSO READ: Sanctions, sovereignty, and Rwanda: A small nation in the crosscurrents of global power The real financial gains accrue to commercial networks operating beyond the conflict zones and the narratives selectively chanting Rwanda-backed AFC/M23 and the world sings in unison hiding the real culprits. Who would sanction the sanctioners? God knows. These networks include licensed and unlicensed traders, transport companies, exporters, customs facilitators, money launderers and international commodity brokers. Many operate behind legitimate commercial structures, making them far less visible than armed militias. Their activities often remain beyond the reach of sanctions regimes that focus primarily on military actors. ALSO READ: Selective accountability will not bring peace to eastern DR Congo Cross-border smuggling remains one of the most persistent challenges. Gold, in particular, has for years been reported to leave eastern DR Congo carried by Congolese traders through neighbouring countries before being exported to international refining centres. Once refined and incorporated into global supply chains, determining its original source becomes exceedingly difficult. And the narratives wrongly unload blame on the AFC/M23 movement and Rwanda alone. This reality raises uncomfortable questions. How can countries with relatively limited domestic mineral production emerge among the world’s significant exporters of minerals? How do minerals extracted illegally from conflict zones acquire certificates of legal origin? Who benefits financially from these discrepancies? And why has the international community devoted far greater attention to the first stage of the chain than to its commercial and financial end points? These questions deserve careful, evidence-based investigation rather than political slogans and unsupported allegations against the same victims of the failures in DR Congo. Equally important is distinguishing between what may be called known networks and undeclared networks. Known networks are those regularly identified in United Nations Group of Experts reports, judicial investigations and sanctions lists. They include armed groups, identified traffickers, specific commercial entities found to have violated regulations, and individuals directly implicated in illegal trade. Undeclared networks are considerably more difficult to identify because they are conveniently hidden. They include political protection systems, corrupt administrative officials, creators of armed groups, shell companies, financial intermediaries, offshore trading firms, logistics providers, and others who facilitate illicit commerce while remaining largely invisible to public scrutiny. These actors seldom appear in photographs from conflict zones, yet they may capture the largest share of profits. Sheer hypocrisy at hands. This distinction matters because policy responses frequently target symptoms rather than structures. International efforts have focused heavily on mineral certification mechanisms and due diligence obligations imposed on downstream companies. These initiatives have undoubtedly improved transparency in parts of the supply chain. However, certification alone cannot eliminate fraud where governance remains weak, corruption persists and commercial incentives remain overwhelming. The whole chain is manned by corrupt officials home and abroad. Nor can sanctions succeed if they concentrate exclusively on armed groups and Rwanda while neglecting the sophisticated commercial infrastructures that transform illicit minerals into legitimate exports from the mines to the final industry abroad. There is also an uncomfortable asymmetry in global accountability. Considerable diplomatic energy has been devoted to identifying the countries through which minerals transit. Comparatively less attention has been paid to the international traders, refineries, commodity exchanges, financial institutions and multinational corporations that ultimately absorb these resources into global markets. Without sustained demand, there would be no profitable illicit supply. Consumers across the world, often unknowingly, become the final link in this chain. The discussion therefore cannot remain confined to security alone. It is fundamentally about governance, international trade, corporate responsibility, geostrategic and geopolitical wars, financial transparency and equitable resource management. It is also about recognising that the mineral economy of the Great Lakes region cannot be understood through simplistic narratives assigning exclusive blame to any single actor or country. Maybe high time to name and shame each and everyone really involved would put an end to this entertained nonsense of sanctions and sweet lies. Peace in eastern DR Congo will undoubtedly require revisiting root causes of known conflicts, political reconciliation, effective state institutions and regional cooperation. But it will also require confronting the commercial architecture that allows conflict minerals to circulate almost seamlessly through international markets. The question is therefore not simply who digs the minerals, nor who carries them across borders. The more important question is: who ultimately profits? Until the international community addresses every link in the value chain: from the artisanal mine to the global marketplace, it will continue to fight the visible manifestations of the problem while leaving its national and foreign hidden economic foundations largely intact. The minerals beneath the soil of DR Congo should be a source of national prosperity and regional development. Instead, they continue to enrich a complex web of actors whose interests often depend upon instability itself. That is the conversation the world has yet to have in full and very much in the open. Maybe then Rwanda will be given a well-deserved break. The writer is a political and diplomatic analyst specialising on Africa and countries of the Great Lakes Region.

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Who really profits from DR Congo’s minerals?