US imperialism has a new engine. Its battery? Congo's buried wealth

The US-brokered ‘peace deal’ between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo isn’t about peace at all — it’s a corporate minerals heist.

Under the guise of economic cooperation, the agreement locks Congolese cobalt, copper, and coltan into Western supply chains, ensuring profits flow out of Africa.

This isn’t diplomacy. It’s colonialism with a fresh coat of paint.

The Democratic Republic of Congo produces nearly 70% of the world's cobalt and substantial shares of global copper and coltan, minerals essential for everything from electric vehicles to advanced weapons systems.

Yet this vast mineral wealth has never translated into development for the Congolese people. This isn’t an accident, it’s design.

Buried in the deal is its real engine of extraction: the Regional Economic Integration Framework (REIF). REIF is being sold as a partnership to boost trade and development between Congo and Rwanda.

The REIF agreement explicitly names U.S. investors as key partners in developing the DRC’s mineral supply chains. This isn't passive language; it's a binding invitation for American capital to dominate the sector while locking out local competitors.

Walter Rodney's seminal work in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (published in 1972) documented how Belgium’s Société Générale and its mining subsidiary, Union Minière de Haute-Katanga, systematically extracted copper, rubber, and ivory while leaving behind only crumbs — token housing and maternity services to mask the theft from the Congo from the late 19th century through the colonial period (1885–1960).

Today, the actors have new names (Glencore, Tesla, the Pentagon), but the maths hasn’t changed. REIF may carry a new name, but it follows the same blueprint that Rodney: exploit the land, extract the value, cobalt, copper, coltan, and more, all while Congolese miners toil in poverty.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank funded by weapons manufacturers and mining firms, recently complained that only Glencore dominates Congo's mineral sector. Their solution? Washington must create an 'enabling environment', which is usually code for relaxing regulations, silencing resistance, and guaranteeing profits.

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CSIS's 'expertise' comes courtesy of arm company donors like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman — the very corporations that would profit from this 'enabled environment' in Congo.

That CSIS points to Glencore, a company repeatedly accused of corruption and human rights abuses in the DRC, as the model says everything.

Glencore has also been named and shamed by the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, as one of the primary suppliers of coal for electricity to Israel in its recent report. 

The pattern is clear, the profits are Western, and the victims, whether in DRC or Gaza, are the people of the Global South. 

The agreement has been in the making since April, was headed by Massad Boulos, the billionaire father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany. His business background is in auto distribution, not diplomacy. 

The involvement of Massad Boulos in brokering the DRC-Rwanda deal is no anomaly; it’s emblematic of how the Trump administration systematically handed foreign policy to billionaire allies with vested corporate interests.

When asked if the US would gain privileged access to “steal” the DRC’s riches, Boulos states that “he wouldn’t use these expressions. I would use the [sic] US companies would be investing in the DRC. As we all know, US companies are very good citizens. These are long-term investments in nature.”

From Jared Kushner’s Middle East deals to Boulos’s REIF, Trump’s diplomacy operated as a patronage network for the ultra-wealthy. Illustrated by both Boulos and Kushner, billionaires with the right connections can turn geopolitical crises into private investment opportunities.

The Congo's minerals are also the lifeblood of the American empire’s military. These minerals are found in military systems ranging from the simplest firearm to fighter jets.

While Western war merchants bombed Palestinians, Yemenis, Somalis, Iraqis, and Syrians, the Pentagon rewarded them with record contracts. The Global South dies so Wall Street lives.

For the empire, control over Congo’s minerals isn’t optional; it’s how it survives. Every drone, every AI weapon, every tech supply chain runs on the extraction of the Global South.

At a recent congressional hearing, US officials warned they're falling behind China in securing critical minerals. “We cannot allow supply chains for AI chips, missiles, and jets to be controlled by China,” one said. Though defence uses less than 10% of these minerals, their strategic role is huge; civilian tech like aircraft and digital systems can easily serve military ends.

This is not about development or security; it's about empire sustaining itself through colonial extraction in a new technological age.

This deal is simple colonialism with fresh paperwork. While King Leopold II ruled Congo through the 1885 Berlin Act — a "royal charter" that divided Africa among Europeans at gunpoint — today's empire uses corporate contracts and Pentagon-brokered deals.

The tools got slicker, but the theft's the same. Hickel exposes the brutal mechanics: first, starve a nation of stability, then demand its minerals as the price for peace.

Rather than ending conflict, these arrangements simply replace direct military confrontation with more insidious forms of violence: systematic extraction, mass dispossession, environmental devastation, and economic exploitation. 

This so-called peace deal merely repackages imperial plunder and legalises Western corporate extractivism in the name of “formalised end-to-end mineral value chains.”

Nandita Lal is an independent researcher on climate change and Indigenous People. She stood as an anti-war candidate in the General Election in the UK in July 2024

Follow Nandita on X: @ditalalmolloy 

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