Case study Democratic Republic of the Congo - Resource wealth, poverty and conflicts
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is one of the few countries in Africa in which, even today, armed conflict is financed through the trade in minerals. Reports of UN expert groups and increased interest by the media have highlighted the DRC as a sad example of the close relationship between conflicts and the exploitation of natural resources.
The DRC is one of the most resource-rich countries in Africa. Copper, diamonds, cobalt, coltan and gold can be found in abundance. According to the German Federal Agency for Geosciences and Natural Resources (Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe), the DRC is one of the ten most important suppliers of natural resources to Germany. Despite all this, the Central African state is one of the poorest in the world. In 2015, its gross domestic product (GDP) amounted to US $35.24 billion—the German 2015 GDP, in comparison, amounted to US $ 3363.45 billion. The DRC belongs to the group of low human development (position 176 of 188) on the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI) 2014, and an estimated 70 per cent of its population lived below the national poverty line in 2014.
In the 1990s, two civil wars raged in the country, and still today, the country is not at peace. It is true that in 2003 there was a peace agreement between the former warring parties, but in the east of the country, the fighting and armed raids on civilians continue.
The Congolese war economy and the role of international companies
How does the Congolese war economy work? During the first Congo war (1996 to 1997), warlords began to market natural resources. For one, rebel groups established tax systems in areas under their control. The lucrative trade in natural resources was one important pillar for this. Then, rebel groups established the control over some mining areas with their foreign military allies and forced miners to work for them.
The Congolese rebel group Rally for Democracy (Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie–RCD), allied with Rwanda, even tried to gain the monopoly over the export of metals, particularly coltan. For many years, coltan, a basic material for the electronics industry (for instance for mobile phones), has played an important role in the war economy. In Eastern Congo, there are deposits that can be mined artisanally without much technical assistance. RCD therefore founded the trading company Somigl in the year 2000, which was to have the sole right to export coltan. That year, the price of coltan rose sharply due to the boom in mobile phones and computers, and coltan became the most important source of income for rebels and militias in the east of the country. In December 2000 alone, Somigl, sold US $1.12 million worth of coltan. This boom in coltan, however, ended as quickly as it had begun, so that in 2001, Somigl was already disbanded. After that, coltan was traded via local traders and foreign buyers from the coltan processing industry, amongst them the German company H.C. Starck, a daughter of the Bayer Group.
Non-governmental organizations and a UN expert group demanded sanctions against the trade in coltan from the DRC; the Security Council, however, refrained from imposing such sanctions. One argument was that an embargo would be difficult to enforce in view of the open borders. Another argument was that sanctions imposed on coltan would mostly affect the great number of miners who would be without income. Indeed, most natural resources, such as coltan, tin, diamonds or gold are mined by hundreds of thousands of artisanal miners who work with their pure muscle power.
The discussion about sanctions has not abated. A new law in the United States has led to a de facto boycott of tin ore, coltan, tungsten and gold in the eastern provinces of South and North Kivu. It is true that the so-called Dodd -Frank-Act (see info text on 'national regulation of international business activities') does not forbid the trade in these metals from the DRC, but it forces companies to publicly report on whether they buy metals from areas of conflict. The majority of the electronics industry has since then temporarily stopped purchases from that region. To ensure legal and fair mining of resources in the DRC, the ownership of resource deposits, mining licences and the distribution of the income from this must be clarified. These questions remain open, until today.
Causes and trajectories of conflict
While the exploitation of natural resources in the DRC surely served as a motivation to continue the conflict, the root causes of wars and armed conflicts in the country were, and still are, of a political and societal nature. The DRC is an extremely poor country with more than 200 ethnic groups and a weak, corrupt state that is targeted by regional and national political interests.
With a surface area of 2,344,885 square kilometres—an area six times larger than that of Germany—the country is difficult to govern. This is aggravated by the fact that the exploitation of natural resources continued to trigger internal power struggles and external interventions. For a long time, mostly European (Belgian in particular) corporate groups had controlled natural resource extraction. This did not change much when President Mobutu, who governed the country until 1997, nationalized parts of the country's economy—then called Zairization. The autocrat misused the state-owned copper- and diamond-producing enterprises to finance his extravagant lifestyle and to pay his followers.
The neighbouring countries, too, wanted to get their hands on the rich mineral deposits. Again and again, regional powers were militarily involved in the two Congo wars (1996 to 1997 and 1998 to 2003), be it by supporting various warring parties or by direct military intervention. And this is why there were—and still are—so many weapons and ammunition in the DRC. In the second Congo war, rebel leaders from the resource-rich east, with the support of the neighbouring countries of Rwanda and Uganda, attempted a coup against the central government in Kinshasa. Other neighbouring countries, such as Angola and Zimbabwe, were supportive of the central government. They used the control over the production and the marketing of national resources to finance these activities. At the same time, individuals in armies and the state apparatus got rich.
The first Congo war must also be viewed against the backdrop of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. There, the extremist Hutu government had up to one million Tutsi and Hutu from the opposition murdered. When Tutsi rebels stopped the genocide, more than one million Hutu fled to the DRC (the Zaire); amongst them were also members of the so-called Interahamwe, a Hutu paramilitary organization that had participated in the genocide. The new Rwandan government felt threatened by the extremist Hutu in the refugee camps across the border and justified its invasion into the DRC in 1996 with this. The presence of the Rwandan Hutu in the east of the DRC exacerbated conflicts between Congolese Hutu and Tutsi (North Kivu) and long-established ethnic groups such as the Wabembe and recently arrived groups, such as the Banyamulenge (South Kivu). The numerous armed groups, be they Congolese or foreign, that had participated in the wars have also contributed to the fact that the chasm between ethnic groups became even deeper.
Only in July 2003 did the United Nations impose sanctions on the import of weapons and ammunition that, initially, were limited to regions in the east of the DRC. Today, a large part of the armed groups have either been integrated into the armed forces or have been disarmed—one consequence of military operations by Congolese and Rwandan military and UN peacekeeping forces. The Rwandan Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR - Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda), founded by the former Interahamwe and some Congolese militias, still exists, plunder villages and control some trade routes. Despite various agreements and the largest peacekeeping operation of all times (MONUC, then MONUSCO, with at times more than 20,000 soldiers), the fighting has still not totally stopped.
For the current conflict, too, natural resources, their exploitation and their trade play an important role. FDLR, militias and the army continue to control large parts of the mining areas. Just like rebels and militias, parts of the state army impose protection duties and possess shares in mines.
Sources and further information:
- medico international - Hintergrund zum Rohstoffkonflikt in der DR Kongo
- Medica Mondiale in der DR Kongo
- ÖNZ und Forum Menschenrechte (Hsg.) 2007. Von der Gewalt zur Kriegsökonomie. Deutsche Unternehmen in der Demokratischen Republik Kongo (German)
