Blood, Gold and Rare Earths

There are two major forgotten humanitarian crises in Africa at the moment. They are the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the civil war in Sudan. After the election of Donald Trump, the White House decided that mineral resources, especially those rare earths that are so precious for the entire electronics industry, must no longer go only to the Chinese.

In Africa, the largest producer of rare earths is Congo, defined as a geological scandal for its wealth, but which is burdened by the curse of resources, according to which when a country is very rich in minerals and resources it will be plundered and its population impoverished. For a long time, the precious minerals of the eastern part of Congo have been contested by government militias and the M23 rebels officially formed against the corrupt national government, but in reality supported by neighboring Rwanda that wants to take the rare earths to smuggle them. The M23 went on the attack in January and conquered several cities in the eastern part of Congo bordering Rwanda, the area with the most mines.
Rwanda is supported by the United States and Great Britain, which wanted to deport immigrants and asylum seekers there.

This crisis has so far caused great suffering, at least one million new displaced people in a country that has been practically in civil war since independence in the 1960s and which has several million internally displaced refugees and camps. It is feared that in the end they want to go to a partition with the eastern part that would pass under Rwandan control, the western part that would remain autonomous and finally the secession of the Katanga region, which is also very rich in minerals such as uranium.

The other crisis is that of Sudan which broke out almost two years ago between the army and the paramilitary forces of the RSF, the rapid support forces, which had already carried out a genocide twenty years ago in Darfur, the western region of Sudan.

The RSF are African Arabic-speaking militias supported by the United Arab Emirates because gold was discovered in the western part of Darfur, another of the precious minerals that drive the economy, both because it is a safe haven, and because of the demand made by the electronics industry, and because of the demand for jewelry. The United Arab Emirates are the main recipients of African gold, especially that extracted from illegal mines, which is estimated to be half of the continent's total. To have it, they arm mercenaries who come to fight in Sudan from neighboring Chad, Cameroon, Libya and also from the Central African Republic to drive out people of Nilo-Saharan origin. Last but not least, the gold of Darfur is mined together with Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Corporation who take part of it to Russia.

There have been 14 million displaced people in all of Sudan during these two years of civil war, three million of whom have gone abroad and live in refugee camps, such as in Chad, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt, all poor states that have kept their borders open. Now the situation in the camps is rapidly worsening.

The cuts wanted by Donald Trump with the freezing of USAID funds, which constituted about a quarter of international humanitarian aid, are literally starving the people who live in refugee camps. These are widows, orphans, elderly, sick people who are fleeing war, violence, ethnic rape and survive only with UN aid. The decision to halt this aid for 90 days risks bringing to their knees millions of people who are already suffering from crises fueled by predatory foreign powers.


Paolo Lambruschi
NP March 2025