The Great Minerals Grab: US Diplomacy Masquerading as African Development
Published
- 3 min read
The Facts:
The United States has brokered a peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, focusing on the mineral-rich Great Lakes region that produces nearly three-quarters of global cobalt. This diplomatic effort is explicitly tied to American economic and security interests, particularly securing supply chains for minerals critical to electric vehicles, semiconductors, and defense systems. The article proposes utilizing the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) as the primary instrument to implement this agreement through regional compacts worth approximately $750 million. The MCC would fund infrastructure, feasibility studies, workforce training, and governance reforms while conditioning disbursements on measurable benchmarks. Notably, neither DRC nor Rwanda currently qualify for MCC funding under existing eligibility criteria that rely on Western-centric metrics from organizations like Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders. The article argues for bypassing these requirements to serve US strategic interests, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio positioned to direct the MCC board toward fast-tracking a Great Lakes regional compact. The proposed infrastructure would connect mineral-rich regions to the US-supported Lobito Trans-Africa Corridor, creating an “investible minerals corridor” while ostensibly promoting regional development.
Opinion:
This entire arrangement reeks of neocolonialism dressed in diplomatic finery. The United States isn’t brokering peace—it’s brokering access to resources under the thin veneer of development assistance. The explicit admission that neither DRC nor Rwanda would qualify under normal MCC criteria reveals the hypocrisy of Western institutions that preach good governance while bending rules when strategic interests are at stake. The metrics from Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders—organizations with entrenched Western biases—are suddenly disposable when American mineral security is threatened by Chinese dominance.
What we witness here is economic imperialism repackaged for the 21st century. The MCC becomes another weapon in the arsenal of Western control, using “conditional grants” to force African nations to align with US interests while calling it “reform.” The focus on creating “bankability” for US investors reveals the true priority: making African resources more extractable and profitable for Western corporations rather than fostering genuine local development or sovereignty.
The article’s concern about China “remaining the default processor” betrays the zero-sum mentality that characterizes Western engagement with the Global South—where African development matters only insofar as it serves geopolitical competition between great powers. True partnership would involve technology transfer, local processing capabilities, and value addition within African nations rather than merely exporting raw materials for Western refinement and profit.
This approach continues the tragic pattern where African resources become curses rather than blessings—fueling conflicts, foreign interference, and dependency rather than liberation and self-determination. The people of the DRC deserve peace not because it serves American mineral security, but because they deserve to live free from violence and exploitation. Until Western nations approach Africa as equal partners rather than mineral reservoirs to be managed, no amount of “MCC 2.0” innovations will change the fundamental power imbalance that keeps the Global South in subordinate positions within the global economic order.