Africa’s minerals are being bartered for security: why it’s a bad idea

By Hanri Mostert, SARChI Chair for Mineral Law in Africa, University of Cape Town
Tracy-Lynn Field, Professor of Environmental and Sustainability Law, University of the Witwatersrand

A US-brokered peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda binds the two African nations to a worrying arrangement: one where a country signs away its mineral resources to a superpower in return for opaque assurances of security.

The peace deal, signed in June 2025, aims to end three decades of conflict between…

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