M23 rebels continue to advance towards Goma, the capital of North Kivu province in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). On Tuesday, the M23 captured the eastern town of Minowa, which is one of the main supply routes to Goma. Other parts of North Kivu province are also at risk of being taken over by rebels.
The security situation in the region is deteriorating due to the growing territorial gains of the militias. The clashes have displaced thousands of people and led to a humanitarian crisis.
The Tutsi-led M23 group has been fighting again in the east of the country since 2022. The Congolese government and UN experts in Kinshasa accuse neighboring Rwanda of supporting the group with Rwandan troops and weapons. However, Rwanda has never acknowledged direct military involvement.
American peace promotion
Former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Fee said the US has proposed expanding the Lobito Corridor to speed up the transport of minerals from southern DRC and Zambia to Angola’s Atlantic coast.
“We proposed to both sides [Rwanda and the DRC] “If we can achieve stabilization in eastern DRC, we can work on developing a trail from the Lobito corridor through eastern DRC,” Fei said in an interview before his exit after the end of the Biden administration. “They did not take action,” Fee told AFP of the Congolese government.
According to the US diplomat, this proposal included a crackdown on the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda). This Hutu-led rebel group has been active in eastern Congo since the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. President Paul Kagame accused the FDLR of trying to destabilize Rwanda.
“We tried to provide positive incentives. A real framework – basically negotiated by the parties – exists, and at the moment, Rwanda seems to have moved away from it,” he said.
Kagame’s absence during Angola peace talks
Rwandan President Paul Kagame skipped Angola-brokered talks between the heads of state of DR Congo and Zambia during the visit of then US President Joe Biden in December 2024.
Alex Vines, director of the Africa Program at Chatham House, London, said [US] The Lobito Corridor’s offer to extend its signed investment into restive eastern DRC as an incentive for a peace deal did not go well.
Vines said this was an “ill-advised” move that did not bring any comfort to Rwandans, so he rejected the offer. He said Rwanda has no interest in seeing trade passing through the DRC and the Atlantic coast; He wants trade to pass through Rwanda.
“It is not surprising that Rwanda has backed out, as it would have no interest in diverting trade going across its borders to East Africa,” Vines said. “It was a fraudulent incentive, it could have been counterproductive.”
Rail transport in eastern Congo ‘nonsense’
According to Evans David Wala Chabala, former CEO of the Zambia Securities and Exchange Commission (ZEC), the US offer makes no sense. He told DW that if Kagame was involved in the conflict in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and was accessing mining products from there, he would not want to transport minerals through a transport corridor that crosses the entire length of the DRC. ,
“He would like to get them out of the country as soon as possible,” said Chabala, a consultant at the Africa Research Policy Private Institute (APRI).
He said a transport running from Dar es Salaam to the capital Dodoma would be more viable for Kagame. In June 2024, Tanzania and Rwanda agreed to build a standard-gauge railway connecting Tanzania’s Isaka dry port to Rwanda’s capital Kigali. The 521 km (323 mi) railway will be estimated to cost $2.5 billion (€1.9 billion).
Trade in valuable raw materials is increasing in the region. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that demand for nickel and cobalt will increase twenty-fold between 2020 and 2040, that of graphite twenty-five-fold and that of lithium a whopping forty-fold, according to a report by Chabala. Lobito Corridor.
The projected increase in demand has generated great interest in the Lobito corridor, creating inevitable conflict for access.
DRC: country rich in precious minerals
The Democratic Republic of Congo, the largest producer of cobalt in the world (about 70% of global production), is at the center of this competition, with Zambia also affected.
The Lobito Corridor consists of a 1,300-kilometre railway line from the port of Lobito on the Angolan Atlantic coast through the town of Luau on Angola’s north-eastern border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the town of Kolwezi near north-western Zambia.
The rail line extends 400 km further into the DRC to the mining town of Kolwezi. According to European and US contract partners, the massive investment in infrastructure is aimed at speeding up the transport of minerals such as cobalt and copper and countering Chinese influence in the region.
This is part of Western geopolitical strategy as China currently dominates the mining sector in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia.
Zambia as a transit for minerals from the DRC
According to Chabala, mineral traders prefer to transport the extracted raw materials from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Zambia before taking them out of Africa through ports.
He said traders are only paid when the goods reach the Zambian border. The extension of the Lobito corridor from Kolwezi to Zambia is being discussed.
“The Democratic Republic of the Congo is already a very unsafe place to do business,” Chabala said. He said eastern DRC has been ravaged by 120 rebel groups fighting over resources.
Zambian analysts do not consider the former US administration’s plan viable, especially since it is unlikely to be followed by the new administration under Donald Trump.
Chabala said, “Joe Biden may have made this proposal to extend the corridor to the eastern region of the DRC because he was well aware that he was in the last weeks of his presidency and that the plan would not be implemented after this discussion “
Edited by: Crispin Mavakideau
