By Cheikh Fall, The Third Path Africa
🌐 Read this dispatch in French👉 https://thirdpath.africa/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Rwanda-DRC-fren-1.pdf
Washington DC, June 30 2025
From the brutal lash of colonization to today’s cloaked wars over lithium, cobalt, and coltan, the Democratic Republic of Congo has borne the unbearable: the paradox of being rich in value, yet treated as expendable. It is a nation whose territory is repeatedly violated, whose people are displaced and discarded, and whose forests cleanse the planet’s carbon while the world lets its sovereignty rot.
Today, as conflict once again consumes Eastern Congo, we must confront an unrelenting truth: the DRC is not simply in crisis. It is being plundered — violently, systematically — while silence is traded for minerals and press releases replace peace.
I. Rwanda’s Role, and the Price of Congo’s Minerals
Let us be unequivocal: Rwanda is the aggressor in this war.
Under the guise of security interests, it has deployed military force, fueled armed proxy groups, and looted Congolese mineral wealth — a pattern long documented and widely denounced, yet continually met with limp outrage or willful denial.
This aggression is not carried out alone. Behind Rwanda’s armored ambitions stand wealthy states and global corporations, whose support — financial, logistical, or political — enables the continued theft of Congo’s critical minerals. In return, they access cobalt, coltan, and other resources far below market value, often at no cost beyond Congolese blood.
The result? Rwanda’s economic ascent is financed by Congolese soil — and the conscience of the international community is kept at arm’s length, masked by calls for “neutrality.”
II. When Mediation Fails and Interests Prevail
Africa has not been idle.
The East African Community (EAC), under the leadership of President William Ruto, has invested tirelessly in dialogue. The Southern African Development Community (SADC), with President Cyril Ramaphosa at the helm, has engaged diplomatically and strategically. President João Lourenço of Angola has mobilized non-stop efforts to convene, mediate, and de-escalate — invoking Africa’s tradition of “consensus under the palaver tree”, where dignity and truth lead dialogue.
Yet Rwanda has not only dismissed these efforts — it has actively undermined them.
It has attempted to stain the neutrality of its African peers, question their motives, and torpedo the very notion of an African-led resolution. But when Qatar, flush with wealth and global cachet, offered its mediation, Rwanda promptly accepted. Why? Because financial self-interest triumphed over regional solidarity — and because it feared alienating a benefactor it could not afford to offend.
The same scenario unfolded with the United States. When Washington applied pressure — not for justice, but to preserve its own strategic interests — Rwanda bowed. What it refused to accept from African leaders offering a dignified exit, it submitted to from foreign powers offering nothing but conditional compliance.
III. The Façade of Western Neutrality
The United States is not a neutral actor in this conflict. It is not guided by moral clarity, but by strategic ambition.
Behind its public appeals for dialogue lies a quieter agenda: secure privileged access to critical minerals, secure regional influence, and possibly score a diplomatic victory worthy of personal legacy, even a Nobel Peace Prize. This is not peace-brokering — it is posturing in pursuit of advantage.
And so the Congolese people are left once again in the shadows: displaced, destabilized, and denied justice — because neutrality has become a cover for complicity, and global attention is shaped by what can be extracted, not what must be protected.
IV. What Real Justice Looks Like
True peace is not the absence of bullets. It is the presence of dignity, sovereignty, and truth.
We call for the immediate establishment of an “African Authority for the Governance of Mineral Resources” — an institution equipped not just to observe, but to enforce. One that defends the rights of the people over the profits of the powerful. One that restores African control over African wealth.
We call, too, for the reaffirmation of “regional bodies as anchors of resolution” — not as observers to foreign dictates, but as authors of the solutions that only proximity and cultural wisdom can produce.
And we declare, without hesitation: the cost of Congo’s stability must no longer be paid by Congolese suffering.
V. A Message to the World
Congo is more than a conflict. It is the second-largest rainforest on Earth. It is the belly of the global energy transition. It is the soul of a continent that refuses to be buried beneath its burdens.
This isn’t just about stopping a war. It’s about ending a system — where silence is bought, where aggression is brokered, and where justice is always postponed. Let this be the last time Congo is asked to bleed for the world without the world standing for Congo.