Rwandan economic involvement in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo

According to the International Rescue Committee, as many as 3.3 million people have lost their lives, either in direct fighting or from the outbreak of diseases as a result of the war. Despite the formation of a two-year national transition government, composed of representatives of the former Kinshasa regime, the pro-government Mayi Mayi-militias, rebel movements, the unarmed political opposition and civil society, the prospects for durable peace remain bleak. While intensified ethnic strife between Hema and Lendu militias in the resource-rich Ituri province has triggered a massive flow of refugees and the creation of a multilateral intervention force in June 2003, the Kivu provinces have witnessed renewed fighting between rebel forces of the Rwandan-backed RCD-Goma rebel movement and Mayi-Mayi militiamen. Even the south-eastern Katanga province has shown signs of evolving instability: on 8 August 2003, the international relief non-governmental organisation GOAL reported that six different armed groups were occupying the town of Manono, following the ejection of the local RCD-Goma administrator by the 8th Brigade, a mysterious group of 150 men claiming to be members of the former Kinshasa government’s army. Unfortunately, the spiral of violence in Congo’s border regions is not the only source of concern to diplomats involved in overseeing the peace process. The dubious track record of some of the key members of the national transition government does not inspire much confidence in the preparatory work for the country’s first democratic elections since independence. Whereas a Belgian court has sentenced vicepresident Jean-Pierre Bemba to one year’s imprisonment for human trafficking, his colleague Abdoulaye Yerodia Ndombasi has also faced a Belgian judicial inquiry for his inflammatory statements concerning the DRC’s Tutsi population in August 1998. Finally, one of the biggest impediments to the Congolese peace process may be the issue of resource trafficking. According to the UN expert panel investigating the illegal exploitation of natural resources and other forms of wealth of the DRC, members of the Rwandan and Ugandan regime have developed mechanisms to continue the looting of diamonds, gold, coltan and timber after the official withdrawal of their troops from Congolese territory, as agreed in the Pretoria and Luanda peace accords. Previous reports by the Panel contained a detailed account of the multiple ways in which a selected group of Rwandan and Ugandan military officers, politicians and businessmen have taken advantage of the military presence of the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces to secure their stake in the Congolese mining business.

Mining in comparative perspective : trends, transformations and theories

This article offers a brief introduction to a special issue based on a selection of papers originally presented at an international mining conference in Ghent (Belgium) in December 2017. The aim of the conference was to promote a comparative and multidisciplinary approach to a selective number of political, economic and sociocultural aspects of mining in the Global South. The five papers included in the special issue have been grouped around three main themes: (1) mining elites, (2) the antagonism between artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) and large-scale mining (LSM), and (3) mining in a globalizing world

European companies and the coltan trade: an update

This is the second part of a research study into coltan trade and the role of European companies. Part one focuses at the changes on the cotan market since January 2002 (price evolution, exports through Rwanda and Uganda, the corporate response to international criticism from amongst others H.C Starck, Eagle Wings Reserouces; and Rwanda's alies). Part two assesses the role of the transport sector (the Dutch Martinair, DAS Air Cargo, Handelsveem, Steinweg, Hollands Veem

Women, mining and power in southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo : the case of Kisengo

Recent decades have witnessed a growing scholarly interest in women’s involvement in ASM, with many authors drawing attention to two frequently occurring trends: the fact that women move to mining areas to escape oppressive gender rules and norms, and the remarkable efforts of women miners to exercise agency in the typically complex and unstable socio-political environments of artisanal mining sites. An important gap in the existing literature is the lack of attention for the differences in agency and the power relations between these women. This article seeks to fill this gap by presenting an ethnographic case study on the so-called mamans moutrousses, a group of women assisting artisanal miners with the drying and cleaning of minerals in coltan mines close to Kisengo, a locality situated in the Congolese Tanganyika province. Drawing inspiration from Vigh’s navigation theory, the work of Honwana, and the spatial approach advanced by Watts and Korf, the article argues that the less successful women in Kisengo’s mining business have only been able to display ‘tactic agency’, while the more successful ones have succeeded in demonstrating ‘strategic agency’