Information

The Democratic Republic of the Congo[b] (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo, is a country in Central Africa. By land area, the country is the second-largest country in Africa and the 11th-largest in the world.  

With a population of around 111 million, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most populous nominally Francophone country in the world. The national capital and largest city is Kinshasa, which is also the economic center.  

The country is bordered by the Republic of the Congo; Central African Republic; South Sudan; Uganda; Rwanda; Burundi; Tanzania (across Lake Tanganyika); Zambia; Angola; the Cabinda exclave of Angola; and the South Atlantic Ocean.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a multilingual country where an estimated total of 242 languages are spoken. Ethnologue lists 215 living languages.

The official language, since the colonial period, is French, one of the languages of Belgium.

Four other languages, all of them Bantu-based, have the status of national language: Kikongo-Kituba, Lingala, Swahili, and Tshiluba.

The oil sector accounts for about half of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) and 80% of its exports, making it the third largest producer in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the main source of income is its mineral deposits.

The main cash crops include coffee, palm oil, rubber, cotton, sugar, tea and cocoa. Food crops also include cassava, plantains, maize, groundnuts, and rice.

The country is considered one of the 17 megadiverse nations and is one of the most flora-rich countries on the African continent.

Its rainforests harbor many rare and endemic species, such as the chimpanzee and the bonobo.

It is home to more than 10,000 types of plants, 600 timber species, as well as 1,000 bird species, 280 reptile species, and 400 mammal species, including the forest elephant, gorilla, forest buffalo, bongo, and okapi. Many of these wildlife species are threatened animals such as large lowland gorillas and chimpanzees. However, the decades-long conflict over minerals is where the mountain gorilla has had its habitat.

They live in two isolated groups – one in the Virunga volcanoes – spanning the borders of Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and one in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda, contiguous with DRC's Sarambwe Nature Reserve.

These mountain gorillas are second on the WWF list of most endangered animals.

On this page, you can see the species living in North Kivu.

Paul Kagame was born into a Tutsi family in southern Rwanda that fled to Uganda when he was two years old. He spent the rest of his childhood there during the Rwandan Revolution, which ended Tutsi political dominance.

In the 1980s, Kagame fought in Yoweri Museveni's rebel army becoming a senior Ugandan army officer after many military victories led Museveni to the Ugandan presidency. Kagame joined the RPF, taking control of the rebel group when the previous leader Fred Rwigyema died on the second day of the 1990 invasion

By 1993, the RPF controlled significant territory in Rwanda and a ceasefire was negotiated. The assassination of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana set off the genocide, in which Hutu extremists killed an estimated 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu. Kagame resumed the civil war and ended the genocide with a military victory.

The genocide is the worst example of tribalism in politics in black Africa's history.

Rwanda has only known four presidents. Paul Kagame made an end to fair elections 25 years ago, on April 22, 2000. Since 2003, he has been "re-elected" time and time again as elections are manipulated in various ways. Manipulations include banning opposition parties, arresting or assassinating critics, and electoral fraud. According to its constitution, Rwanda is a multi-party democracy with a presidential system. In practice, it functions as a one-party state ruled by the Rwandan Patriotic Front and its leader Paul Kagame.

Like Kagame, Yorowi Museveni, Uganda's long sit-tight dictator has a militant background as he was a Front for National Salvation member. In Uganda, nine people who have ruled the country were military officers. In 1981, Yoweri Museveni carried out a coup against the then-dictatorship of Milton Obote. The first elections under Museveni's government were held on May 9, 1996. He was sworn in as president for the second time on May 12, 1996, and remained in power since then. In 2004, the government proposed to amend the Constitution to enable Museveni to rule for life.

Like the Rwandan constitution, the  Ugandan constitution doesn't reflect reality. In the Political Parties And Organizations Act 2005, it is to read: " Every citizen of Uganda has a right to form or join a political party or organization of his or her choice." and "The people shall express their will and consent on who shall govern them and how they should be governed, through regular, free and fair elections ..." Well, the case of Bobby Wine has proven that even Uganda is defacto a one-party state.

Bertrand Bisimwa is the 'president' of the rebel group 'March 23' (M23), and Emmanuel Sultan Makenga the military chief. Bisimwa stood alongside Nangaa at the launch of AFC and is central to AFC and M23's collaboration.

On January 1, 2025 and during an interview with Al Jazeera, Bisimwa claimed that he was fighting a "defensive" war. The Qatari broadcast was punished for the interview and banned from reporting in the DR Congo for nine months.

However, a background check learns that Bisimwa is since April 2012 the head of the militia group while the Rwandan ruler, Paul Kagame is destablizing the North Kivu province over minerals since 2004 .

It is in 2012 that the M23 first saw action during its first rebellion against the Congolese government that led to the displacement of large numbers of people.

A United Nations report found that Rwanda (read: Kagame) created and commanded the M23 rebel group. Rwanda ceased its support due to international pressure and the military defeat by the Congolese military and the UN peacekeeping forces in 2013.

In June 2024, up to 4.000 Rwandan troops have secretly crossed the border into North Kivu province. A year later, the Guardian reported that hundreds of Rwandan troops had been killed during covert operations in the province contradicting claims by Kagame that his soldiers are not involved in the conflict there.

An X-post reads: "On 5th/2/2025, RDF terrorist appointed Manzi Ngarambe Willy, a Rwandan by nationality, & a cousin to ICC-convicted war criminal Bosco Ntaganda, alias  Terminator, as Vice Governor of North Kivu in charge of administration. Previously, he was RDF-M23's Diaspora Chief Coordinator."

Rwanda is the main key player.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is considered the world's richest country in terms of wealth in natural resources. Most of the raw mineral deposits remain untapped and are worth an estimated $24 trillion. These deposits include the world's largest coltan reserves and considerable amounts of cobalt. The price of coltan depends on how much tantalum it contains, but on average, a kilogram of the rare ore fetches $48, according to Forbes in January 2024.

WHAT IS COLTAN USED FOR?

Coltan (short for columbite–tantalites and known industrially as tantalite) is a dull black metallic ore from which the elements niobium and tantalum are extracted. The niobium-dominant mineral in coltan is columbite (after niobium's original American name columbium), and the tantalum-dominant mineral is tantalite.

Tantalum from coltan is used to manufacture tantalum capacitors which are used for mobile phones, personal computers, automotive electronics, and cameras. Coltan mining is widespread in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

WHAT IS COBALT USED FOR?

Cobalt is a chemical element; it has the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, somewhat brittle,  gray metal.

Cobalt-based blue pigments (cobalt blue) have been used since antiquity for jewelry and paints, and to impart a distinctive blue tint to glass. The color was long thought to be due to the metal bismuth. Miners had long used the name kobold ore (German for goblin ore) for some of the blue pigment-producing minerals. They were so named because they were poor in known metals and gave off poisonous arsenic-containing fumes when smelted

Cobalt is primarily used in lithium-ion batteries.

RWANDA

We don't look at political aspects. We look at material aspects. Here are a few examples found in reports mainly from the United Nations Security Council indicating Rwanda's interest in minerals from North Kivu.

• On July 15, 2004, traffic reportedly consisted of military materiel and ammunition, recently recruited Congolese returning from Rwanda for active military.

• On November 15, 2012, Border officials and former M23 soldiers repeatedly witnessed the arrival of Rwandan troops into North Kivu from Rwanda

• BBC on July 30, 2024, The Democratic Republic of Congo accused the Rwandan army of jamming satellite navigation systems affecting civilian flights in the conflict-hit east of the country.

• On December 27, 2024, Rwanda jams air traffic in the DRC.

• On January 29, 2025, the director of the UN peacekeeping missions, Jean-Pierre Lacroix said "There was no question that there are Rwandan troops in Goma supporting the M23,"

CHINA

• On April 14, 2021, Chinese machine factory, Forui Machinery posted a video of a tantalum-niobium ore beneficiation installation it had delivered to Rwanda.

• In 2022, the Observatory of Economic Complexity reported that the Democratic Republic of the Congo exported Cobalt worth $5.74B

• On June 4, 2024, the UNSC reported the presence of a landing strip in Rwanda close to the border with DRC's North Kivu.

• On October 27, 2024, the French RFI reported that Chinese-owned firms were mining gold in North Kivu often without permits and without declaring the mineral when brought into Rwanda.

CONSUMERS

As consumers, we all are part of the conflict because our homes are filled with tantalum, and carry it in our mobile phones, and smartwatches. Some people even have tantalum in their jewelry.

However, we are at the end of the chain. So, we all don't feel guilty because we think it's not created by us. We as consumers contribute to the war by always wanting the newest and or better versions without asking ourselves what's inside, what is it made of, and where the material comes from to make it.

It is not in our collective buying behavior to be critical and it is also not what manufacturers want to see. Producing, selling and making money is what it is all about, not human lives. Hence the indifference among buyers and sellers.

The unchanged collective behavior among consumers naturally raises the question "Is a change in this behavior possible?"

A change is always possible if there is a will and that has not been the case for years because of advertising campaigns to keep everyone buying. It is about a vicious circle of supply and demand.

However, how often do manufacturers come up with "innovations" that the consumer has not asked for? You see this every year in the mobile phone industry, for example.

• Paul Kagame is undemocratically president of Rwanda since 2000 but his activities in the east of the DRC are known since 2004.
• The summary is exemplary, so indicative as it does not contain all developments you may wish to see listed.
• The views expressed in the content of each article are solely those of the source and may not or do not reflect the reality as having occured as dated below..

• Paul Kagame is undemocractically president of Rwanda since 2000 but his activities in the east of the DRC are known since 2004.
• The summary is exemplary, so indicative as it does not contain all developments you may wish to see listed.
• The views expressed in the content of each article are solely those of the source and may not or do not reflect the reality as having occured as dated below.

• Paul Kagame is undemocratically president of Rwanda since 2000 but his activities in the east of the DRC are known since 2004.
• The Summary is exemplary, so indicative as it does not contain all developments you may wish to see listed.
• The views expressed in the content of each article are solely those of the source and may not or do not reflect the reality as having occured as dated below.

• Paul Kagame is undemocratically president of Rwanda since 2000 but his activities in the east of the DRC are known since 2004.
• The summary is exemplary, so indicative as it does not contain all developments you may wish to see listed.
• The views expressed in the content of each article are solely those of the source and may not or do not reflect the reality as having occured dated below.