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There are countries whose natural resources have become instruments of national transformation, and there are countries whose natural resources have become instruments of national tragedy. The Democratic Republic of Congo occupies a particularly painful position in the latter category. Beneath its vast territory lies an extraordinary concentration of minerals essential to the modern global economy, including cobalt, copper, gold, tin, tantalum, tungsten and coltan. These resources are indispensable to the manufacture of smartphones, electric vehicles, computers, industrial machinery and other technologies upon which contemporary civilisation increasingly depends. Yet, for millions of Congolese citizens, this geological abundance has not translated into peace, prosperity or the security of ordinary life. Instead, parts of the country, particularly its eastern provinces, have endured successive cycles of armed conflict, displacement, exploitation and humanitarian catastrophe.
The contradiction demands an uncomfortable question: if the minerals were taken out of the equation, would the wars in Congo end? And if the mineral wealth ceased to attract armed groups, foreign commercial interests and competing geopolitical ambitions, would Ebola and other public health emergencies cease to haunt the Congolese people?
The intellectually honest answer is that the wars would not necessarily end, and Ebola would not disappear. However, removing the financial incentives that minerals provide to armed actors, while simultaneously addressing the political, institutional and socioeconomic conditions that sustain violence, could substantially alter the trajectory of the Congolese crisis. To understand why, we must distinguish between the causes of conflict, the mechanisms through which conflict is financed, and the conditions that transform infectious disease into a national humanitarian emergency.
The distinction is essential because the tendency to explain Congo’s tragedy exclusively through its minerals risks obscuring the deeper institutional failures that make the exploitation of those minerals possible.
Congo’s predicament is not simply the consequence of having too much wealth beneath its soil. It is also the consequence of a political and economic order in which the extraction of wealth has repeatedly proceeded without a corresponding transformation in the security, accountability and welfare of the people who inhabit the land.
The country’s modern tragedy cannot be understood without examining its colonial inheritance. Under King Leopold II of Belgium, the Congo Free State became an international emblem of organised brutality, with the extraction of rubber and ivory enforced through coercion, terror and the destruction of local communities. When Belgium formally assumed control of the territory in 1908, the fundamental economic orientation remained heavily extractive. Colonial administration prioritised the production of commodities for external markets while denying the Congolese population meaningful political power.
Independence in 1960 did not automatically dismantle the structures through which external economic interests, domestic political elites and coercive institutions interacted. The assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 1961, followed by the consolidation of Mobutu Sese Seko’s authoritarian rule, illustrated how the struggle for political authority in Congo became entangled with Cold War calculations and international interests in strategic resources.
Mobutu’s regime eventually presided over the systematic weakening of public institutions, the personalisation of state authority and the entrenchment of patronage. The state increasingly became a vehicle through which political loyalty could be rewarded and economic opportunities distributed. Its institutions were insufficiently developed to guarantee that national wealth would be managed for the benefit of the population.
This history matters because contemporary conflict did not emerge from an otherwise peaceful society simply because somebody discovered valuable minerals. It developed within a political landscape shaped by colonial extraction, authoritarian government, regional insecurity, contested citizenship, land disputes and the erosion of public institutions.
The Congo wars of 1996–1997 and 1998–2003 further internationalised the country’s crisis. Domestic rebellions, the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the presence of armed groups operating across borders, regional security calculations and competition over territory combined to create one of the most complex conflict systems in modern African history. Mineral exploitation became increasingly important within this environment, but it was not the sole force responsible for its creation.
The analytical mistake, therefore, is to treat minerals as the original explanation for every Congolese war. A more defensible argument is that mineral wealth has helped transform an already combustible political and security environment into a self-sustaining conflict economy.
The distinction between creating a war and financing its continuation is not merely academic. It determines the policies that might actually bring peace.
The United States Government Accountability Office, in its October 2024 report on conflict minerals, found that the trade in gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten continued to provide financial opportunities for armed groups operating in eastern Congo. Some groups tax access to mines, impose levies on mineral production, interfere with transport routes or profit from illicit trading networks. Yet the report also emphasised that the conflict has multiple, interdependent causes, including weak governance, corruption, regional involvement, ethnic tensions and economic pressures. It further concluded that existing American mineral-disclosure requirements had not produced a demonstrable improvement in peace and security.
This evidence challenges two opposing simplifications. The first claims that Congo is at war merely because it possesses minerals. The second suggests that mineral exploitation is incidental to a conflict that can be resolved without confronting the economic interests sustaining it. Neither adequately captures the relationship between natural resources and organised violence.
Minerals are not always the reason an armed group comes into existence. They can, however, become the reason that the group remains economically viable long after its original political grievances have changed.
A militia initially organised around insecurity, exclusion, ethnic mobilisation or resistance to state authority may discover that controlling a mining area provides a more dependable source of revenue than negotiating a political settlement. Once its leaders establish systems of taxation, coercion, smuggling and territorial administration, the conflict acquires an economic constituency. Individuals and networks who benefit from the continuation of violence may begin to resist peace because peace threatens their income, influence and power.
In such circumstances, war ceases to be merely a contest over political objectives. It becomes a business whose profitability depends upon the continued absence of peace.
This is where Congo’s mineral wealth assumes its most destructive significance. The country’s resources provide an opportunity for armed actors to convert territorial control into financial power. A mine is not simply a geological deposit. In a conflict zone, it can become a source of taxation, a bargaining instrument, a strategic asset and a gateway into international commercial networks.
The same is true of the roads connecting mining areas to trading centres, border crossings and export markets. Whoever controls these routes may exercise influence over the movement of minerals, agricultural produce, humanitarian supplies and civilians. The political economy of conflict therefore extends beyond the mine itself to encompass the wider infrastructure through which wealth is extracted and transported.
The result is a disturbing asymmetry. The minerals may eventually reach international manufacturers, refiners and consumers, but the violence associated with their extraction is experienced disproportionately by the Congolese communities living near the sites of production.
A smartphone assembled in a technologically advanced economy may contain materials originating in a region where miners work under precarious conditions, families have been displaced and armed actors impose illegal levies. The consumer sees the finished product. The Congolese villager may see the armed men who control the road leading to the mine.
This is not an argument that every company purchasing Congolese minerals finances violence, nor that every mining operation is controlled by an armed group. Such generalisations would be inaccurate. Rather, the central concern is that opaque supply chains, illicit trade, corruption and inadequate accountability can allow minerals originating in conflict-affected areas to generate revenue for actors who perpetuate insecurity.
The international community has attempted to address this problem through mineral traceability, corporate disclosure and responsible-sourcing initiatives. Yet the limitations of these measures reveal how difficult it is to separate a mineral from the political environment in which it is extracted.
The American disclosure regime associated with Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act sought to encourage companies to investigate the origins of certain minerals associated with the Congolese conflict. However, the Government Accountability Office found that the rule had not reduced violence in eastern Congo. Its 2024 assessment also highlighted the difficulties of tracing gold, which is relatively easy to transport and smuggle. Some efforts to improve supply-chain transparency have therefore coexisted with continued insecurity.
The lesson is not that mineral traceability is useless. It is that transparency cannot substitute for security, accountable government, effective law enforcement and a functioning judicial system.
A mineral can be certified, documented and tracked, but such procedures cannot independently resolve a territorial dispute, disarm a militia, reform a corrupt security institution or prevent an external actor from pursuing strategic interests through armed proxies. Responsible sourcing is an important component of a wider solution, not a substitute for one.
The question of whether Congo would enjoy peace without minerals must consequently be examined through a counterfactual. Imagine that tomorrow every commercially valuable mineral deposit in eastern Congo disappeared. The mines would be empty, the trading networks would lose their principal commodities, and the international scramble for access to those deposits would diminish.
Would the guns fall silent?
Some armed groups would undoubtedly lose an important source of revenue. The cost of sustaining fighters would rise, and certain territorial contests would become less attractive. Networks whose operations depend heavily on mineral extraction might weaken, fragment or disappear.
Yet other armed groups would continue to have reasons to fight. Land disputes would remain. Competition over local political authority would remain. Questions of citizenship, belonging and ethnic exclusion would remain. Regional security anxieties would remain. Grievances arising from abuses by state forces or non-state actors would remain. The opportunities for extortion, kidnapping, taxation of transport and agricultural trade, and the exploitation of vulnerable populations would not automatically disappear.
The Government Accountability Office’s analysis directly supports this distinction: experts consulted for its research indicated that armed groups could seek alternative sources of financing if minerals became unavailable. The same report identified several interconnected drivers of violence that extend beyond the mining economy.
Mineral wealth is therefore better understood as an accelerant of conflict than as a universal explanation for its existence. It can intensify competition, extend the life of armed organisations and increase the rewards associated with territorial control. Removing it could weaken particular conflict economies, but it would not automatically eliminate the political conditions that make violence possible.
Indeed, an armed group that loses access to a mine may turn to the taxation of farmers, traders and transport operators. It may increase kidnappings or seize other economically productive territory. In a region where state authority is contested, the methods of extraction can change even when the underlying structure of coercion survives.
This is why a serious peace strategy cannot stop at depriving armed groups of minerals. It must also prevent them from replacing mineral revenues with other forms of predation.
But there is a second question in the Congolese tragedy, one that requires even greater analytical care: what is the relationship between mineral extraction, armed conflict and Ebola?
Here, intellectual precision is indispensable. Minerals do not cause Ebola. Ebola is an infectious disease caused by viruses belonging to the orthoebolavirus group. Human infections are zoonotic, meaning that they can arise through transmission from infected animals to people, while subsequent human-to-human transmission occurs through direct contact with the blood or bodily fluids of infected individuals and contaminated materials.
The World Health Organization’s account of the 2026 outbreak of Bundibugyo virus disease in Congo identifies fruit bats as a suspected natural reservoir and describes the risks associated with contact with infected wildlife, inadequate infection prevention and control, and unsafe burial practices. The disease is biologically distinct from the political economy of mineral extraction.
It would therefore be scientifically indefensible to claim that Congo suffers Ebola because it possesses cobalt, gold or coltan. Nor would it be accurate to suggest that removing these minerals from the country would eliminate the virus or prevent every future outbreak.
Ebola outbreaks have occurred in several African countries, including countries where mineral extraction is not the defining feature of national life. The emergence of the disease depends on ecological, biological and epidemiological conditions. The presence of wildlife reservoirs, human exposure, patterns of movement and the effectiveness of public health systems all matter.
Nevertheless, the relationship between Congo’s conflict economy and its public health crises is significant, even if it is indirect.
Minerals may not produce the virus, but the political and social conditions surrounding their extraction can influence how effectively an outbreak is detected, contained and treated.
The distinction between causing a disease and creating conditions in which it spreads is fundamental to understanding the Congolese experience.
Consider a mining community in which people work under precarious conditions, health facilities are poorly equipped, access to clean water is limited and families have few alternatives to crowded settlements. If an infectious disease emerges, the capacity to recognise symptoms, conduct laboratory investigations, isolate suspected cases and deliver timely treatment may already be inadequate.
Now introduce armed violence.
Healthcare workers may be unable to reach affected villages safely. Roads may become inaccessible. Families may flee their homes and move into overcrowded settlements. Public health teams may struggle to trace contacts because people have been displaced or because insecurity prevents them from entering affected areas. Suspicion of government institutions, international agencies or unfamiliar medical interventions may further complicate cooperation with communities.
These circumstances do not create the virus, but they can increase the difficulty of containing it.
The World Health Organization’s reporting on the 2026 Bundibugyo outbreak illustrates this interaction. In its August 2026 assessment, WHO described a crisis unfolding amid insecurity, armed violence, mass displacement, food insecurity and restricted access to healthcare. It explained that these conditions were obstructing surveillance, case investigation, contact follow-up and the delivery of essential health services. The organisation also identified overcrowding and inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene services in mining communities, informal settlements and displacement sites as additional challenges.
This evidence does not establish that mining caused the outbreak. It demonstrates something different: the circumstances in which extraction, insecurity, displacement and weak public services intersect can make an outbreak more difficult to control.
The distinction matters because public debate frequently confuses the geographical association between mining and disease with proof of direct causation. Mining communities may experience particular vulnerabilities because of mobility, working conditions, settlement patterns and inadequate services. Yet an outbreak in or near a mining area does not, by itself, prove that mineral extraction caused the infection.
The scientifically defensible argument is that public health vulnerability is shaped by the conditions in which people live and work, and that conflict can magnify those vulnerabilities.
Congo’s health crisis must therefore be understood as more than a question of virology. It is also a question of institutional capacity, public trust, infrastructure and the ability of the state to protect human life in areas where its authority is weak or contested.
A government that cannot guarantee safe access to a village cannot easily guarantee timely medical surveillance there. A health system that lacks adequate personnel, supplies and facilities cannot consistently provide effective care. A population repeatedly exposed to violence and displacement may find it difficult to cooperate with public health interventions when those interventions arrive without sufficient communication, trust or community participation.
The result is a tragic convergence between political insecurity and biological vulnerability.
The same roads that carry minerals to markets may be essential for transporting medical supplies. The same communities whose labour sustains commercial extraction may lack reliable access to hospitals. The same borderlands through which goods and people move may require coordinated public health surveillance. Yet when institutions are weakened by conflict, corruption or neglect, the benefits of economic activity can remain disconnected from the protection of human life.
This raises a profound moral question. How can a country contribute resources to the technologies of the future while its own citizens struggle to secure the basic conditions of survival?
The contradiction is not adequately explained by saying that Congo is rich in minerals but poor in development. It requires an examination of who controls the resources, who receives the profits, who bears the risks and which institutions are capable of converting national wealth into public welfare.
Natural resources do not automatically produce prosperity. Their developmental effects depend on the political and institutional arrangements through which they are governed.
Where revenues are transparently collected, public expenditure is accountable and economic opportunities are broadly distributed, mineral wealth can support infrastructure, education, healthcare and productive employment. Where revenues are captured by narrow political or commercial networks, the same wealth can reinforce inequality, weaken public institutions and intensify competition for control of the state.
Congo’s experience demonstrates the danger of allowing the extraction of wealth to proceed without a sufficiently strong social contract.
A social contract is more than an agreement between a government and its citizens to obey laws and pay taxes. It embodies an expectation that public authority will protect life, uphold rights, provide essential services and manage national resources in the public interest. Where citizens observe that valuable resources leave their communities while insecurity and deprivation remain, confidence in public institutions may deteriorate.
Such distrust can become particularly damaging during an epidemic. Public health interventions require cooperation, information-sharing and confidence that those administering medical measures are acting in the interests of the affected population. When trust has been eroded by years of insecurity, exploitation or institutional failure, responding to an outbreak becomes more difficult.
The implications extend beyond Congo’s borders. The country is part of a wider Great Lakes region in which population movements, trade, shared borders and security concerns connect the fortunes of neighbouring states. An outbreak in eastern Congo may create public health risks elsewhere, just as insecurity can disrupt regional commerce and generate displacement across borders.
The World Health Organization’s 2026 assessment warned of the risks associated with cross-border mobility, including movement linked to trade and mining activities. It emphasised the importance of surveillance, preparedness and cooperation among neighbouring countries.
For Uganda and the wider region, Congo’s stability is therefore not a distant humanitarian concern. It is a matter of shared security, public health and economic interest.
Yet regional cooperation must be distinguished from the pursuit of regional advantage. The presence of armed groups and cross-border security concerns cannot justify the indefinite exploitation of Congolese territory or the externalisation of violence onto Congolese communities. Equally, allegations of foreign involvement must be examined through credible evidence rather than collective blame against neighbouring populations.
The United Nations Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo has repeatedly investigated armed actors, mineral exploitation and cross-border dynamics. Its 2025 final report described the intensification of conflict in eastern Congo and the capture of strategically important, mineral-rich areas by the Alliance Fleuve Congo and M23, alongside the Rwandan Defence Force, as reported by the experts. The report illustrated how territorial control, military operations and access to economically valuable areas can intersect in the contemporary conflict.
Such findings reinforce the need to confront the economic incentives of conflict while pursuing credible diplomatic and security arrangements. They do not, however, justify reducing every dimension of the crisis to minerals alone.
A durable solution must begin by recognising the political agency of the Congolese people. Congo cannot be treated merely as a geological warehouse whose strategic importance lies in the contents of its soil. Its citizens are entitled to the same standards of security, accountable government, public health and economic dignity expected elsewhere in the world.
This requires reform on several interconnected fronts, although none can succeed in isolation. The Congolese state must strengthen its ability to protect civilians, administer justice and regulate mineral extraction. Public revenues must be transparently accounted for, with meaningful scrutiny of contracts, licensing arrangements, taxation and the movement of mineral exports. Independent investigations must identify and hold accountable those who finance, organise or profit from serious abuses.
Companies purchasing minerals must exercise credible due diligence, investigate the origins of their supplies and avoid commercial arrangements that enable armed actors to profit from coercion. International trading centres must strengthen measures against smuggling and the laundering of illicitly sourced resources. Regional governments must cooperate to prevent the movement of illegally extracted minerals through their territories, while respecting Congo’s sovereignty and addressing legitimate security concerns through lawful arrangements.
However, economic reform without security will remain fragile. A transparent mining contract cannot protect a village from an armed attack. Nor can a diplomatic agreement, by itself, guarantee that public institutions will function impartially after fighting subsides. Peacebuilding must include the resolution of local disputes, the reintegration of former combatants where appropriate, the creation of legitimate employment and the development of institutions capable of addressing grievances without violence.
The health dimension requires equal seriousness. Mining communities and displaced populations need accessible healthcare, clean water, adequate sanitation and reliable public health information. Health facilities must be equipped to recognise and manage infectious diseases. Surveillance and laboratory capacity must be strengthened, and outbreak responses must involve trusted local leaders, healthcare workers and affected communities. Public health teams need safe access to populations, while governments and humanitarian organisations must work to ensure that conflict does not prevent essential medical care.
Crucially, health investment should not depend solely on the appearance of an epidemic. A health system built only in response to emergencies will remain vulnerable between outbreaks. Lasting resilience requires continuous investment in primary healthcare, trained personnel, surveillance, infrastructure and public confidence.
Nor should responsible mineral governance be understood as a demand that Congo abandon its natural resources. Such a prescription would be both economically simplistic and morally questionable. The Congolese people have a legitimate interest in developing their mineral wealth for national benefit. The objective should be to transform extraction from an instrument of coercion into a source of public prosperity.
This includes moving beyond the assumption that raw materials must leave the country with minimal domestic economic transformation. Under appropriate conditions, investment in local processing, infrastructure, technical education and industrial capacity could help expand employment and retain more economic value within Congo. Such development must nevertheless be pursued with safeguards for workers, communities and the environment, and without allowing new industrial projects to become additional channels of corruption or dispossession.
The ultimate test is not how much cobalt, gold or coltan Congo exports. It is whether the people living above those deposits enjoy greater security, better healthcare, meaningful employment and a stronger capacity to determine their own future.
The question posed at the beginning can now be answered more precisely. If Congo’s minerals were taken away, some armed groups would lose significant sources of revenue, and particular conflicts might become harder to sustain. But the wars would not necessarily disappear because their causes extend beyond the mineral economy. Political exclusion, institutional weakness, regional insecurity, disputes over land and authority, and opportunities for other forms of illicit financing could continue to sustain violence.
Ebola would also remain a possibility. Its biological origins are not dependent on mineral wealth. However, the severity of future outbreaks and the ability to contain them would continue to depend, in part, on the strength of public health institutions, the security of affected communities and the availability of essential services. Conflict and displacement can magnify these vulnerabilities, even though they do not create the virus itself.
The deeper lesson is that Congo does not simply need fewer minerals. It needs a political and economic order in which minerals cannot be converted into instruments of war, public institutions cannot be captured with impunity, and citizens do not remain abandoned beside the wealth that sustains the global economy.
There is a danger in imagining that peace will arrive automatically when the last mine is exhausted or the last shipment of gold leaves the country. Such a belief mistakes the economic expression of a crisis for its entire substance. A country can lose its mineral wealth and remain politically unstable. It can cease to attract resource-driven competition and still suffer from weak institutions, poverty, public health failures and unresolved grievances.
Conversely, a country can possess extraordinary natural resources without being condemned to permanent conflict. The decisive question is whether its institutions can govern those resources in the public interest and whether its citizens possess the power to demand accountability when that obligation is betrayed.
Congo’s tragedy is therefore not an inevitable consequence of its geology. It is a warning about what happens when economic value becomes detached from human dignity and when the institutions responsible for protecting the public become too weak, too compromised or too contested to fulfil their purpose.
The international community must confront its own responsibilities. Global demand for strategic minerals cannot be separated from the conditions under which those minerals enter international markets. Consumers, manufacturers, investors and governments cannot credibly celebrate technological advancement while treating the human consequences of extraction as somebody else’s problem.
But international responsibility must not become another pretext for denying Congolese sovereignty. The solution is not for external powers to determine Congo’s future according to their own strategic calculations. It is to support a framework in which Congolese institutions, communities and citizens can exercise meaningful control over their resources, with international cooperation serving peace, accountability and development rather than competing systems of influence.
Ultimately, the future of Congo will be decided neither by the mere presence of minerals nor by their disappearance. It will be shaped by whether the country can establish a political order that makes violence less profitable, public authority more accountable and human life more valuable than the extraction of wealth.
Until that transformation occurs, removing the minerals may weaken some of the machinery of war, but it will not dismantle every structure that keeps the conflict alive. And eliminating the mineral economy will not eliminate Ebola, although strengthening the institutions that protect Congolese lives could make future outbreaks less devastating.
Congo’s greatest misfortune is not that it possesses minerals. It is that the wealth beneath its soil has too often proved easier to extract than the justice, security and dignity its people deserve.
The measure of genuine liberation will not be the day Congo runs out of minerals, but the day its children can live above those minerals without inheriting the wars, deprivation and preventable suffering that have marked generations before them.
About the Writer
Evan Sande Ndahura is a Ugandan political and legal commentator, columnist, poet, and social justice advocate whose writings focus on governance, constitutionalism, democracy, and the political economy of power in Africa. He is widely published on issues of judicial accountability, electoral justice, human rights, and institutional reform, with particular emphasis on Uganda's political and legal systems. Writing from a Pan-African critical perspective, he interrogates the failures of state institutions and the lived realities of ordinary citizens under entrenched systems of power. He strongly believes that the liberation of Africa will ultimately be achieved through the mighty pen.
