On Jan. 28, the Rwanda-backed rebel group M23 captured Goma, capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mineral-rich North Kivu province. The fall of Goma marks a shocking chapter in a long-running conflict in the eastern DRC that has claimed millions of lives since it began in 1996. Deeply rooted in the colonial history of Central Africa, as well as the 1994 Rwandan genocide, one of the core drivers of fighting in the region is the DRC’s vast mineral wealth. The DRC has the world’s largest reserves of coltan, crucial for the manufacturing of consumer electronics like cellphones and laptops. Extraction of the mineral is associated with deforestation, habitat loss, and pollution of waterways.
Along with Goma, in the past year M23 has seized control of many lucrative coltan, tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold mines in the eastern DRC, including the largest coltan mine on Earth, near the town of Rubaya. According to a group of experts convened by the United Nations, the Rwandan Defense Force is active in the DRC and embedded within M23 units, while much of the coltan produced in Rubaya’s mines is currently being illicitly funneled into Rwanda. In a recent interview with CNN, President Paul Kagame denied the allegations that Rwanda is exporting Congolese coltan, and claimed he wasn’t sure if soldiers from his country were fighting in the conflict.
To understand the dynamics of the eastern DRC’s mineral trade, the current crisis, and Rwanda’s role, Mongabay’s Ashoka Mukpo spoke with Jean-Pierre Okenda, director of the DRC-based NGO Sentinel Natural Resources. A 19 year-veteran of the extractive sector, Okenda previously worked with the DRC-focused NGO Resource Matters, as well as with U.S.-based organizations the Carter Center and the Natural Resource Governance Institute, as its DRC country director. He created Sentinel Natural Resources in 2018 and took its helm in July 2024, citing the need for an “additional nuanced Congolese voice” in the DRC’s resource policy making.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Jean-Pierre Okenda. Image via Resource Matters.
Mongabay: This is not the first time there’s been fighting in eastern DRC; it’s been on and off for decades now. How does mineral wealth in that region shape that conflict, both in the past and now?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: Access to minerals, from my perspective, has been at the heart of this conflict. [Rwanda’s] economic model requires access to minerals in the DRC. It’s also a small country with a large population and it seems they think they can take part of Congo. I know there are all these ethnic conflicts, but for me the main root is getting access to minerals and land. If you look at the production statistics of coltan, you’ll see that Rwanda is the largest producer. How can you explain that? Kigali has been saying they have coltan mines in Rwanda, but can they prove there’s that much coltan mining there? Their economic model includes aid from the international community, but the mineral contribution to Kigali’s budget is around 30%.
Mongabay: What kind of minerals are coming out of the DRC in this region, and what are they used for?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: The most important is coltan. You also have the “Three T’s” [tin, tungsten and tantalum, derived from coltan.] Coltan is used for a lot of technologies like mobile phones. Congo is a huge producer of it, I think last year it supplied the global market with around 50%, so it’s a big export.
Mongabay: I understand that early last year M23 took the town of Rubaya, which has the largest coltan mine on Earth. Since then how have supply chains there changed?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: We don’t know much about what has changed. Why? Because the supply chain itself is really not transparent. Before, that mine, and also the mines surrounding there, had some traceability initiatives to tag whether minerals were coming from “green sites.” Since M23 took control, there’s none there, so the supply chain is very dark. Previously, the supply chain was a bit transparent, because it was possible to trace some of the minerals from Congo, but now there’s no possibility. So now they just go from Rubaya to Rwanda and then are gone.
Even before the war, from Rwanda to the global market the supply chain was already dark. So that’s just to say that I can’t tell you exactly how it’s changed, but what we know is that Chinese companies are really buying minerals from Rwanda. China then produces batteries and other products that go to Europe, the U.K. and the U.S.
[Editor’s note: The International Tin Supply Chain Initiative, which was active in Rubaya, has been criticized in the past by civil society groups for failing to accurately trace mineral exports.]Mongabay: That brings up an interesting question. Do we know which companies, Chinese or European, are sourcing coltan from Rwanda or products made from it?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: So you’ve had Apple, Samsung, Nikon. These are South Korean and American [and Japanese] companies, but I don’t have the name of the Chinese companies. It’s important to highlight that China is really the darkness in the supply chain and has always been, not only for coltan but also for cobalt and copper. So we are missing information about a huge actor, which hasn’t been investing a lot to make its supply chain transparent. So we should put pressure on them for that.
[Editor’s note: In December 2024, the DRC filed a criminal complaint against Apple, accusing it of using conflict minerals in its supply chain. Apple says it has instructed its suppliers to stop buying minerals from Rwanda or the DRC. Nikon says it doesn’t use “conflict minerals mined or intermediated by armed groups.”]
DRC troops being trained by UN instructors in the area of Beni, North Kivu. Image by MONUSCO/Ado Abdou via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).
Mongabay: Are the contracts between Chinese importers and Rwanda public?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: No, they don’t make them public. Another challenge we are facing is that Rwanda isn’t a part of anything like the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative. I’ve been doing desk research and I haven’t found any, unfortunately.
Mongabay: On the Congolese side, could you tell me a little bit about what the supply chain looks like in a place like Rubaya, in terms of who the miners and buyers are?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: Most of these mines are controlled by artisanal miners. That complicates the situation in terms of telling you who is doing what. They often don’t stay in the same place. We have had some big operators, for example Société Minière de Bizunzu (SMB), which does some level of coltan processing. And we have factories in Goma. They buy from artisanal miners, do some processing, and then it goes to Rwanda. We did some mapping of actors in the Congo – they are very small companies, but we have data. SMB has been the biggest one.
Mongabay: And these are owned by Congolese citizens? Are they still operating now that M23 is in control of the area?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: That’s a good question. SMB’s license was withdrawn before M23 took control of Rubaya. It’s been facing very huge challenges. The leader was arrested and is here in Kinshasa, and one of the claims against him was that he’d been working for Kigali.
[Editor’s note: SMB’s founder, Édouard Mwangachuchu, was sentenced to death for treason in the DRC last year.]This is to make it clear that even before M23 took control, there were illegal activities. But there was some Congolese public administration services, and we could say they were controlled by the government. We would see agents from the Ministry of Mines there to monitor and record which artisanal miners were involved in production. But now there’s no one there except M23. The public administration is totally out of the sites where M23 are, and there are no taxes being paid to the DRC’s government — it’s all going to them.
From the Congolese point of view, this is all illegal exploitation now. Those artisanal miners who dig should be a member of a cooperative, according to the mining code. No individuals are allowed to exploit minerals without being one, according to Congolese law. These entities should have approval from the government. But now there’s no approvals or taxes to pay. It’s a complex situation with the artisanal and small mining activities.
Mongabay: So the actors who are involved, whether it’s artisanal miners, refiners or buyers, are Congolese, but they are still cooperating with and involved in a supply chain that’s headed toward Rwanda.
Jean-Pierre Okenda: All these minerals, including the Three T’s, even before the conflict, have been going through Rwanda, because it’s the nearest border that goes toward the Indian Ocean. That includes legal extraction. But now the situation is that since M23 took Rubaya — and I was talking to a friend who’s in Goma today — the factories in Goma are no longer supplied. They don’t have minerals because Rubaya and the surrounding villages are the most important site. Now there’s no way for artisanal miners to go and sell in Goma.
Mongabay: In your opinion is that because minerals that would have been heading toward Goma are now being directed toward Rwanda?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: Yes, exactly. That’s the main reason. I think that’s logical.
Mongabay: I also wanted to ask about the ecological impact of coltan mining in Rubaya or anywhere else. What does this kind of mining do to the environment?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: That’s a cross-cutting challenge within artisanal mining. It really harms the environment. This isn’t only about coltan. The way to protect the environment is to conduct an impact assessment, and according to the mining code, even the cooperatives are required to do one. That’s the legal process. But they don’t do it. The situation was bad even in zones where the government was in control. Now, I think that the risks will increase because a mining site like Rubaya, which is really the most important source of coltan, will have destruction without anyone from the public sector that can visit there. What’s the motivation for M23 to actually make sure the minimum regulations are implemented?
Gold mine in South Kivu, DRC. Image courtesy of the Sasha Lezhnev Enough Project.
Mongabay: To pull back out again, what’s the evidence that Rwanda is illegally sourcing and selling minerals from this region of the DRC?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: Different U.N. expert panel reports, for example, highlight that Kigali is doing it. Kigali has always rejected this, but there are different reports published by NGOs as well. It’s recognized in the region that it’s preferable to sell minerals to Rwanda because their tax regime isn’t as high as the Congolese. So if I sell to Rwanda, I will benefit more, so you do your best to bring minerals there.
Mongabay: Let me try to understand that a bit better. You’re saying that for an artisanal producer or a middleman, you get a better profit by selling to Rwanda?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: We’re talking about the middlemen here. The individual miners cannot move minerals themselves, so they sell to middlemen who bring them to Goma or Rwanda. The tax regime in Congo is very high for everyone, and in Rwanda it’s low. That’s an incentive for them, which is part of the problem. It’s also the case with gold in Uganda.
Mongabay: To go back, it sounds like China is the primary buyer of these minerals from Rwanda. Has the DRC government tried to raise this issue with them?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: I don’t know if they’ve done anything to discuss this with them. One of the recommendations I have for the government is to declare all the mining sites controlled by M23 as illegal. If you do that it would be a key starting point to start disconnecting some companies from buying those minerals. There are small Chinese companies that work on both sides, in Rwanda and in the Congo. The Chinese investments are not responsible, we know that, so we need them to make their supply chains transparent.
Ernest Rwamucyo, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Rwanda to the United Nations, addresses the Security Council meeting on the situation concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Image via Mark Garten/UN Photo.
Mongabay: It seems very surprising to me that the DRC hasn’t raised this seriously with its Chinese partners. This is a major crisis, it’s losing territory.
Jean-Pierre Okenda: That’s a very good question. No one wants the supply chain to become transparent, including Congolese authorities. That’s very important to highlight.
Mongabay: Why would that be?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: Because you have a huge involvement of Congolese authorities in the artisanal mining sector. They are getting a lot of money. That’s really important. No one really has an interest in making the supply train transparent, not the authorities in Rwanda or in Congo, the middlemen, or Chinese and other companies. We’ve been struggling to formalize artisanal mining across the country, and the authorities are one of the reasons why. Now I think that the war is coming, and I’m sure there’s a fear that they can lose power, they’re doing what they can do to limit it. But previously no one had an interest in normalizing things.
From my perspective, you have so much populist speech here in the DRC that Western countries are supporting Rwanda, providing budget and aid to it. But I don’t understand why the government doesn’t like to discuss China. I think they prefer to focus on the Western countries and pay less attention on the fact that the buyers of these minerals are Chinese. From what I understand from the Ministry of Mines, they are reflecting on how they can sit down with China, but nothing has been done yet. They didn’t even enforce the mining code before. Even myself, I don’t understand this.
Mongabay: Speaking of Western countries, what seems to be a major issue that’s coming up is the EU’s mineral sourcing agreement with Rwanda. That’s being heavily criticized given Rwanda’s involvement with M23. What role do you think the EU and U.S.A. have played in this conflict and what would you like to see them doing differently?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: So there’s this Global Gateway agreement, which is part of Europe’s strategy to secure critical raw minerals. This is a sort of template agreement, which is common — the DRC has one too — which includes provisions for a road map with the government that says, “We agree to sell you raw materials.” There are MOUs to secure supply chains for those minerals. They sign them with any government they think have those minerals, and Rwanda is one of them. We are signing a letter now which will be sent to the European Union asking them to withdraw from this MOU.
An artisanal miner in North Kivu holds cassiterite crystals, from which tin can be extracted: young people in Manono also dig for this mineral to sell to traders. Image by Laura Heaton/Enough Project via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Mongabay: The EU must have presumably known that Rwanda had some involvement with M23 before it signed this MOU, right?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: The MOU came before the escalation.
Mongabay: Does it look like the EU is going to keep it in place?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: The process of signing this MOU with Rwanda was not transparent, and I’m not sure that Rwanda complied with the criteria that was required. I’ve heard, including from some Europeans, that the process was not respected. What’s factual is that Rwanda does not meet the requirements for this MOU. This was last year — M23 was there, but they hadn’t taken control of Rubaya, and I don’t there was an expectation that it would take Goma. But the MOU is one of the reasons why I think the DRC government has been focusing more on the EU than in holding China’s government responsible.
Do I think the EU will withdraw it? I don’t think so. A lot of Western companies have invested a lot there. Still, civil society and NGOs here have been asking for it to be withdrawn.
Mongabay: That seems like an important point. Rwanda receives a lot of aid from Western countries. Ten years ago, when M23 took Goma, there was a huge outcry and they withdrew quickly. This time there doesn’t seem to have been the same intensity of reaction. What changed?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: My perception is that they are tired of the conflict and that it’s in part due to the fact that my country seems to be irresponsible.
Mongabay: But that sounds like you’re blaming the DRC?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: It’s not blaming the DRC, but we seem to keep asking the international community to come help us. It doesn’t make sense. Rwanda’s a small country, we’re a very big one. Western governments have been funding different programs here against corruption, including in security forces, and I think they’ve realized that there’s not a lot of chance to change it. For me that’s one part of it.
The U.S.A., EU, and U.K. are looking for opportunities to exploit critical minerals here, but the Chinese have a monopoly. The geopolitics of this explain to me part of why [the West] is feeling like they don’t really want to react as quickly as expected.
The last part is that we can’t forget that Rwanda has been sending a lot of troops to Mozambique and U.N. missions. It plays a lot of roles. If you sanction Rwanda, that means they’ll withdraw their troops from those countries. France, for example, has Total’s investment in Mozambique that Rwanda has sent troops to secure. That’s in the interests of France. There are these conflicts of interest that also explain why they aren’t reacting quickly. That’s my answer: they can’t blame Congo, but Europe has funded many programs here, and they aren’t seeing outcomes. So I think at some point they’re losing interest. But this is falling on the civilian population [in eastern DRC], and we have to stop it.
M23 fighters withdraw from Goma in 2012. Image via Sylvain Liechti/UN Photo.
Mongabay: Are the countries that are major donors to the DRC and Rwanda doing enough to stop the conflict right now?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: No, they are not.
Mongabay: What should they be doing from your point of view?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: We want them to do what they did in 2012. That’s what we expect from them, especially the U.K., which provides huge aid to Rwanda. We think it’s important to stop that. The same for the French government, which is the catalyst for aid coming from the EU. We are asking them to ask Kagame to stop doing what he’s doing to the Congo, killing the civilian population, women and children. Everyone agrees that Rwanda has troops in the Congo, so why not take action to sanction him? Even to just condemn him? They’ve never done that. They call him and say, “You guys have to withdraw your troops,” and he doesn’t do it. At some point it becomes a song that people are singing to you. We are asking them to hold Kagame accountable.
Mongabay: On the other side of the supply chain, I’m thinking about the DRC’s decision to bring a court case against Apple. Do you feel like there are companies in the Western world that are benefiting from Congolese minerals that are illicitly transported into Rwanda, and do we have evidence that it’s ending up in products that are sold in the West?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: For sure. This is clear, there are a lot of U.S. companies that are sourcing minerals from the DRC, especially coltan. I think Apple has just suspended sourcing from Rwanda, which is good. Others should follow. But again, the supply chain has a lot of minerals that are bought by China, and then they go to the U.S.A. and elsewhere. So the risk for me is we act against U.S. companies, and then the Chinese just continue buying. This is problematic. They can’t pursue Western companies to stop buying from Rwanda, but in parallel not engage with the Chinese government. It might affect the market to an extent, but if the Chinese keep buying minerals they’ll continue to be sold.
Mongabay: Without being able to put leverage on China, it sounds like it’s going to be very difficult to shut these supply chains down.
Jean-Pierre Okenda: The impact will be limited. If we want to get the maximum impact, it will mean engaging Western companies to stop, but at the same time we have to leverage the Chinese. That would put pressure on Rwanda, because their budget is dependent on the mining sector. China is the big question mark.
Mongabay: By all accounts, it looks like M23 is planning to be in Rubaya for a while. They’ve set up permitting systems for miners and essentially a de facto administration there. Does it seem like there’s any chance of the DRC regaining control there or in Goma any time soon?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: My view is that Rwanda was well prepared for this war. I think they are planning to be in Congo for a long time and told M23 to put governance systems in place. That’s my analysis of the situation. But again, Kagame knows that the end of the conflict will depend on what Tshisekedi will concede. It seems like they’re saying, we don’t know how long we will be here, so let’s put in place an administration. If Kinshasa doesn’t concede a lot, I think they will keep it. A lot depends. The only person who can decide how long they stay is Kagame.
Mongabay: What’s his long-term goal here?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: The long-term goal for Kagame is to continue to influence political decision-making in the Congo, that’s really important for him. By doing so he will continue also to have control of the Kivu provinces from a security and economic point of view.
I think he wants to basically annex them and take full control of this land. But if he can’t do that, I think at least the medium-term goal will to be have control of the mineral resources and security there. He’s been complaining about FDLR [a Rwandan rebel group active in the DRC], but I’m not convinced there’s enough of them to really harm Rwanda. In the past he’s played a critical role here.
Mongabay: Is there any hope of the fighting stopping for good any time soon?
Jean-Pierre Okenda: No. Because Kinshasa isn’t willing to negotiate with M23. And Congolese citizens won’t agree on Rubaya and Goma staying in their control. So I think it will be very complicated for our president and the war will continue.
Banner image: Artisanal miners in Rubaya area, DRC. Image courtesy of Global Witness.
