The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is at the epicenter of global news after the recent Ebola outbreaks. As of July 1, 2026, there are up to1,460 confirmed cases. There are also the Rubaya coltan mines, whereover 200 people died in March, including an estimated 70 child miners. Questions about the Congo, its development, and its role in the global supply chain have come up again, from the current exploitation of artisanal miners, men, women, and children who work in some of the worst conditions known to mankind in cobalt-copper mines and who mine for1 to 2 dollars a day for the cobalt needed for everything from iPhone batteries to electric car batteries, to its history of being a personal colony of King Leopold II, who used it to exploit the Congolese people for their natural resources and labor, such as rubber and ivory, to the 1920s and 1930s, when2/3 of the uranium used in the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from the Congo. This raises the question of who has been benefiting from the DRC.
It is common to view a country’s development as a reflection of its own inhabitants’ decisions rather than as a result of external factors. When you look at the underdevelopment of the Congo, it’s not because of a lack of raw resources. Look, for example, at the DRC, which has the potential to feed2 billion people, more than the population of the entire African continent, with its unused farmland. It also has an estimated24 trillion dollars in material resources. The extraction of its own resources to build up others is nothing new; the DRC used to be a personal colony of Belgian King Leopold II. At the time, they used rubber quotas. In 1908, it became the Belgian Congo. When thinking about the Congo, in almost all of its forms, from colonial times up to its modern incarnation, the main way of extracting resources has always been through exploitation of its people’s labor and resources, especially through mining.
After Congolese independence, it seemed to be a turning point for the country, with its first President Patrice Lumumba having concrete plans to take the DRC’s resources and use them for the betterment of the people. Then there was a coup, and he was overthrown by Joseph Mobutu with the backing of the U.S., the UN, and the Belgians. On January 16, 1961, they killed him by firing squad and, a day later, put his body in acid but kept one of his teeth as a souvenir. The police officer saved it anddidn’t give it back to his family until 2022. This showed the barbarity of the Belgians and their allies (Cobalt Red 2019). He was one of the great leaders, along with people such as Kwame Nkrumah and Frantz Fanon, who saw what Europe was doing to Africa and envisioned a way out through post-colonial Pan-African thought and practices.
The DRC has been used for its resources and not for the betterment of its people; look to the mines. The DRC has 73% of the world’s cobalt. Artisanal miners supply up to 30% of the country’s cobalt, using only simple pickaxes and other tools. The working conditions in these mines mirror those of the Industrial Revolution, with miners working in small, cramped caves where groups of people work. This destroys their bodies; cobalt is 40 times more common in the miners’ bodies than in the bodies of people in the control group (Cobalt Red 2019). Much of the area from Lubumbashi to Kinshasa has mines with similar exploitative conditions. The Congolese elite, like that of Mobutu, has used Congolese natural resources to enrich themselves. There is also foreign ownership of much of the cobalt supply chain, with the Chinese currently, but historically it’s been the French, the Belgians, and even American mines, to name a few.
No matter the owner of these mines, if there aren’t political systems in place that take the wealth of the country and invest it in the development of its people, the ongoing exploitation of the Congolese people will only continue.