Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: The Trump administration oversees a peace plan between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, Turkey sends troops to Somalia to help fight al-Shabab militants, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visits South Africa.
U.S. Seeks to End Congo’s Conflict
In a U.S.-brokered deal, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda agreed on Friday to draft a peace plan by May 2 to end the fighting that has engulfed eastern Congo in recent months. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio facilitated the talks in Washington.
Since January, Kinshasa has lost swaths of territory to the Rwandan-backed March 23 Movement (M23) rebel group, which resurfaced in 2022 after five years of relative inactivity.
The agreement comes after the Congolese government lobbied the Trump administration for support in the conflict. In February, Congo proposed a Ukraine-style minerals-for-security deal with the United States, offering U.S. companies “exclusive” mineral extraction rights in return for diplomatic support, weapons, and military training in its fight against M23.
No U.S. deal has materialized yet, but last week, Michael Boulos, U.S. President Donald Trump’s new Africa czar, said that he and Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi had “chartered a path forward” for a minerals pact.
According to Boulos, Washington intends to support Congo by encouraging private-sector investment as well as by using government agencies, including the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and Export-Import Bank of the United States.
“These institutions are fully prepared to support the private sector in Africa, whether in mining or other sectors, but especially in infrastructure,” Boulos said.
Congo is vital to the U.S. government’s plans to compete in the critical minerals race with China, which has restricted exports of so-called rare earths in response to Trump’s trade war. Currently, Chinese companies operate the majority of Congolese mines, which are a key component of Beijing’s dominance in critical minerals.
Congo produces more than 70 percent of the world’s cobalt, which is used for batteries in phones and electric vehicles. It also has significant reserves of elements such as germanium, which is used in semiconductors.
No major U.S. mining companies operate in Congo. But KoBold Metals, a start-up backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, intends to apply for licenses to mine lithium, copper, and cobalt in the country, the Financial Times reported over the weekend.
And according to a Reuters report, Washington also pressured Alphamin Resources, a Canadian company headquartered in Mauritius, to resume operations at its Bisie tin mine in eastern Congo’s North Kivu province.
Alphamin, one of the few remaining Western mining companies operating in Congo, temporarily paused operations in March as M23 took the nearby town of Walikale, which the group has now withdrawn from. Sources told Reuters that M23 made the decision to retreat due to pressure from Washington.
Despite these developments, many observers doubt that Congo’s hostilities can be so easily resolved.
Last month, Congo and Rwanda announced an “immediate and unconditional cease-fire” after talks in Qatar, but that pause in fighting failed to materialize.
M23 now operates a parallel proxy government across the territories that it has captured, where it collects taxes from mining operations. The group is also hosting former Congolese President Joseph Kabila, an ally-turned-opponent of Tshisekedi, in the eastern city of Goma. Kabila returned from self-imposed exile abroad earlier this month, prompting Kinshasa to ban his political party and seize his assets.
Meanwhile, according to the Wall Street Journal, Tshisekedi has been negotiating with Erik Prince, a prominent Trump ally and founder of U.S. private security contractor Blackwater, to provide security and help Congo collect taxes from mining operations overrun by rebels.
In addition, experts have long argued that Congo’s army and government require a root-and-branch reform to address militarization and conflict in the country’s eastern regions.
For now, Kigali continues to claim that the U.N.-estimated 4,000 Rwandan troops in Congo are fighting in self-defense against the Congolese army’s recruitment of Hutu extremists who oppose Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s Tutsi-dominated government.
Congo is reportedly in the process of acquiring more Chinese drones, further suggesting that a genuine plan to cease fighting will not arrive anytime soon.
The Week Ahead
Wednesday, April 30: The United Nations Security Council is set to discuss its mission in South Sudan.
Friday, May 2: The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights begins its weeklong meeting in Banjul, Gambia.
What We’re Watching
Massacre in Sudan. At least 31 Sudanese people, including children, were killed in a recent attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, according to the Sudan Doctors Network. Graphic videos of the executions began circulating on social media early Sunday morning.
The killings took place in the city of Omdurman, where the Sudanese army is attempting to regain control from the rebels. More than 150,000 people have been killed in the two-year war, and around 13 million have fled their homes.
Turkey sends troops. Turkey deployed around 500 soldiers to Somalia last week, doubling its troop presence in the country, in an effort to help Mogadishu’s counterterrorism operations against al-Shabab militants. Ankara also recently delivered two Akinci drones to Mogadishu, strengthening its air combat capabilities.
Last year, Turkey settled a dispute between Ethiopia and Somalia over access to a port in Somaliland. Ankara also inked a security deal with Mogadishu in exchange for the rights to oil and gas exploration off Somalia’s coast—a pact that has drawn criticism over the stipulation that Mogadishu will earn only 5 percent of the revenue from the venture.
Russian mining deal. Burkina Faso’s junta-led government has signed a gold-mining deal with Russian company Nordgold as gold prices soar in the wake of Trump’s shifting trade policies.
Burkina Faso will retain a 15 percent stake in the Niou gold deposit project, located in a large artisanal mining area in Kourweogo province. The project may make it harder for artisanal miners to make a living.
The deal deepens the alliance between Russia and Burkina Faso, which has partnered with the Africa Corps—Russia’s quasi-private paramilitary successor to the Wagner Group—in fighting jihadis. The announcement comes just after Burkina Faso’s military government said that it foiled a “major” plot by former soldiers to overthrow junta leader Ibrahim Traoré.
Zelensky in South Africa. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa affirmed “strong bilateral relations” between their countries last week in a tour that was cut short by Russian airstrikes in Kyiv.
South Africa’s neutrality during Russia’s war in Ukraine has strained relations between Kyiv and Pretoria. But the two countries are now finding common ground as they navigate unpredictable relationships with the Trump administration. Trump cut aid to South Africa in February over what he called “unjust racial discrimination” against Afrikaners due to the country’s land reform law, which seeks to address disparities in land ownership that are a legacy of the apartheid era.
Although Ramaphosa has engaged in careful diplomacy with the United States, members of his African National Congress (ANC) party have not fallen in line. “We are a free country, we’re a sovereign country. We’re not a province of the United States, and that sovereignty will be defended,” said Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s national chairman, on Sunday.
Meanwhile, South Africa’s finance minister announced last Thursday that he had scrapped plans to increase the country’s value-added tax after the plan to boost state revenue threatened to topple the 10-party coalition government. State revenue may now fall short by around $4 billion in the medium term.
This Week in Tech
Africa’s space agency. The African Union launched the African Space Agency last Sunday in the Egyptian Space City, a 123-acre site in Cairo, which will coordinate and implement the continent’s space plans. So far, the region’s nations have largely depended on foreign facilities to launch satellites into space.
The African Space Agency has already formed partnerships with the European Space Agency and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency to collaborate on climate mapping projects and developing small satellites.
FP’s Most Read This Week
What We’re Reading
Zambia’s cautious diplomacy. Zambia faces rising geopolitical pressures, from fighting in nearby Congo to its key role in the Lobito Corridor, a U.S.-backed infrastructure project.
But for now, Zambia has continued its decades-long strategy of attempting to balance neutrality and pragmatism in dealing with foreign and regional powers, Kang-Chun Cheng writes in Africa Is a Country.
Vietnam’s African defectors. More than 100,000 North African soldiers, largely from Morocco, fought in Vietnam between 1947 and 1954 as France sought to regain its Southeast Asian colony, Basma El Atti recounts in New Lines Magazine.
Some of the soldiers defected to the Viet Minh—the communist resistance group that led the struggle for independence—and eventually married Vietnamese women. Eventually, some of these families formed a small Vietnamese Moroccan community back in Morocco.
Ethiopians flock to Saudi Arabia. Thousands of people fleeing armed conflict and economic crisis in Ethiopia’s Oromia region have undergone a perilous journey to Saudi Arabia via Yemen, the New Humanitarian reports.
Some of the migrants are held for ransom in Somaliland or drown in overcrowded boats in the Gulf of Aden. Last year, 558 deaths were recorded on the route.
Officials in Oromia say that local communities have coined a new saying: “Gala Suudii, yookin gala luudii.” (“I am going to Saudi Arabia or to my grave.”)
