DRC conflict: Why a US peace initiative faltered
January 23, 2025
The M23 rebels are steadily advancing toward Goma, the capital of North Kivu Province in the eastern region of theDemocratic Republic of Congo (DRC). On Tuesday, M23 captured the eastern city of Minova, one of the main supply routes for Goma. Other parts of North Kivu Province also risk falling to the rebels.
The security situation in the region is deteriorating due to the increasing territorial gains of the militias. Clashes have displaced thousands and triggered a humanitarian crisis.
The Tutsi-led M23 group has been fighting again in the country's east since 2022. The Congolese government in Kinshasa and United Nations experts accuse neighboring Rwanda of supporting the group with Rwandan troops and weapons. Rwanda, however, has never admitted direct military involvement.
The US peace incentive
Molly Phee, the former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, said the US proposed expanding the Lobito Corridor to speed up the transport of minerals from southern DRC and Zambia to Angola's Atlantic coast.
"We had proposed to both sides [Rwanda and the DRC] that if we could get to stabilization in eastern DRC, we could work on developing a spur from the Lobito Corridor up through eastern DRC," Phee told AFP in an interview ahead of her exit as the Biden administration came to an end. "They did not take that action," Phee said of the Congolese government.
According to the American diplomat, the offer had included a crackdown on the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda). This Hutu-led rebel group has been active in eastern Congo after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. President Paul Kagame accuses the FDLR of seeking to destabilize Rwanda.
"We tried to offer positive incentives. A genuine framework — fundamentally negotiated by the parties — exists, and at the moment, Rwanda seems to have walked away," she said.
Kagame's absence during Angola peace talks
Rwandan President Paul Kagame did not participate in the Angola-brokered talks between the heads of state of DR Congo and Zambia during a visit by then-US President Joe Biden in December 2024.
Alex Vines, director of the Africa Program at Chatham House in London, said the US offer to extend its signature investment of the Lobito Corridor into the troubled eastern DRC as an incentive for a peace deal did not land well.
Vines said this was an "ill-advised gesture" that did not comfort the Rwandans, so they rejected the offer. He added that Rwanda is not interested in seeing trade pass through DRC and the Atlantic coast; it wants trade to pass through Rwanda.
"It's not surprising that Rwanda has backed away from this, as it would not be interested in diverting trade away crossing its own borders going into East Africa," Vines stated. "This was a fraud incentive, it might have been counterproductive."
Rail transport in eastern Congo 'nonsensical'
According to Evans David Wala Chabala, former CEO of the Zambia Securities and Exchange Commission (ZEC), the US offer does not make sense. He told DW that if Kagame was involved in the conflict in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo and was accessing the mining products from there, he would not want to transport the minerals via a transport corridor that crosses the entire length of the DRC.
"He would want to get them out of the country as quickly as possible," Chabala, now a consultant at the Africa Research Policy Private Institute (APRI), said.
He said it would be much more viable for Kagame to have transportation that runs from Dar es Salaam to the capital, Dodoma. In June 2024, Tanzania and Rwanda agreed to construct a standard-gauge railway linking Tanzania's Isaka dry port to Rwanda's capital, Kigali. The 521 km (323 miles) railway will cost an estimated $2.5 billion (€1.9 billion).
Trade in valuable raw materials in the region is growing. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that demand for nickel and cobalt will increase twenty-fold between 2020 and 2040, that of graphite twenty-five-fold and for lithium, a whopping forty-fold, according to a report by Chabala on the Lobito Corridor.
The predicted surge in demand has sparked great interest in the Lobito Corridor, creating an inevitable scramble for access.
DRC: A country endowed with precious minerals
The Democratic Republic of Congo, the world's largest producer of cobalt (estimated at around 70 % of global production), is at the center of this competition, as is Zambia, which is also affected.
The Lobito Corridor comprises a 1,300 km railroad line from the port of Lobito on the Angolan Atlantic coast to the town of Luau on Angola's north-eastern border with the Democratic Republic of Congo to Kolwezi town, near northwestern Zambia.
The railroad line extends 400 km further into the DRC to the mining town of Kolwezi. According to the European and American contract partners,investing heavily in the infrastructure, it is intended to speed up the transportation of minerals such as cobalt and copper and counteract Chinese influence in the region.
It is part of the Western geopolitical strategy because China currently dominates the mining sector in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia.
Zambia as a transit for minerals from the DRC
According to Chabala, mineral traders prefer to transport the extracted raw materials from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Zambia before transporting them out of Africa via the ports.
He added that traders are only paid once the goods reach Zambia's borders. An extension of the Lobito Corridor from Kolwezi to Zambia is being discussed.
"The Democratic Republic of Congo is already a very unsafe place to do business," Chabala said, noting that eastern DRC has been devastated by the 120 groups rebel groups fighting over the resources.
The Zambian analyst does not consider the plan of the former US administration feasible, especially since the new administration under Donald Trump is unlikely to follow suit.
"Joe Biden may have made this proposal to expand the corridor in the eastern region of DRC because he knew full well that he was in the final weeks of his presidency and that the plan would no longer be implemented after this discussion," Chabala said.
Edited by: Chrispin Mwakideu