African Leaders Challenged To Unite Against Energy Transition Mineral Oppressors

By Isaiah Esipisu
ADDIS ABABA, Feb 27 2025 – Renewable energy and climate change activists have challenged African heads of state to take a united stance to safeguard essential mineral resources, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and other parts of the continent, which are selfishly exploited by foreign miners with disregard for poverty-stricken local communities.

“We call upon the Africa Union Commission (AUC) to convene a special summit on the DRC and come up with resolutions on how African countries, particularly the DRC, should determine the value of their essential minerals, how they should engage foreign miners, and how to protect fundamental human rights of communities living in the mining areas,” said Dr. Augustine Njamnshi, the Director, Africa Coalition on Sustainable Energy Access (ACSEA), at an event ahead of the election of the new AUC Chairperson in Addis Ababa.

So far, the DRC is the world’s largest producer of cobalt and the third largest producer of copper, among other essential minerals that are used to manufacture state-of-the-art electric cars and buses, golf carts, pumps, and electric motorbikes, among other non-emitting but expensive gadgets like smart phones, tablets, laptops, drones, smart watches, and electric scooters, among other items.

As a result, the value and the growing demand of cobalt and other such essential minerals have led to a scramble for these rare metals, particularly by foreign miners.

Even as the activists make an appeal, the mineral wealth has become a pawn in the DRC’s war with Rwandan-backed M23.

According to Congolese president Felix Tseisekedi’s spokesperson, Tina Salama, on X, the United States was warned not to buy minerals from Rwanda, as this was tantamount to buying stolen goods. She said the proposal to buy directly from the DRC was also open to the European Union, with a warning that “receiving stolen goods will become increasingly complicated.”

“President Tshisekedi invites the USA, whose companies source strategic raw materials from Rwanda, materials that are looted from the DRC and smuggled to Rwanda while our populations are massacred, to purchase them directly from us, the rightful owners,” Salama said on X.

Appolinaire Zagabe, a Congolese human rights activist and the Director for the DRC Climate Change Network (Reseau Sur le Changement Climatique RDC), told IPS in an interview that the mineral exploitation was mired in corruption.

“The foreign miners sign contracts with the government to legalize their activities, and since they make so much money, they always bribe government officials and top-ranking police officers to protect them as they illegally expand their mining areas by forcefully evicting communities from their ancestral land,” Zagabe said.

“The current system of mineral exploitation activities in the DRC has almost no positive impact on the local communities. Community rights are not respected and the population is a victim of companies’ pollution,” Zagabe told IPS. “There are no community programs undertaken, no durable infrastructure is put in place, no health facilities, no schools, no roads. Hence, people in those areas remain the poorest in the world.”

Zagabe says that nearly all the hundreds of thousands of community members who suffer at the hands of foreign miners of cobalt and other essential minerals have never seen what an electric vehicle looks like, they have never owned a smart phone, and they don’t dream of using a tablet or even a computer in their lifetime, yet they interact on a daily basis with essential minerals that are at the center of manufacturing these items.

A report by Amnesty International in collaboration with the Initiative for Good Governance and Human Rights/Initiative pour la Bonne Gouvernance et les Droits Humains (IBGDH) paints a grim picture of what is happening in the DRC.

The minerals, which are apparently supposed to be a huge blessing, have turned out to be a curse for the communities.

“People are being forcibly evicted, or threatened or intimidated into leaving their homes, or misled into consenting to derisory settlements. Often there was no grievance mechanism, accountability, or access to justice,” said Donat Kambola, president of IBGDH, in a statement.

“It is total chaos,” said Zagabe. “Human rights activists are often harassed whenever they denounce violations of community rights in mining areas, and they risk being killed since most illegal mining companies have the backing of politicians or high-ranking soldiers,” he said.

The rush for essential minerals has also exposed artisanal/local miners to harsh working conditions where some of them have been buried alive within collapsed tunnels, children have been forced to child labor, and women, whose livelihoods have been taken away, have been forced to toil to extreme lengths to find minerals, which they sell to foreign mining companies for almost nothing.

According to a report by Friends of the Congo (FOTC), child labor is well documented in the cobalt supply chain, with children as young as seven (years old) working in mines under dangerous conditions, depriving them of education and a healthy childhood.

“Pit wall collapses are common when digging in larger open-air pits, with the result of all miners being buried alive; of the 10,000 to 15,000 tunnels dug by artisanal miners, none have supports, ventilation shafts, or other safety measures,” reads part of the report.

According to Njamnshi, whatever is happening in the DRC mining sector is replicated in nearly all other African countries. “The only difference is that in the DRC, the atrocities are on a large scale and therefore are more visible than what is happening, for example, in Kenya’s Nyatike goldmines in the western part of the country,” he said, noting that there is a need for a collective high-level resolution to protect all African countries from greedy foreign mineral-thirsty companies.

The alleged disrespect of human rights and signing of dubious contracts that oppress communities, denying them right to their resources, is not in line with the Dubai COP 28 resolution, which called for rapid decarbonization of the energy system to keep the goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach.

The negotiators called for acceleration of the clean energy transition both from the demand and supply sides, but through a transformation that is orderly, just and equitable and also accounts for energy security.

“The world is changing very fast, and the geopolitical dynamics are becoming more unpredictable,” said Dr. Mithika Mwenda, the Executive Director at the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA).

“President Donald Trump’s executive orders should be a wake-up call for the continent, and likewise, African countries should find the power to dictate terms on their natural resources, including essential minerals,” he said during a PACJA event ahead of the 2025 AUC Summit in Addis Ababa.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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