In a story ran by the Financial Times in March 2023, the authors Atom Wilson and Adres Schipani wrote that the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) authorities accused Rwanda of plundering its resources by supporting the M23 rebel group.

The article quoted  Nicolas Kazadi, DRC’s finance minister, saying  that Rwanda last year exported close to $1bilion in gold, tin, tantalum and tungsten, even though the country has few mineral deposits of its own.

Kazadi added: “M23’s main objective was to take DRC minerals and siphon them over the border. We’re very surprised to see there‘s no sanction [for Rwanda], not even the beginning of sanctions.”

Kazadi’s claim is not new and has been repeated by Western countries and their agents such as the UN Group of Experts. The claim by DRC and Western countries; about Rwanda’s interest in DRC minerals, is diversionary. It is a cover up of the real plunderers of DRC mineral wealth.

From the time of colonization until today, Western mining companies have been involved in mineral exploitation in DRC. The Belgian mining company   Société Générale de Belgique, Anglo-Swiss Glencore International, Canadian company Ivanhoe Mines, American Freeport-MacMoran, and the London-based Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation are just a few of the hundreds of Western mining companies operating in DRC.

In 1996, when Rwandan forces invaded Zaire (DRC), the objective was not to plunder mineral resources but to deal with an existential security threat.

Rwanda’s security concern was former President Juvénal Habyarimana’s defeated genocidal army, the ex-FAR, and Interahamwe militia, who had committed the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and were launching attacks against Rwanda from DRC while supported by Mobutu’s regime.

From that time, Western countries and their allies started advancing the absurd claim that Rwanda went into DRC simply to plunder mineral resources.

Rwanda had lost over one million people during the genocide against the Tutsi and more people were being killed through cross border insurgency. The aim of the attacks launched from DRC territory was to continue the genocide, which the killers never completed while still in power in Rwanda.

Western countries feared Rwanda; knowing that it had a strong army that could fight and occupy the mineral-rich territories their companies operated from and then their business with DRC would be disrupted. Western powers always looked for excuses to run away from their responsibility of creating the DRC crisis. 

The claim that Rwanda plunders DRC minerals is a red herring.

Rwanda is accused of something Western countries have done ever since the era of colonialism and still do today, which is plundering DRC resources. Kinshasa completely failed to use the minerals for the benefit of the Congolese people. Despite being the second-largest country in Africa, about the size of Western Europe, DRC remains one of the five poorest nations in the world.

According to a 2022 World Bank report, 62 percent of Congolese, nearly 60 million people, live on less than $2.15 a day, with one out of six people living in extreme poverty.

Western countries are more concerned about the DRC minerals than over a million innocent lives of Rwandans that were lost during the 1994 genocide. And they are less bothered by genocidal groups like FDLR who want to return to Rwanda and carry out genocide.

The Kinshasa regime that supports the genocidal militia and incorporates it in the national army (FARDC) has never been held accountable by the West because they do not want to antagonize their exploitative mineral business deals with DRC.    

It is a fact that DRC and Rwandan business communities have, for decades, traded in different commodities including minerals.

Rwanda does not sanction illegal trade of minerals from DRC or any other commodities. It is only interested in legal trade between the two countries.

Over the years, Rwanda has seized and returned smuggled minerals to DRC, with the biggest consignment of more than 80 tons intercepted and returned in November 2011.

The God who created minerals in DRC did not stop along the border with Rwanda.

Since the 1930s, Rwanda’s mining sector has been growing with a production capacity estimated at 8,000 and 9,000 tons of mineral compounds every year.

Rwanda is among the top producers of Tantalum, producing about 9 per cent of the world’s Tantalum used in electronics manufacturing.

The Rwandan mining sector boasts two refineries, one for gold and another for tantalum in addition to a tin smelter. The sector's annual revenues reached $585 million in September 2022, and is projected to reach $ 1.5 billion in 2024.

Rwanda has a mineral tagging and sealing scheme, internationally recognized as a member of the International Tin Supply Chain Initiative (iTSCi) programme which ensures that the origins of minerals can be traced in order to avoid conflict financing, human rights abuses, or other malpractices such as bribery in mineral supply chains.