PREVIEW
President Trump’s special advisor is testing transactional diplomacy amid the conflict and the continent’s biggest reserves of critical minerals
Washington’s latest intervention in Kinshasa, led by Massad Fares Boulos, senior advisor to United States President Donald Trump, is disrupting the calculations of Congolese politicians and warlords. Boulos, a Francophone Lebanese whose son Michael is married to Trump’s daughter Tiffany, met with Congo-Kinshasa President Félix Tshisekedi on 3 April to discuss prospects for a ceasefire and US investments in the mining sector.
A former managing director of Compagnie Française de l’Afrique Occidentale (CFAO) in Nigeria, Boulos has maintained his ties with West Africa. He met President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in Paris on 10 April to discuss collaboration between Abuja and Washington on Congo-Kinshasa and broader regional business interests.
Securing the only US mining project in Congo was a priority for the Boulos mission. Denham Capital is a US company with a majority stake in Alphamin and operates the rich Mpama tin mine in Bisie, Walikale territory, North Kivu. In March, Denham’s Washington lobbyists persuaded Boulos to intervene to protect Alphamin’s mine from the Rwanda-backed M23 militia, which already controls Goma, Bukavu, and several other eastern Congo-K towns, and was advancing ever closer (AC Vol 66 No 4, Gold is booming amid the geopolitical chaos & Vol 66 No 6, Kigali and the M23 militia clear a path for regime change & Dispatches 18/2/25, Silence in Addis as M23 takes Bukavu).
Boulos pressured Rwandan President Paul Kagame both directly and via the Qatari Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who mediated direct talks in Doha between Kagame and Tshisekedi on 18 March (AC Vol 66 No 6, M23 militia blocks peace talks until Brussels drops sanctions). Despite the M23’s claim of autonomy from Kigali, Kagame’s intervention led to the militia backing away from Bisie. But its subsequent advance on Walikale town proved too much for Alphamin, prompting the company to place the mine under care and maintenance, evacuating staff soon after that.
There, Boulos intervened, this time focusing on ensuring Alphamin’s supply chains remained safe from M23 attacks. But we hear it could take another three months to restart the mine – depending on security conditions. Due to the atrocious state of the road from Walikale to Goma, Alphamin transports its tin via a detour to Kisangani, then down either to Beni or Bunia, before exiting through Uganda. Boulos therefore pushed for the M23 and the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF), which has been expanding its presence in eastern Congo-K, to stay away from Kisangani too.
US ambitions
Boulos and the US administration’s ambitions in Congo-K extend far beyond Alphamin and tin. His discussions with Tshisekedi included US control over the rich but litigation-entangled lithium mines in Manono, Tanganyika Province, as well as industrial copper and cobalt mines in Haut Katanga and Lualaba provinces. They also covered the deep-water port in Banana on the Atlantic coast, currently under construction by the United Arab Emirates-owned DP World. A businessman close to the talks told Africa Confidential that US companies such as KoBold Metals, Orion and Freeport MacMoran were in the frame for a ‘fire sale’ along with Canada’s Ivanhoe and Anglo-Australian Rio. Yet other companies said that progress on structuring US acquisition and investment deals remains a distant prospect.
Boulos also persuaded Tshisekedi to prohibit any further lobbying in Washington by Congolese government entities, ensuring that only bona fide diplomatic channels are used. This restriction does not apply to Congo’s state-owned companies, which continue to employ Washington lobbyists, nor to other corporates, who were encouraged by the initial success of Denham’s team on Alphamin (Dispatches 25/2/25, Tshisekedi inks lobbying deal to bag minerals deal with Trump).
Despite meetings between Boulos, Tshisekedi, and other regional leaders in the first week of April, little changed in terms of military realities on the ground. The M23’s advance south from Bukavu towards Uvira and further into South Kivu, encountered resistance from local Wazalendo (Patriot) militias, with fierce fighting causing civilian displacement and loss of life. On 7 April, the M23 attacked villages in Minembwe, South Kivu. Then, on 12 April, fighting broke out in Fizi between the M23 and the Bilozebishambuke FABB militia, resulting in the destruction of several villages.
In the occupied towns of Goma and Bukavu, food is more plentiful. It seems that farmers are returning to their fields now that fighting has largely stopped in the countryside surrounding these cities. However, reports from Rutshuru territory, North Kivu, indicate that many returnees are finding their farms either destroyed or taken over by others.
While food availability has improved, money is as scarce as ever. There is a chronic shortage of both Congolese francs and US dollars. The M23 administration’s promises to establish a viable bank in Goma have come to nothing, and the Goma branches of all Congolese banks remain closed.
Representatives of the M23 and Congolese government have met several times in Doha but the talks are not going well. M23 leaders complain that ever since the US government publicly expressed interest in a deal with Tshisekedi, exchanging natural resources for security guarantees, the government’s ‘old arrogance’ has returned, and it is not taking the talks seriously. But there are signs that the M23 is beginning to splinter, and that Rwanda is running short of cash to finance the war as mineral production in eastern Congo has stalled.
The delegation leaders – Patrick Luabeya from Kinshasa and Mauro de Lorenzo, a naturalised Italian from Kigali – impressed the Boulos delegation with their seriousness. One plan in circulation is for Congo, Uganda and Rwanda to agree on the construction of a new road network in Kivu provinces to facilitate the transport and monitoring of export commodities. But that would require a political will at head of state level that it is currently missing.
Kabila lurks
On 9 April, former Congolese President Joseph Kabila announced that he would soon return to the country ‘from the east’. Several Congolese opposition politicians, including Olivier Kamitatu, interpret this to mean that Kabila will be coming to Goma. The Tshisekedi administration has made it known that if Kabila does go to the North Kivu capital, security forces will target Kinshasa-based activists and politicians in Kabila’s People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy.
With the Trump administration currently viewing Tshisekedi more benignly, Kabila cannot be sure that the US would intervene to prevent this. Perhaps unsure of his next move, Kabila has provided no further details of his ‘homecoming’. He may also have missed Tshisekedi’s weakest moment, a month or so ago.
Yet Tshisekedi’s attempt to build a new government of national unity is having little effect so far. He already presides over a large and unwieldy coalition, and few prominent politicians outside it appear interested in joining. Earlier proposals from Tshisekedi’s camp to amend the constitution, perhaps to give him a third term, have been abandoned. His more modest aim now seems to be clinging to power during his second term, alongside the rapid enrichment of his family and entourage.
Congolese hopes that Tshisekedi’s presidency will boost living conditions are fading after the ambitious plans of his first term. In Kinshasa, heavy rains caused the Ndjili River to burst its banks in April, overwhelming poorly maintained, plastic-clogged drains and flooding much of the city.
Over 165 people have lost their lives, 170 have been injured, and more than 7,025 remain displaced in emergency shelters after losing their homes. The city and national administration were unable to cope, highlighting the perception that politics revolves around elite power struggles. And when the crises arise, the people are left to fend for themselves.
THE SUPPLY CHAINS UNDER SCRUTINY
Research by Global Witness, an investigative NGO, published on 14 April and shared with Africa Confidential has found that Traxys, a multinational commodities trader based in Luxembourg, bought 280 tonnes of coltan from Rwanda in 2024. Global Witness has interviewed smugglers who say they buy coltan mined in M23-occupied Rubaya, smuggle it from Congo-K to Rwanda, and sell it there to African Panther Resources Limited. Global Witness has found that African Panther’s coltan exports soared to unprecedented volumes in 2024, and that Traxys is a major offtaker from the company. Traxys denies that any of the minerals it buys from African Panther are from Rubaya. African Panther denies buying any material from Congo-K.
Over 15% of the world’s supply of tantalum, a rare metal extracted from coltan, which is a key component in mobile phones, computers and electric car batteries comes from mines in Rubaya, a region controlled by M23. The revelations are also embarrassing for the European Commission which has been deeply reluctant to suspend a ‘cash for minerals’ deal it agreed with Rwanda in February 2024. EU foreign ministers agreed to put the agreement under review in March, and sanctioned the head of Rwanda’s minerals board, as well as a gold refinery in Kigali (AC Vol 66 No 6, M23 militia blocks peace talks until Brussels drops sanctions). But diplomats say that the Commission fiercely resisted attempts by ministers to simply suspend it.
At a separate EU Foreign Ministers meeting in February, meanwhile, Luxembourg’s foreign minister Xavier Bettel was also the most resistant to imposing EU sanctions on Rwanda (Dispatches 25/2/25, Suspending defence cash, Brussels edges towards sanctions). Global Witness says that it believes that other companies are also buying conflict minerals from Rwanda, whose coltan exports increased by over 40% last year. Last December, the Congolese government sued the French and Belgian subsidiaries of US tech giant Apple after accusing them of using conflict minerals smuggled out of Congo-K by Rwandan forces. Apple has denied the allegations.
The UN Group of Experts, Global Witness and the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI) have all warned over the past few months that Rwandan mineral supply chains are compromised, particularly for coltan from Rubaya. Traxys was accused by the UN Group of Experts in 2008 of sourcing minerals from eastern Congo-K buying houses that were themselves obtaining the material from areas controlled by rebel militia. Traxys denied the accusations, said that its ‘attempts at dialogue’ with the GoE had failed, leaving it no option but to declare force majeure and quit the country. Traxys was then sued by one of these buying houses for millions of US dollars which convinced the judge during arbitration this wasn’t a case of force majeure but simply of terrible judgement on the part of Traxys.
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