By The Unimaginable Wealth In Congo
The DRC, Republic of Congo is extremely rich in gold, diamond, copper, cobalt, tin, uranium, coltan and so many other precious mineral resources.
It is with no doubt that 65% of the earth’s total coltan deposits can be found in Congo, and coltan an important mineral is important in the manufacture of modern electronics like mobile phones, Tabs, iPads, computers, laptops, play stations, Jet engines, just to name a few.
Wherever you find a laptop or mobile phone in the world, including the one with which you are reading this write-up now definitely has an imprint of Congo in it. By right, Congo is supposed to be one of the richest countries in the World, but no, it is not, not even in the top 20 in Africa. Instead, exploited daily, plagued with unending war, misery, and poverty.
Over 70 years ago, precisely sometime in 1946, the Western world passed the Strategic Mineral Stockpiling Act to obtain and stockpile cobalt. With the largest deposit of cobalt on planet Earth, Congo became a target since cobalt is a “strategic and critical” mineral resource essential in the American aerospace, military, and defence industries.
Even neighboring countries like Rwanda and Uganda, countries that Western countries like the US and UK continue to empty financial aid into, have, in turn, not stopped the pillage and plunder of Congo on behalf of what many analysts have insisted are their western godfathers.
In many cases, the UN has indicted many Western multinational companies in their exploration of the resources of Congo like coltan, and in some of those cases, they have even called those companies the “engine of the conflict” in the over 30 years war in the DRC.
And since then, Congolese men, women, and children have been tortured, raped, starved, and even killed just to keep that war going, and keep the attention away from resource exploitation, so the West can continue to have access to the resources. The same UN studies have cited cases of genocide against the Congolese people by Rwandan and Ugandan forces, and yet nothing has been done.
Guess what, the western media will not cover what is going on in Congo, and even when they mistakenly do, they will make sure the focus is on the atrocities and crimes being perpetrated by rebel groups, but they won’t tell you it is the same West and their multinational companies that fund, arm and train these rebel groups.
Revolutionary leaders like Laurent-Desire Kabila who rose to speak against these crimes and ask for a change have either been demonized by the Western press or killed by Western powers and their local proxies.
Late Kabila was president of Congo but was assassinated. Just pause for a moment and ask yourself why all across Africa, throughout the time we began to attain independence, young revolutionary voices that have arisen in their various countries, men like Tom Mboya, Amilcar Cabral, Patrice Lumumba, Thomas Sankara, Steve Biko, Gadaffi just to mention a few, have been brutally assassinated?
Coming to Nigeria, a country that is supposed to be the GIANT of Africa, and the hope of the black world, that should rise as a big brother in defence of black Africa, is bogged down with the most backward government and leaders anywhere in the world. And to make matters worse, we are still here debating cattle ranching and large-scale kidnapping of school kids by terrorists in the 21st century.
(AN EXCERPT)
Reference: Mr Albert Afeso Akanbi
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