The Rwanda-backed insurgency entered Goma, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s largest city, this week, marking a major turning point in a conflict with government forces that has raised fears of a spillover into a broader regional war.
The rebels, which Rwanda denies supporting, have long been funded at least in part by the illicit mineral trade. Those revenue flows intensified after M23 — the latest in a long line of Tutsi-led rebellions — seized the coltan-rich Rubaya area in April, UN experts found.
Congo is the world’s top producer of tantalum and cobalt, a key component in batteries for electric vehicles and mobile phones, and is also home to significant coltan and gold deposits.
“Mineral exports from Rwanda are now over a billion dollars a year,” said Jason Stearns, a political scientist at Simon Fraser University and former UN investigator.
“That’s about double what they were two years ago. And we don’t know how much, but a fair chunk of that is from the DRC.”
Rwanda’s ambassador-at-large for the Great Lakes region Vincent Karega rejected the idea that M23 was trafficking Congolese minerals.
“Do you think it’s possible to fight and still have time to mine natural resources and refine them?” said Karega, who has been sent to the border with Congo to oversee the crisis.
Rebels recently captured the mining town Lumbishi in South Kivu province. Numbi, an eastern mining area in South Kivu rich in gold, tourmaline, and tin, tantalum and tungsten — so-called 3T minerals used in computers and mobile phones — is also under threat.
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