Media reports that the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has sought to negotiate an arms-for-minerals deal with the US at a time when Washington has imposed unilateral tariffs targeting both allies and opponents.
Media reports suggest that the US-DRC deal could be modelled along the lines of the US- Ukraine deal, a transactional bilateral arrangement upon which the US would provide security support in exchange for critical minerals and rare earth metals.
While the DRC faces a desperate security situation and has alluded to the need to diversify its partners, the Trump administration looks keen to take its transactional model of bilateral, and indeed multilateral, relations to conflict states, trading mineral resources for security needs.
The motivation and timing of the DRC’s overtures towards the US may throw the country into a catch-22. The Trump administration has been very clear about seeking maximum benefits for the US in line with the Trump Administration’s America First Agenda by forging transactional relations with partners. At the same time, the DRC is pulling a huge gamble which could alienate its traditional trusted partners.
At this juncture, African countries should seek collective solutions to emerging challenges, including in dealing with the chaotic, unpredictable, and transactional policies emerging from Washington.
The DRC faces ongoing violence, instability, massive displacement of its citizens and a huge humanitarian crisis. Millions of its citizens have been forced to flee their homes to escape the advancing M23 rebels, allegedly supported by Rwanda.
The rebel groups have responded with mixed signals to calls for a ceasefire by both the government of the DRC and Rwanda, while the SADC forces deployed to keep peace in the country are being withdrawn, leaving the Tshisekedi-led government desperate to bolster peace and stability in the country.
China has emerged as the major investment and development partner in Africa and the DRC in particular. The Trump Administration has indicated its desire to continue pushing US interests for critical minerals, drawing big power competition and rivalry into the region. The U.S., through its International Development Finance Corporation, set up during Trump's first term in 2019, has pledged a $550 million loan to support the Lobito corridor project.
The DRC, Angola, Zambia, and Tanzania are all participating in the Lobito corridor initiative, a $4 billion project which was originally launched by the Biden administration to develop railway infrastructure linking ports in Tanzania through the DRC and Zambia to Angola.
The project, which seeks to facilitate the transportation of minerals resources and other raw materials found in abundance in this region, was touted as evidence to affirm that the US and EU are seriously back to invest in Africa, and possibly outcompete flourishing Chinese investments.
According to the BBC, the U.S. chargé d’affaires and acting ambassador to Angola, James Story, told reporters that the United States is ''set to show our commitment to these projects,'' suggesting that the Trump administration is all in the planned partnership with the 4 Africancountries, the private sector, the US, and the EU countries.
Western governments view the Lobito corridor project as their answers and alternative to massive Chinese infrastructure projects in the region backed by a combination of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Forum for China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).
In contrast to ad hoc, recently emerging Western infrastructure initiatives in Africa, China has institutionalised its investments in the continent through combined public and private sector investments to assert itself in diversified supply and value chains, creating millions of jobs across the continent.
Western countries and the private sector have previously been reluctant to invest massively in the continent. They have mostly directed their focus on humanitarian and security initiatives partly because Africa is generally viewed as unstable and characterised by poor governance.
Compared to extensive Chinese investment in the DRC, and despite dangling billions of dollars in potential investment, US-DRC trade accounts for minuscule economic exchanges between the two countries. A summary of trade relations between the DRC and the US from the Office of the United States Trade Representative indicates that total goods trade with the Democratic Republic of the Congo reached $576.4 million in 2024.
The US goods exports to the Democratic Republic of the Congo were $253.3 million in 2024, growing by 35.6 percent to reach $66.5 million from 2023, while the US goods imports from the Democratic Republic of the Congo clocked $323.1 million, gaining by 17.5 percent to $48.1 million. Since the 2000s, China has invested more than $155 billion in Sub-Saharan Africa, making Beijing a legitimate alternative to Western financing in the realm of developmental and commercial infrastructure.
The DRC, which produces 80 percent of the world’s cobalt, has attracted massive investments from state-owned enterprises and policy banks from China.
Chinese companies have invested in half of the largest cobalt mines in the DRC, with a significant stake in the refining of cobalt and other minerals.
China is by far the DRC's largest single trading partner, representing nearly half of its merchandise exports and more than a quarter of its imports, according to 2022 data from the World Trade Organization.
When it comes to China's economic ties with DR Congo, the UN Comtrade Database shows that for years, China has been DR Congo's top trading partner since the 2000s. According to the United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade, Chinese exports to Congo reached US$4.49 billion in 2023.
China has financed and built large-scale infrastructure projects in DR Congo, including hydropower plants and a dry port. The Chinese Loans to Africa Database run by Boston University says that Beijing extended $3.2bn (£2.5bn) of loans to the DRC between 2005 and 2022, mostly to fund road and bridge construction and the country's electricity grid. US investments in Africa in general, and the DRC in particular, are marginal.
The Trump administration is equally proving transactional, basically self-interested in a very inside-looking way. The unilateral imposition of blanket tariffs on nearly 60 countries, which have been suspended for 60 days, requires the DRC to demonstrate a measure of solidarity, goodwill and, most importantly, seek a collective response with other African countries to maintain a diplomatically nuanced collective posture towards the US. China, the main economic partner with the DRC, is confronted with a cycle of additional US tariffs.
In the context of the transactional operational mode characterising contemporary Washington foreign relations, and the tensions between Washington and Beijing triggered by Trumpsunilateral imposition of tariffs on China, the DRC, as with other African countries who aremembers of the BRICS, and have forged strong bilateral and multilateral relations with Beijing risk coercive backlash from Washington.
While China is clear on its policy of non-intervention and non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, Trump has threatened to impose debilitating tariffs on members of the BRICS group of countries. South Africa is facing intense pressure for some of its policies to address its domestic historical contradictions.
Barring some serious delicate balancing act, the DRC risks alienating some of its traditional partners who have ploughed billions of dollars into the fragile state at a time when the US is proving unpredictable and unreliable, tearing the global economic and political rule book even for its historical partners.
Gideon H Chitanga, PhD is a Post Doctoral Researcher at the Centre for China Africa Studies (CACS), University of Johannesburg.
