The Democratic Republic of Congo is in talks with a Texan businessman allied to Donald Trump to make a notorious source of conflict minerals a central part of US-backed peace plans for the region.
Gentry Beach, the chair of investment firm America First Global and former finance co-chair of Trump’s campaign in 2016, is part of a consortium negotiating for rights to the Rubaya coltan mine, said Congolese officials and people familiar with the matter.
The mine, outside the city of Goma in eastern DR Congo, has been at the centre of the trade in smuggled coltan used in the financing of one of Africa’s longest-running and deadliest wars.
Rubaya, which produces about half of DR Congo’s coltan, was captured in January by Rwandan-backed M23 rebels who have since overseen and taxed its output. The mine is considered by geologists to be one of the most commercially promising sources for the tantalum and niobium used in the electronics industry.
People involved in the discussions hope, if a deal is finalised, the mine will be part of a raft of US investment underpinning the Trump administration’s novel approach to ending the fighting between DR Congo, Rwanda and proxy militias.
Washington — which has negotiated a peace settlement with the warring parties — sees dangling the prospect of billions of dollars in US investment in mining and infrastructure as key to persuading them to stop fighting, in an example of Trump’s signature transactional style of diplomacy.
Rubaya was one of a number of assets the embattled DR Congo president Felix Tshisekedi touted when he first approached Washington in February offering mining rights in return for help in ending a rebellion in the country’s east, according to Congolese officials.
Both Washington and Kinshasa have expressed hope that any deals that flow will also dilute Chinese dominance in what is Africa’s richest store of minerals. DR Congo accounts for about 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt, as well as some of the continent’s largest reserves of gold, copper, coltan, tin and diamonds.
“When the US stepped in, they wanted to frame their approach to a peace settlement differently than in the past,” said one regional participant in the plans, on condition of anonymity. “They were looking at what the business and economic side of the deal would be that allows this region to prosper, so we don’t get back into this all over.”
Beach, a former hedge fund manager and long-standing college friend of Trump’s son Donald Jr, has experience in DR Congo dating back to a previous 2004 mining venture. Beach was also involved in ventures in the DR Congo with the late Congo-born basketball legend Dikembe Mutombo.
Although Donald Jr and Beach are old college friends, the president’s son has no involvement in Beach’s business ventures, according to a person close to Donald Jr.
America First Global, which declined to comment, is part of a consortium including the Swiss commodities group Mercuria, that hopes to develop the mine in a joint venture with Congolese state miner Sakima. Mercuria — which also did not comment — would buy offtake from the mine, which according to people involved could require in excess of $500mn in investment.
“Rubaya is an important part of the peace process . . . We hope to dramatically expand it, reorganise it, and make it a world-class example of how to do mining,” one participant of the consortium said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
DR Congo and Rwanda on Friday signed an agreement to end the conflict, which dates back to the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda, when millions of refugees fled across the border.
Foreign ministers from both countries signed the peace deal in Washington in what Trump had hailed on Truth Social as “A Great Day for Africa and a Great Day for the World”.
But it remains unclear how the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels may be persuaded to withdraw from the swaths of territory they control, or to relinquish cash cows such as Rubaya.
The US International Development Finance Corporation, the private sector development-lending organisation set up by Trump during his first term, may support some of the US investments as part of a separate strategic minerals agreement with DR Congo, officials have said.
This economic component of the settlement — designed to herald US investment in cobalt, copper and lithium mines, as well as infrastructure — is still some way off, according to people familiar with the talks. DFC did not respond to a request for comment.
Rubaya has become synonymous with hellish conditions and the plunder of DR Congo’s riches by its neighbours.
It has been controlled by different militias as the 30-year conflict has ebbed and flowed, with its output frequently smuggled on to international markets through Rwanda and Uganda, according to reports by UN experts.
Longer term, some of the coltan mined at the site would be exported legally through Rwanda and processed for export at a new smelter in Kigali. The smelter would be built by a separate consortium made up of Mercuria, Beach’s America First Global and Rwandan state investor Ngali Holdings, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
Some regional experts remain sceptical about the plans, given the central role Rubaya has played in fuelling conflict. But one person familiar with the matter argued that the deal would be “all about business building the bridges”.
Additional reporting by Alex Rogers and Guy Chazan