Introduction
The legacy of colonial rule is still extremely important in understanding African Politics today since the configuration of the economic and political relationships that characterised the colonial state have been sustained by the norms that govern the international system. “Colonialism integrated Africa into the global economy…as unequal and dependent counterparts” (Taylor 2018:21), and the system has continued to operate in a manner that has sustained this relationship.
To support these conjectures I make four arguments in four successive sections. Firstly, I argue that the economies of extraction set up under the colonial state are sustained by the economic relationship between Africa and the West. Secondly, I argue that the colonial characteristics of African states have been maintained because the global system is regulated by institutions governed by The West, for The West. Thirdly, I argue that the colonial process by which Africans were divided by the imposition of demarcated borders, with no regard for their common characteristics, continues to have repercussions for African Politics today. Finally, I argue that former colonies were left unprepared for self rule and thus those colonies did not possess the foundations necessary for the construction of sovereign and stable states.
African Politics Today
Before expanding on these conjectures it is necessary to assert how I intend to characterise “African Politics Today”. A clear problem with this term is that each African state is its own polity and thus its political situation is unique. Therefore, since this essay can not have the scope to make sense of African Politics in all states and all contexts, it focuses largely on the importance of colonial legacies in explaining politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In doing so, it assumes that the political situation in The DRC can be explained by five key characteristics.
Firstly, The DRC is not developing economically – The DRC is ranked 176th/180 on the HDI scale (Bakumanya and Kimball 2018). Secondly, The DRC is experiencing a lack of order – in 2015 alone, 171 people were killed during peaceful protests, while violence involving local armed groups, Congolese security forces and government backed militias led to the deaths of 5000 people in the Kasai Region between August 2016 – September 2017 (Human Rights Watch 2017). Thirdly, this lack of order is partly the result of The DRC government using its centralised power to deliberately undermine order in The DRC – there are frequent attacks on civilians by armed groups and government forces, and the government has clamped down on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly (Human Rights Watch 2017). Fourthly, the clear goal of the government’s behaviour has been to undermine democracy in The DRC – The Presidential Elections in The DRC, having been delayed several times, are yet to produce an outcome that is undisputed and internet service in the country had been “blocked…to dampen speculation about the…results” (The Guardian 2018). Finally, the international community is reacting to the problems in The DRC with caution – they have imposed sanctions and are conducting a UN investigation into violence in the state (Human Rights Watch 2017).
It is important to note that there is no single, direct line of causation between the political realities expressed above and factors discussed in the different sections of the essay – the relationship between colonial legacies and African politics is too complex for this to be possible. All four of the key arguments explain the relationship between colonial legacies and the political realities expressed above, but to varying extents and in a way by which the arguments reinforce each other.
Finally, the essay discusses relationships between Africa and its trading partners, former colonial powers, The United States, The International Criminal Court (ICC), The United Nations (UN), The World Bank (WB) and The International Monetary Fund (IMF). When the essay reflects on one of these relationships specifically, it names the relevant actor, when the essay refers to numerous international organisations collectively the essay uses the abbreviation ‘IO’ and when the essay is making a broader reference to the actions of some or all of these actors, the essay uses the term “The West”.
Extractive Economies
During the colonial period, trading patterns between Africa and The West were dependent on the needs of the latter. Rodney (1972:1) rightly argues that as a result of this, a “dialectical relationship” formed whereby colonies were exploited and wealth was extracted, producing African underdevelopment and European development by interaction and “reinforc[ing] this existing system of stratification” (Wallerstein 1974:1). This relationship led to the enrichment of capitalists such as David and Alexander Barclay who used the loot they gained from engaging in slave trading to set up Barclays bank (Rodney 1972:2).
The key to understanding this extraction of wealth from Africa, is understanding that “African societies were developing independently until they were taken over” (Rodney 1972:20) i.e colonisation entailed the loss of control over trade policy, putting such decisions in the hands of colonisers. I argue that this relationship between capitalist powers” and African states has remained unchanged. Under Leopold’s rule, Rubber was extracted through a process by which natives were attacked and women were kept as hostages until local chiefs could be convinced to hand over rubber to the Force Publique (Hochschild 1998:161). If a village refused to submit to the rubber regime, “state or company troops or their allies sometimes shot everyone in sight” and the right hands of corpses were cut off so that soldiers could prove themselves to mistrustful European officers (Hochschild 1998:165). Despite the slave trade having supposedly ended, Leopold’s colony was built on the backs of enslavement – in the first year that Henry Morton Stanley’s workmen were building roads in The DRC, twenty two Africans in his small team died under his command (Hochschild 1998:68). This mistreatment of Africans continued throughout colonialism; the population was tightly controlled with some Africans being required to wear a numbered metal disk attached to a cord around their neck and some children were taken from their families and trained as soldiers in “children’s colonies” (Hochschild 1998:134).
I argue that this exploitation and mistreatment of Africans by capitalist powers continues in The DRC today. The DRC is Africa’s biggest copper producer, the world’s largest source of cobalt and has enough hydropower potential to power half of sub saharan Africa (Sawyer 2018). Despite this natural resource wealth, 10% of Congo’s children die before the age of 5, 40% have stunted growth and 13 million people are in need of food, sanitation, shelter and education (Sawyer 2018). The fact that The DRC’s natural resource wealth does not lead to increased life chances for its people reflects the fact that The DRC’s role within the world economic system is still as a supplier of resources to the West. In labelling The DRC, the “heart of darkness”, Home (2017), rightly notes that as the use of Electric Vehicles increases, the demand for cobalt (a key resource for building lithium-ion batteries) will further increase. However, the process by which companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Vodafone already source cobalt for producing mobile-phone batteries is shrouded in “legal opacity” (Home 2017). It is estimated that $750 million worth of DRC copper cannot be tracked reliably (Home 2017) and that 40,000 children are being forced to work in cobalt mines (Kelly 2016). In interviews, children spoke of labouring in intense heat, carrying “back breaking loads” for 12 hours a day with no protective clothing, only to be paid $1 a day (Kelly 2016). Importantly, Apple, Microsoft and Vodafone have turned a blind eye to this mistreatment – an Amnesty international investigation discovered that cobalt used in battery production could be traced from all three companies to a subsidiary of the mineral company Huayou cobalt, which has been proven to employ and mistreat children in mines (Kelly 2016). While Apple has humbly responded to Amnesty International’s reports by exclaiming that “underage labour is not tolerated in our supply chain” (Kelly 2016), both Vodafone and Microsoft have admitted to ignoring such considerations. Microsoft admit to having made a choice not to trace the cobalt used through their supply chain “due to the complexity and the resources required” (Kelly 2016), while Vodafone admit to being “unaware” of the origins of the cobalt used in their products.
Just as Leopold “never saw a drop of blood spilled in anger [and] never set foot in the Congo” (Hochschild 1998:4) these companies have extracted resources from The DRC without due care for the impact of doing so, because the structures of dependency between The West and Africa have not changed. These relationships have not changed because “modern conditions force all countries to be interdependent to satisfy their own citizens” (Rodney 1972:38). The example of Tanzania illustrates the problems that arise when countries shun this interdependence. Having argued for Tanzanian “self reliance” (Nyerere 1967). President Nyerere embarked on a villagisation program, motivated by his belief in “ujamaa” (Nyerere 1967). However, Nyerere failed to “improve the material conditions of Tanzania’s…population” (Schneider 2004:345). Ultimately, since western countries are more technologically advanced they can “determine the direction of change” (Rodney 1972:??) in this interdependent world economy. The West have chosen to support the “subjugation of the colonies under a foreign capitalist yoke” (Rodney 1972:39), while African states cannot “curtail the capitalist mode of production” (Wallerstein 1974:4), and thus the legacy of colonial rule is important for understanding African politics today since the lack of a transformation in Africa’s economic relationship with the rest of the world explains the current state of affairs in Africa.
Lack of Participation in Institutions
The international institutions that govern the world economy are run by The West – every managing director of the IMF has been a European, all Presidents of the World Bank have been American and major donor countries are more proportionally represented among the make-up of IO bureaucracies (Dreher and Lang 2016:9). Furthermore, 80% of the World Bank’s economists studied at UK or US universities, suggesting that the “ideational culture” within IO’s is likely to be “dominated by neoliberal beliefs” (Nelson 2014:304).
The international institutions that govern the world economy are also run in the interests of the west. Alignment with the interests of major western donors is a better indicator of whether a state will received aid than whether they need or deserve it (Frey and Schneider 1986:225), while informal relationships between Western board directors and World Bank staff have a larger influence over loan disbursement than the views of voting members (Kaja and Werker 2010:171).
These IO’s were predominantly set up and are funded by former colonial powers. Moreover, the actions of these IO’s has hindered African progress in much the same way as the actions of former colonial powers did. In light of this, this section proceeds to discuss the problems that have arisen as a result of IO’s being run by The West and for The West, focusing on issues of African security and development.
In the early 2000’s, the UN peacekeeping force in The DRC became the largest and most expensive in the world, while the EU sent its first ever European-led peacekeeping force and the ICC chose The DRC as its first historic case (Autesserre 2010:3). Nonetheless, the peace building effort was undermined by its lack of focus on “bottom-up” (Autesserre 2010:8) solutions. Even after the negotiation of a peace settlement in 2003, “micro-level antagonisms continued to fuel the insurgencies that destabilised” The DRC (Autesserre 2010:8). Such “antagonisms” included disputes between Mai Mai militias allied with President Kabila and Congolese soldiers of Rwandan descent (Autesserre 2010:8) which sustained the presence of Rwandan Hutu rebels in The DRC, fuelling violence against the Kinyarwanda-speaking minority in North Kivu . Despite these antagonisms representing “primary obstacles to national and regional reconciliation” (Autesserre 2010:8), the UN chose not to “resolve land disputes, reconstruct grassroots institutions…[and] promote reconciation” (Autesserre 2010:9), even though the had the “resources at hand”, (Autesserre 2010:9) to do so. This choice was a result of the fact that the UN were influenced by “a dominant international peace building culture” that “focused on reconstructing a unified and legitimate leadership through elections” (Autesserre 2010:9). Ultimately, this culture precluded the “action on local violence (Autesserre 2010:10) that was so desperately needed in the Congo.
This focus on establishing democratic institutions, though a benevolent aim, has often do more harm than good. In the early 1990’s, “there w[as] no keener advocate of multi-party democracy” (Bayart 2000:225) than President Mobutu who used the transition to multi-party democracy as a “technique of self preservation” (Bayart 2000:225). He was able to “engineer several dozen new political entities” which were supposedly independent but were led by officials in his service (Bayart 2000:225).
Similarly, when President Moi announced Kenya’s transition to multi-party democracy in 1991, his Presidency was in a precarious position. Elite fragmentation had forced him to rely on ethnic militias to maintain power – this threatened the stability of the state since the government no longer had a “monopoly over the means of violence” (Branch and Cheeseman 2009:3). By voluntarily transitioning to democracy, Moi was able to control how democratic elections took place. He ensured that coalition governments were forbidden and any Presidential candidate would have to win at least 25% of votes, which, given the “factionalising of the opposition” (Brown 2010:726), meant only Moi could feasibly win. Thus, the transition to democracy upheld the rule of a dictator intent on fostering disorder.
Additionally, in pursuing a “policy of stabilisation” (Curtis 2013:563) in The DRC, the UN were not merely abiding by peace building norms, but also pursuing their own interests – to assert itself as a “responsible international power” (Curtis 2013:552). This is a problematic approach to state building as it aims to ensure IO’s appear effective even if their actions have a negative impact. For example, in 2004, the ICC, motivated by a “quest for effectiveness” (Branch 2007:189), inadvertently supported violent and anti-democratic forces in Uganda. The Ugandan government “cynically referred the ongoing conflict to the ICC” (Branch 2007:179) on the condition that they would cease to cooperate if government forces were investigated. This enabled the government to “delegitimise…opposition” (Branch 2007:183) and “undermine the peace process” (Branch 2007:184) since the ICC’s desire for effectiveness led it to only prosecute LRA terrorists and not even investigate atrocities committed by the government forces. Furthermore, The ICC practice of issuing arrest warrants had a negative impact. Vinjamuri (2010:195) notes that the warrants were supposed to “bring targeted individuals to the negotiating table” by “deter[ring] others from providing…support to…perpetrators”. However, these warrants “removed the LRA commanders incentive to leave the Bush” (Branch 2007:??). This led commanders to boycott talks out of fear of arrest, meanwhile allowing the government to justify reentering Sudan and The DRC (Branch 2007:184).
The failure of the issuing of arrest warrants to make meaningful change in Uganda reflects the fact that IO’s often focus “exclusively on one cause of violence and one solution to it”, and in doing so inadvertently “exacerbate the very problems they were combatting” by diverting “attention from much-needed policy actions” (Autesserre 2012:212). The same can be said of the fact that “there has been no interest in the Congo at the UNSC except when it discusses incidents of mass rapes and potential responses to them” (Autesserre 2012:214). This is especially problematic considering that, influenced by capitalist norms, IO’s tend to shape NGO behaviour through market incentives (Autesserre 2012:216). During off-the-record interviews, Congolese foreign aid workers and NGO’s “regularly complained that they cannot draw the attention of the media to horrific events that have no sex dimension” as they “receive more money than they need to treat victims of sexual abuse while they lack funding to implement other crucial projects” (Autesserre 2012:216). By focusing too intently on a single issue, IO’s have created an “NGO scramble” (Cooley and Ron 2002:5) as NGO’s rush to seek funding, leading “other human rights issues [to be] neglected” (Lake 2014:523). Moreover, not only is this approach undermining focus on other vital issues, but it has been shown to incentivise local militias to commit gang rapes as a means of drawing attention to themselves so that they can be “invited to the negotiating table” (Autesserre 2012:217). This was true in the case of the Mai Mai Sheka, a militia that raped 387 civilians in three days in the Walikale territory in August 2010.
It is therefore clear that colonial legacies are still important in understanding African politics today because African stability is often hindered by the actions and of IO’s run by The West and for The West.
Demarcated Borders
Prior to colonialism African societies were organised along lines of religion, language, commercial ties and military authority, while demarcated borders were unknown. However, the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 defined the regions of Africa in which European powers had an exclusive right to pursue the legal control over land. This created African states whose borders were demarcated in line with the Westphalian idea of territorial integrity and sovereignty. This demarcation took place with no concern for the political and social ties that had brought Africans together previously. As a result, African countries came to be made up of numerous ethnic groups – there were 70 distinct ethnic groups in Kenya alone (Kurian 1992). Since this demarcation occurred in the context of states possessing minimal institutional capacity to control areas of vast resource wealth, this has led state actors to exploit ethnic tensions to control populations through divide and rule (Sawyer 2018), while rebel groups and actors in other states have looked to foster grassroots antagonisms for economic gain (Clapham 1999:536).
With regards to the former, Mobutu’s inability to achieve “political domination through…administrative bureaucratic intervention” (Tull 2003:432), led him to construct “patronage based clientelistic networks”, with rebel groups (Tull 2003:424). This essentially amounted to “a hollowing state succumbing to the violent assault of private actors” (Tull 2003:431) as a means of controlling the population through the manipulation of ethnic tensions. However, in the long term this undermined order within The DRC since both the Barwanda and the indigenous people in North Kivu “perceived the state to be siding with the enemy and felt mutually threatened by extinction” (Tull 2003:443). As a result, ethnic militias killed 1000 people and paved the way for Kabila’s “seizure of control” (Tull 2003:433) in 1997. Similarly, during the second Congo war, the RCD (a rebel group made up of former AFDL troops and supported by Rwanda) continued Mobutu’s tactics – Tull (2013:441) notes that “if divide and rule strategies were the hallmark of Mobutu’s regime, the RCD has proved to be an adept disciple of the late President”.
President Kabila has also proven himself to be a “disciple” of Mobutu in this respect. In the Djuga territory of The DRC’s Ituri province, more than 200,000 people have been forced to flee their home since December 2016 as a “result of inter-ethnic tensions between the Lenda and Hema communities” (Sawyer 2018). However, this violence has been stirred up by the government for political purposes. Sawyer (2018) notes that “local leaders and survivors have been baffled” by the conflict as “while low level tensions have existed”, between the two groups the “communities were not preparing to go to war with each other” (Sawyer 2018). In actuality, it seems likely that the recent violence was the result of “professional killers c[oming] into…villages and hack[ing] people to death…in what appear to be pre-meditated attacks” (Sawyer 2018), approved by government officials. Similarly, large scale violence in North and South Kivu is state funded – many of the 120 armed groups in the Eastern Congo “receive support from the Congolese government and security forces” (Sawyer 2018). It was this violence that allowed Kabila to justify repeated election delays – in July 2016 the CENI President argued that violence in the Ijuri province was one of the main reasons elections could not be held in 2017 (Sawyer 2018).
In light of this, it seems ironic that “despite having been divided among Europeans at Westphalia, the post Colonial states have, since independence, emerged as the most strident defenders of the principle of Westphalian sovereignty” (Clapham 1999:552). This enthusiasm for the idea of territorial integrity is clear when we consider that Kenyatta’s independence speech included the exclamation that “we do not want assistance from any person or country” (Kenyatta 1968:340), while Nyerere’s Arusha declaration insisted on “self reliance” (Nyerere 1967) and Lumumba’s speech at The DRC’s independence proclamation ended with the cry “long live the independent and sovereign Congo” (Lumumba 1960). However, this enthusiasm is explained by the fact that African countries have embraced sovereignty since it is necessary for asserting control. Firstly. The DRC “rel[ies] on the assistance of foreign states” (Lumumba 1960) and since the Western international order respects territorial integrity above all else, “sustain[ing] a fiction of formal statehood”, is the best means of “courting international recognition and the financial benefits this…bring[s]” (Tull 2003:444). Secondly, The DRC has been plagued by regional powers looking to “create localised hegemonies” (Clapham 1999:536) – in 1996 the Rwandan and Angolan military forces supported insurgents in The DRC’s civil war and in 1997 Angola intervened in the Congo-Brazzaville civil war. Ultimately, the principle of non-intervention is so important for The DRC, “because states [are] so fragile and their boundaries so artificial that conflicts in one state always risked the involvement of neighbours” (Clapham 1999:536). Thus it is clear that African states don’t support the idea of sovereignty because they believe that Europeans were right to divide Africa, they do so out of necessity.
Unpreparedness and Centralisation
Taylor (2018:25) notes that “colonialism was grounded in the exploitation of the labour and natural resources of Africa”. Africans were, thus, merely good for labour and the role of the state was merely to control labour and extract resources. As a result of this, as African countries gained independence they were largely unprepared for self rule. This was especially true for The DRC. In 1959, The DRC had a population of 15 million and yet there were only 16 citizens in the country who had a university degree and only 3 Africans in management positions within the civil service (Taylor 2018:25). There were also no Congolese doctors, lawyers, engineers or army officers (Taylor 2018:25). In light of this, Belgian officers estimated that The DRC “needed, at a minimum, 30 years until it was ready for independence” (Taylor 2018:25). Nonetheless, The DRC became independent on June 30th 1960.
Bearing this in mind, it is hardly surprising that Mobutu “took charge of all aspects of the state, military, economic and judiciary system” (Mcnulty 199:59), since The DRC did not have a “strong, differentiated bureaucrac[y] governed by the rule of law” and thus “personalistic ties” (Tull 2003:444) became vital for the restoration of order, necessitating the centralisation of power. Power has since remained centralised, as is clear when we consider how easily Kabila has been able to stay in power beyond his constitutionally mandated terms by “systematically…jailing opposition leaders and supporters” and “sow[ing] violence and instability across much of the country” (Sawyer 2018). Kabila has amassed a “considerable fortune”, leaving the government “bereft of funds to meet the basic needs of an impoverished population” (Sawyer 2018). Similarly, Mobutu was able to amass $4 billion of personal wealth, which he “accrued at the expense of his country’s economy and natural resources” (Mcnulty 1999:60).
Of course, these rulers did make a conscious choice to enrich themselves to the detriment of The DRC’s development. They could have followed the contrasting path of former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, who banned any government leaders from being associated with “the practices of capitalism” (Nyerere 1967). Nonetheless, the choices made by these rulers were influenced by colonial legacies and the actions of the West. On a simple level, the fact that colonies were left institutionally unable to build stable states meant that Mobutu’s wealth served a purpose – it allowed him to maintain control in The DRC because his “vast personal fortune provided a seemingly inexhaustible source of patronage” (Mcnulty 1999:61). Furthermore, Mobutu and Kabila’s actions had already been normalised by colonisers. Through using propaganda as a means of controlling the population (Tull 2003:432), Mobutu and Kabila are merely taking a leaf from King Leopold’s book. Leopold normalised such behaviour through his misleading use of rhetoric to ensure his wealth extraction appeared philanthropic (Hochshild 1998:44), to the international community. Similarly, Kabila’s choice to blame election delays on violence that his own policies fuelled (Sawyer 2018), is reminiscent of King Leopold deflecting the blame for his genocide by blaming it on the spread of sleeping sickness (Hochschild 1998:231). Moreover, while it is right to condemn rebel groups for using “looted resource wealth to buy arms” (Weinstein 2005:600), the act of looting resource wealth was also normalised by colonialists. Ultimately, when we bear in mind that “colonial sovereignty rested on violence” (Mbembe 2001:25), it is not surprising African states don’t “pay tribute to Europe by creating states, institutions and societies” (Fanon 1961), in line with the demands of former colonial powers.
It is also important to recognise that Kabila and Mobutu’s personal extraction of wealth from The DRC has been supported by both the US and the former colonial powers. By propping up Mobutu and Kabila, the West gave these leaders “little reason…to behave differently” (Mcnulty 1999:62). With regards to France, The DRC contracted French companies for “prestige infrastructure projects which increased The DRC’s national debt by £8 million (Mcnulty 1999:62). In exchange, the French repeatedly intervened militarily to uphold Mobutu’s rule. For example, they offered military support when anti-Mobutu dissidents in Angola (FNPC) launched attacks in 1997 and 700 French and 1700 Belgian paratroopers were flown into The DRC in US aircraft (Mcnulty 1999:66). When we consider that the West continued to prop up Mobutu despite the fact that he ordered the massacre of students at Lubumbashi University in 1991, sponsored ethnic cleansing in the Shaba and Kivu provinces and sanctioned the assassination of the French ambassador in 1993 (Mcnulty 1999:69), it seems likely that it was Mobutu’s belief “that western allies would always rally to his support”, (Mcnulty 1999:66) that led him to be ruthless in extracting Congolese wealth for his own ends. Similarly, just as previous sections of this essay have emphasised the West’s focus on a “policy of stabilisation” (Curtis 2013:552) in The DRC, it is clear that Mobutu and Kabila have enriched themselves without fear of consequences, in the knowledge that they were “indispenable” in terms of “perceptions of Western security” (Mcnulty 1999:68). This is clear when we consider the response of The West to Kabila’s repeated attempts to undermine democracy in The DRC, has been to half heartedly impose sanctions and make a feeble “appeal” for a democratic transition (Sawyer 2018).
Conclusion
I have made four key arguments to support my conjecture that colonial legacies are extremely important for understanding African Politics today. I have argued that the economic relationship between Africa and the West is still one that involves the extraction of wealth from the former and by the latter. I have argued that IO’s, in their failure to make meaningful change in The DRC, have led the colonial characteristics of states to endure. I have argued that demarcated borders continue to undermine order and I have argued former colonies were left unprepared for self rule. These arguments, in combination, help explain why The DRC can be characterised in the five ways I have outlined and in doing so they support the assertion that the configuration of the economic and political relationships that characterised the colonial state have been sustained by the norms that govern the international system.
It is true to say that The DRC is an extreme example of a failed African state and as I outlined in the introduction, every African state is unique and thus faces its own challenges. Nonetheless, I have focused on The DRC as my main case study as I believe the arguments discussed have broader applicability. To draw just a few comparisons, Taylor (2018:25) notes that it is true “in most cases”, that African countries were unprepared for self rule, citing the lack of trained Ghanian civil servants as an example. Similarly, decolonisation created “a large number of the world’s most artificial states with very weak internal legitimacy” (Taylor 2018:32), across the continent, not just in The DRC. Peace building efforts across the continent including in Somalia, Burundi and South Africa (Autesserre 2010:62) have been undermined by a lack of focus on rebuilding grassroots institutions and it is broadly true that “African countries mainly export natural resources and import manufactured goods, and thus structure of trade has not been meaningfully transformed since independence” (Taylor 2018:35). Ultimately, African states across the continent have “had to take over the failure of colonial development (Cooper 2002:5) in order to move “towards a future that built on a painful past” (Cooper 2002:19) and The DRC is a useful illustration of this.
Looking forward, the future for The DRC is uncertain and any government will have to fight an uphill battle to build the “rich, free and prosperous state” that was promised on independence day (Lumumba 1960). Some look to the possibility that “Chinese assistance for infrastructural development would offer…a pathway to greater investment and growth” (Curtis 2013:552). However, past agreements signed between Chinese companies and The DRC government have been “unfairly skewed to Chinese interests” (Curtis 2013:552). Just as Soviet aid did not act as a silver bullet for African development during the Cold war (Plank 1994:410), it is equally unlikely that Chinese investment will be one for The DRC. The DRC may gain more benefits from the fact that it’s share of world cobalt production will increase to 73% by 2023 (Deign 2018). Therefore, the international corporations that want to “sign up to the bright, shiny EV future” (Home ??), have two options; they can continue to extract cobalt from mines who exploit child labour and are “controlled by insurgent militias” (Home 2017); or they can invest in more “upstream part[s] of the supply chain” to ensure cobalt production happens in “socially acceptable terms” (Home 2017). If humanitarian efforts such as that which exposed the unethical sourcing of cobalt (Kelly 2016), can lead global corporations to choose to invest in The DRC rather than to extract wealth from it, perhaps The DRC can become a country of “peace, prosperity and greatness” (Lumumba 1960).