Blood Minerals: How Neocolonialism Perpetuates Mining Deaths in Congo

By: Kashvi Kaul

Editor: Elijah Eaton

Editor-in-Chief: Grace Samuel

The views expressed are the author's own and do not reflect the views of the International Relations Society.

Credit: Wikimedia commons, The International Institute for Environment and Development (Creative Commons 2.5)

At the start of February this year, a deadly mine collapse in the town of Rubaya took the lives of over 200 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). But for communities in North Kivu, such collapses are neither shocking nor rare. Rather, they are a predictable outcome of a mining system that has for over a century treated Congolese land and labour as expendable. The DRC is one of the most mineral-rich areas of the world, with vast deposits of diamonds, gold, copper and cobalt, the latter essential for various technological advancements such as smartphones and electric cars.

So how can a country with such massive potential for wealth be plagued by extensive conflict and instability? To investigate this, focus must be brought to the neocolonial exploitation of African countries such as the DRC; a process that began in the colonial era and continues into the post-colonial world of today.

Congo’s deadly mining economy can be traced back to the era of colonial Belgian rule, which transformed the territory into one of the most brutally exploited regions in modern history. Under King Leopold II and the Belgian colonial enterprise, Congo’s economy was organised almost entirely around the extraction of copper, rubber and other raw materials for European profit. From the rubber that fed the Victorian bicycle craze, to the uranium used to make the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, imperial exploitation of Congolese resources via slave labour has spilt the blood of many.

Formal independence in 1960 did not dismantle Congo’s extractive economic structure. Instead, the country inherited an economy designed for export rather than domestic development, leading to the instability, conflict and human rights violations seen in the territory now. Direct colonial rule ended on paper, yet the post-colonial activity of foreign corporations, international markets and ‘global demands’ has replaced it, continuing the logic of extraction and exploitation.

Today, this neocolonial system is most prevalent in the mining sector. Multinational companies and foreign buyers dominate global mineral supply chains, capturing the majority of the profits through processing, manufacturing and technological innovation abroad. Meanwhile, Congolese communities are left with the most dangerous and least rewarded stage of production: the extraction itself. The value of the DRC’s minerals is realised and clinched elsewhere, while the risks are borne locally, rendering Congolese labour expendable.

Further, armed factions such as the M23 have perpetuated violence in the DRC by seizing strategic, mineral-rich areas. M23 has occupied and taxed key mining sites, including around Rubaya, using mineral revenues to fund its operations and consolidate territorial control. While often framed as purely regional and ethnic conflict, the rise of groups such as M23 can be traced back to legacy arbitrary borders drawn by colonial powers during the Scramble for Africa. Without the counsel of the local, cost-bearing people, ethnic communities were fractured and forcibly merged, producing long-term instability which continues to this day.

To describe mine collapses as tragic accidents is a means to obscure responsibility. Heavy rain does not kill miners; unsafe working conditions do. These conditions persist not because safer systems are logistically challenging, but because the global extractive economy has little incentive to fund and reform them. Therefore, this recent collapse is not an isolated ‘tragedy’, but a predictable outcome of a system rooted in a history of imperial extraction, sustained through modern, neocolonial economic relations. Until these structures are challenged, the neocolonial exploitation of some of the most materially rich countries in the world will continue while their people suffer, sustaining the decades-long imperial system built on unequal sacrifice.