Resource-Rich Nation Backs US Ties as Critical Minerals Race With China Heats Up

— The Democratic Republic of Congo is not framing Washington’s expanding role in its critical minerals sector as a head-to-head race with Beijing, the nation’s foreign minister told INC News, stressing that Kinshasa wants a wider circle of partners to help turn its enormous resource base into real gains for Congolese citizens.

“I don’t like talking about competition. I like talking about complementarity,” Foreign Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner said during an exclusive interview at the United Nations.

Wagner said major nations do not build their futures through a single relationship alone. “A country as big as the USA, but also a country as big as the DRC and as big as China, they do not develop just with one single partner,” she said. “They develop with different partnerships that respond to different needs and that bring different expertise to the table.”

Her remarks come as the Trump administration moves to strengthen U.S. access to Congo’s vast reserves of copper, cobalt, lithium, gold and other critical minerals, part of a broader push to loosen America’s dependence on supply chains long shaped by China’s dominance.

On Dec. 4, 2025, Washington and Kinshasa signed a strategic partnership aimed at deepening economic cooperation, attracting investment and building more secure and transparent critical mineral supply chains. The deal was rolled out alongside a wider regional framework that ties economic integration to renewed efforts to bring an end to decades of conflict involving Congo and Rwanda.

Another proposed deal, involving DR Congo’s state-owned mining firm Gécamines and commodities trader Mercuria, could provide U.S. buyers with priority access to portions of the country’s copper and cobalt output, Reuters reported on Dec. 5, 2025. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation has also signaled interest in taking a strategic stake in that partnership.

Kayikwamba Wagner said relations between the U.S. and DR Congo were taking “a more concrete shape” based on mutual economic interests.

She said Kinshasa welcomed “more U.S. interests in the DRC” that could help the country turn its mineral wealth into “tangible transformations for the lives of Congolese,” while also delivering benefits to American partners.

Speaking separately at a high-level U.N. meeting on critical minerals Tuesday, Kayikwamba Wagner warned that the global shift toward clean energy must not reproduce an economic model in which raw materials leave Africa while processing, technology and most of the profits remain elsewhere.

“The global energy transition must not become another extractive transition,” she said. “If it merely replaces one form of dependency with another, it will have fallen short of its promise.”

She called for foreign partnerships to support local processing, infrastructure, technology transfers, research, industrialization and access to financing — not simply secure supplies of raw materials.

The minerals push is closely connected to the U.S.-mediated peace process between the DRC and Rwanda. The countries initially signed a peace agreement in Washington June 27, 2025, before presidents Félix Tshisekedi and Paul Kagame reaffirmed the deal and signed related economic agreements on Dec. 4. The framework was intended both to reduce fighting and attract Western investment to a region rich in cobalt, copper, tantalum and other minerals.

Kayikwamba Wagner acknowledged that the agreement had not ended the violence but said Washington’s willingness to impose consequences for violations showed that the process remained meaningful.

“This is a 30-year conflict we’re dealing with,” she said. “It’s not going to happen overnight.”

She praised the administration for sanctioning the Rwanda Defense Force and senior Rwandan officials over what the Treasury Department described as their support for the M23 rebel group. Treasury said in March that the RDF had supported, trained and fought alongside M23 as it seized territory and strategic mining locations in eastern Congo. Rwanda has repeatedly denied supporting M23.

“I find it encouraging to see that we have with us a partner that is not willing to give up at the first obstacle,” Kayikwamba Wagner said.

She was in New York as the DRC, which holds the Security Council presidency for July, elevated the connection between natural resources, armed conflict and sexual violence.

Kayikwamba Wagner said rape and other forms of conflict-related sexual violence had risen sharply in areas held by M23 and Rwandan forces, affecting women and girls as well as men and boys.

Victims in occupied areas, she said, often lack access to courts, healthcare or other avenues for redress.

“This is also one of the reasons why we continue to be mobilized against this illegal occupation of eastern DRC,” she said, arguing that restoring state authority was essential to providing survivors with justice and medical care.

In her U.N. remarks, she cited the Rubaya mining area, which is under M23 control and supplies a significant share of global tantalum demand. She said U.N. experts estimated that at least 1,400 tons of coltan were smuggled into Rwanda during the first year after the mines were seized, generating approximately $800,000 per month for the armed group.

The Treasury Department imposed additional sanctions on June 25 against a network it accused of working with M23 to smuggle minerals from eastern Congo into Rwanda, saying the action was intended to support the Washington peace framework and improve transparency in regional mineral supply chains.