DRC

 

At the time of its independence (1960), its population was c. 15 million. Today it is 109 million people.

GDP $79.12 billion

primary sector: 44.2%

industry: 22.6%

services: 33.1%

More than 350 ethnic groups with more than 700 local languages and dialects suggest ethnic fragmentation and a lack of integration, although this is supposed to be overcome through the use of four main languages throughout the country for business and military communication.3

• Area: DRC is the second-largest country in Africa (after Algeria) and the largest in Sub-Saharan Africa — roughly the size of Western Europe.

• Population: ~110 million (2025 est.), making it the 4th most populous country in Africa (after Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt) and among the top 15 in the world.

• Resources: Holds an estimated $24 trillion worth of natural resources, including 70% of the world’s cobalt, vast copper, coltan, diamonds, gold, uranium, hydropower, and rainforests.

So yes — it’s among the biggest countries by both size and population to remain so persistently troubled.

In the case of the DRC, copper, diamonds and other lootable and non-lootable minerals have played the most important role in the economy since the second half of Belgian colonialism in the early 20th century. The Congolese state was heavily dependent on mining earnings throughout its existence. The technical aspects of mining have changed significantly over time: while in the 1960s extraction was based on the latest technology available in Belgium, the deterioration of the sector began in the mid 1970s and it totally fell apart during the 1990s. The mode of extraction shifted to artisanal mining. This cannot be explained by the 'resource curse' argument

Thus, the minerals would have to change their 'character' from being a curse to being a developmental blessing, as they are in Botswana.

Meanwhile, the economy:

"The economy of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which started as the most industrialized nation in sub-Saharan Africa at independence in 1960, has declined dramatically due to political instability, conflict, and corruption."

From US intel in 1968 reflecting on post independence Congo:

 There is little hope, however, that the Congo can reverse the trend and acquire either the capital or the skills needed to support a significant econɔmi.c development program. Indeed, the prospects favor moderate economic deterioration over the next few years. The lack of administrative, technical, and managerial skills will continue for many years to be the highest barrier to economic recovery and growth. An adequate number of skilled expatriates cannot be induced to work in the Congo because of the absence of physical and economic security. Al though many native Congolese are being trained, a decade or more wil) be required before there are enough of them to make a difference. Large amounts of aid would be necessary to restore the transport network, to increase agricultural output, and to reintegrate scattered centers of economic activity. But aid of the required magnitude is not likely to be found. Although substantial assistance from Belgium and the United States is expected to continue, most of this is required to maintain current levels of activity. Private foreign capital investment will continue to be discouraged by internal instability and by relatively unattractive prospects in both the domestic market and the world market for the country's most exbloitable resources. Since Congolese tax rates are already among the highest among the underdeveloped countries, prospects for increasing local funds for restoration and development are dim.

At independence, Kinshasa inherited one of the most advanced economies in sub-Saharan Africa, with well-integrated and efficiently run infrastructure, abundant natural resources, thriving agriculture, and an expanding mining sector. But there were no native Congolese in the upper echelons of either government or business, and it took more than 100,000 Бelgians -- administrators, mining engineers, plantation owners, technicians, and teachers -- to hold the complex economic structure together.

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Another document

While the Belgian colonial state forcefully created a rational state in Congo that gained some authority over patrimonial societies, it also created a small group of people that were to become the elite in charge of the state after independence. This group, however, had no experience in political organisation and split immediately after independence. Several political and military rivals challenged the newly independent state until Mobutu was able to create an elite consensus by buying in or crushing rival groups. This consensus resulted in nine years of state-building, but then started to crumble and eventually break down under serious economic pressure and outside intervention. State power was gradually eroded until even the monopoly of legitimate violence was lost. Unsolved questions of citizenship and land entitlements fuelled outside intervention, which eventually crushed the Congolese state altogether. 

It’s helpful to think of Congo’s history not as a series of disconnected horrors, but as a continuum of extraction:

Period	Force	Purpose	Consequence
1500s–1800s	Atlantic slave traders	Human labour for plantations	Depopulation, social collapse
1700s–1800s	Arab-Swahili traders	Slaves, ivory, domestic service	Raids, displacement, terror
1885–1908	King Leopold II	Rubber and ivory for European industry	Mass death, terror, forced labour
1908–1960	Belgian colonial state	Copper, uranium, minerals	Continued subjugation and economic dependency

The form changed — from slave ships to concession companies — but the dynamic remained: outside powers saw Congo as a source of wealth, not a society.

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Here

May 5, 2025 5:11 pm ET

We need to talk about Africa. With major wars raging in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, increased Chinese and Russian activity, jihadi terrorists gaining ground in many places, and American foreign aid on the chopping block, the failed U.S. policy in Africa is past due for some new thinking.

To think clearly about Africa, we have to discard some accumulated nonsense and illusions that get in the way. To begin, we must drop the myth, endlessly promoted by the NGO-industrial complex of consultants and activists, that the struggle between democracy and dictatorship defines the continent’s politics. If only this were true. In reality, democracy has essentially collapsed in much of Africa. According to Freedom House, only 8% of Africans live in countries that can be called “free.” There are no signs that this trend is going to reverse.

The idea that economic potential makes Africa a continent of the future that we neglect at our peril is deeply misguided. Africa has grown economically, and that growth will continue. Should Africa ever realize its potential, Americans will pay it more attention. But until that happens, Africa’s hypothetical future riches will command little attention from the American public. As it is, Africa’s economic importance to the rest of the world revolves around its mineral resources and commodity production. That was true 100 years ago and will likely be true for some time.

//Africa’s nominal GDP is about USD 2.8 trillion (across all its countries). SAfrica, Egypt, Algeria largest. 1.47 billion people. 

What are the real issues we need to consider? The first is the power vacuum. In 1884-85, 13 European nations and the U.S. met in Berlin to set up rules to govern what contemporaries called the “scramble for Africa.” Decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s brought formal independence to most of Africa, but European influence (supplemented in places by American power) remained dominant for decades.

That era ended during the Biden years with Russia’s overthrow of what was left of the French sphere of influence, but weak African governments for the most part still rely on outsiders. We are now watching another scramble for Africa. China, Japan and India are all looking to carve out zones of economic influence. In places such as the Horn of Africa, the Sahel and Libya, countries such as Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are increasingly meddling in conflicts, overthrowing governments, or supporting local political movements. The U.S. abstained from the first scramble for Africa. Should it do the same in the sequel? The U.S. could be drawn into the game whether it wants to or not by concerns about jihadist violence or interest in rare-earth minerals in places like Congo.

Weak African states face increasingly existential challenges. The question is less whether particular countries are democratic or not, and more whether they have governments that can actually work. Congo has never really controlled all of its own territory, and in many other places daily life goes on without much presence of national authority. In Ethiopia and Sudan, the power of central authorities is challenged by regional and tribal rebellions. In other places, “tribalism”—which would be called “nationalism” elsewhere—is gaining traction as the artificial postcolonial states enter their sixth or seventh decade of comprehensive failure.

// daily life goes on. Our need to see the world in our forms, our ways of government, our ways of organisation. But more importantly a respect for rights and liberty. But life seems to go on and grow irrespective that the country has a functioning government or not. The daily struggles are closer to the existential struggles of food, shelter. The human creature persists and exists, irrespective of circumstances. But the world that knows better, or has seen the range of worse to better knows what's waht. It is a huge negotiation of power and responsibiltiies and accountabilities... between the external world and the affected people. In the case where large swathes of people dont even know except that something's fundamentally wrong with life... how do they champion for themselves. And where is the responsibility of external world in that case?? And can responsibility be delivered with a detached ownership? That investment and ownership, yet detachment with power... like that of a teacher.

The international scramble for influence and internecine ethnic conflicts often play into the other big African story: the contest between Christianity and Islam. Since the end of the colonial era, Christianity has spread across much of sub-Saharan Africa. Now the two religions confront each other in an arc from western Africa down to Mozambique. In some places relations are cooperative and even cordial. In others, religious differences add fuel to existing ethnic and economic conflicts. Where jihadist groups have weaponized Islam in a quest for power, actual wars of religion are possible.

Americans have real interests in Africa, including access to critical minerals, containing radical Islam, checking the ambitions of geopolitical rivals, promoting global health and simply expressing humanitarian solidarity. What happens in Africa matters.

At the same time, many traditional U.S. policy instruments don’t work well in Africa. Neither economic-development efforts nor democracy promotion have had the desired results. Armies trained and supplied by the U.S. have turned against Washington in some countries. The NGO-industrial complex that feasted on American development aid has fallen prey in too many cases to fashionable wokeism and is often therefore no longer a useful tool of state policy.

Giving foreign aid to failing states served the U.S. reasonably well during the Cold War. We will need to do better in the times that are coming.

// Just for comparison. Africa has 1.47 billion people. India has 1.4 billion people. India GDP is $4.3 trillion. Very different land mass and resources. But institutions and systems allow for growth and entrepreneurship. First stop is security of state and freedom of people to pursue enterprise. That seems to be lacking in most of Africa.

the first and most essential public good any state must provide is security and freedom of action. Without those, population size and resource wealth remain latent potential — like seeds on bare rock. With them, even resource-poor societies (like Japan, Singapore, or Israel) can achieve extraordinary prosperity.

Africa’s long-term future will hinge less on how many minerals it has or how many babies are born, and more on whether it can build strong, impartial institutions that guarantee safety, enforce contracts, and create a stable field for human ambition to unfold.