The elements of power, p.55
The Elements of Power, page 55
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the lam for two years: Mudge, “Convicted Congolese Warlord Escapes. Again.”
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journalists were tortured: “Three Journalists Tortured by DRC Intelligence Agency,” May 23, 2022, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), rsf.org/en/three-journalists-tortured-drc-intelligence-agency/.
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newly built by the Chinese: On a bus in Addis Ababa, I once met an Israeli investor who told me about the new terminal at N’djili. “I have just been in Kinshasa, where they have a new airport,” he said. “It was built by the Chinese. A whole terminal without an air conditioner. Think about that. The Congo—the heat is tropical, and people get angry.”
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previously healthy Beya: Pascal Mulegwa, “RDC: François Beya obtient une libération provisoire pour raisons de santé,” Radio France Internationale, August 16, 2022, rfi.fr/fr/afrique/20220816-rdc-françois-beya-obtient-une-libération-provisoire-pour-raisons-de-santé.
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“a man of the”: Kamanda Wa Kamanda, “RDC: Du changement à la tête de l’Agence nationale du renseignement,” Radio France Internationale, December 17, 2021, rfi.fr/fr/afrique/20211217-rdc-du-changement-à-la-tête-de-l-agence-nationale-du-renseignement.
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detention of Beya: Romain Gras, “RDC: Dix choses à savoir sur Jean-Hervé Mbelu Biosha, le patron de l’ANR,” Jeune Afrique, March 9, 2022, jeuneafrique.com/1314124/politique/rdc-dix-choses-a-savoir-sur-jean-herve-mbelu-biosha-le-patron-de-l-anr/.
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a “mafia network”: Stanis Bujakera and Hereward Holland, “Congo Virus Funds Embezzled by ‘Mafia Network,’ Says Deputy Minister,” Reuters, July 8, 2020, reuters.com/article/world/congo-virus-funds-embezzled-by-mafia-network-says-deputy-minister-idUSKBN249224/.
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Chapter 49: An African Electric Car
Uganda’s chameleonic president: Conrad Comrade, “President Museveni Calls for Self-Sufficiency Among African Countries,” Record FM, October 28, 2021, archived at web.archive.org/web/20211209020037/https://recordradio.co.ug/president-museveni-calls-for-self-sufficiency-among-african-countries/.
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overwhelmingly young population: “President to Launch Kiira Motors Electric Trike at National Science Week 2023,” Independent, September 28, 2023, independent.co.ug/president-to-launch-kiira-motors-electric-trike-at-national-science-week-2023/.
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Uganda should focus: “Uganda Economic Update: Improving Public Spending on Health to Build Human Capital,” World Bank, June 27, 2024, worldbank.org/en/country/uganda/publication/uganda-afe-economic-update-improving-public-spending-on-health-to-build-human-capital.
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“is a renaissance”: “Museveni Pledges Better Pay for Scientists,” New Vision, November 24, 2011, www.newvision.co.ug/news/1003744/museveni-pledges-pay-scientists.
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progress has been slow: “RDC: Félix Tshisekedi veut mettre en place une industrie de fabrication des batteries toute suite,” Desk Eco, November 25, 2021, deskeco.com/index.php/2021/11/25/rdc-felix-tshisekedi-veut-mettre-en-place-une-industrie-de-fabrication-des-batteries-toute-suite.
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“Faced with the challenge”: Jonas Gerding and Carole Assignon, “Des batteries électriques bientôt produites en RDC?,” Deutsche Welle (DW), October 6, 2023, p.dw.com/p/4X9Ta.
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are exported unprocessed: “Blue Lines,” Africa Confidential 65, no. 18 (September 6, 2024), africa-confidential.com/home/issue/id/1342.
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The report’s authors urged: Abdurrehman Naveed and Cina Vazir, “Value Amidst Transition: Evaluating Strategic Opportunities for Value Addition in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” M-RCBG Associate Working Paper No. 204 (Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School, June 2023), 60, hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/publications/awp/awp204.
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only around twenty thousand: “Beijing’s Green New Deal Pledges Factories in Africa,” Africa Confidential 65, no. 18 (September 6, 2024), africa-confidential.com/home/issue/id/1342.
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Chapter 50: Uncle Bunker
launch the Minerals Security Partnership: “Minerals Security Partnership: Media Note,” U.S. Department of State, June 14, 2022, archived September 25, 2023, at web.archive.org/web/20230925075850/https://www.state.gov/minerals-security-partnership-june-14-2022/.
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dumped toxic waste: Reuse and the Benefit to Community: Bunker Hill Mining and Metallurgical Complex Superfund Site (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, December 2017), semspub.epa.gov/work/HQ/100001209.pdf.
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chain-smoking owner: “Silver Valley,” Living on Earth, August 8, 2003, loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=03-P13-00032&segmentID=9.
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owned Bunker Hill: “Hecla Mining Company to Pay $263 Million in Settlement to Resolve Idaho Superfund Site Litigation and Foster Cooperation,” U.S. Department of Justice, June 13, 2011, justice.gov/opa/pr/hecla-mining-company-pay-263-million-settlement-resolve-idaho-superfund-site-litigation-and.
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“building an ecosystem”: “The Regeneration Vision,” Bunker Hill Mining Corporation, accessed July 16, 2024, bunkerhillmining.com/esg/the-regeneration-vision/.
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“drop in the bucket”: Michael Holtz, “Idaho Is Sitting on One of the Most Important Elements on Earth,” Atlantic, January 24, 2022, theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/01/cobalt-clean-energy-climate-change-idaho/621321/.
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“arsenic is associated”: Matthew Sletten et al., Idaho Cobalt Operations: Form 43-101F1 Technical Report Feasibility Study, Idaho, USA (Jervois Global, November 2020), 286, jervoisglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/190348_Idaho_Cobalt_13112020_NI_43_101_Technical_Report-FILED-r1.pdf.
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“We’re a long way”: Senior U.S. official, interview with the author, March 2025.
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invested $40 million: “Teck Invests $40M to Support Historic Bunker Hill Mine Restart in Idaho,” Mining.com, March 6, 2025, www.mining.com/teck-invests-us40m-to-support-bunker-hill-mine-restart-in-idaho/.
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Afterword: Power Dreams
Leopold was desperate for a colony: The king, ambitious and greedy for land overseas and the profit that might come of it, had tried, and failed, to buy a colony in the Philippines and in Fiji, as well as in Argentina and in Uruguay. See Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 38–41.
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the “flowering progenitor”: Charles d’Ydewalle, L’Union minière du Haut Katanga: De l’âge colonial à l’indépendance (Librairie Plon, 1960), 39.
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Leopold used philanthropic: The 1884 conference in Berlin was convened by Otto von Bismarck, the first German chancellor. Its object was ostensibly “furthering the moral and material well-being of the native populations,” but it was, in fact, the forum at which Europe’s “great powers” cemented their colonial claims over West and Central Africa. See “Preamble, General Act of the Berlin Conference,” February 26, 1885, in Edward Hertslet, ed., The Map of Africa by Treaty, vol. 2, Great Britain and France to Zanzibar (Harrison and Sons, 1909), 468.
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they insulated the king: This was the Compagnie du Congo pour le Commerce et l’Industrie. See Georges Defauwes, Albert Thys, de Dalhem au Congo (Collection Comté de Dalhem, 1995), 14.
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but Congo’s forests: Henry Morton Stanley, the progenitor of Congo’s colonization, observed that “if every warrior living on the immediate banks of the Congo and its navigable affluents were to pick about a third of a pound in rubber each day throughout the year…and convey it to the trader for sale, five million pounds [over $665 million in 2025 U.S. dollars] worth of vegetable produce could be obtained without exhaustion of the wild forest productions.” (Traveling some seven thousand miles between 1876 and 1877, Stanley made his way from the Congo River to the sea in a well-publicized expedition that brought him immense fame. Leopold used him as an agent to colonize the Congo Free State.) See Henry M. Stanley, The Founding of the Congo Free State (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1885), 355.
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If they refused to work: Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost, 125.
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“Leopold had not given any”: Judy Pollard Smith, Don’t Call Me Lady: The Journey of Lady Alice Seeley Harris (Abbott Press, 2014), 55.
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Thys certainly didn’t: Thys appears to have been convinced that he was some kind of charity worker. On his first visit, in 1887, he wrote to his wife that what the Belgians were doing in Congo was “an absolutely new colonial conception, and, truth be told, it is not a colony, which is something that dispossesses the indigenous man of his land, and considers the indigenous as a conquered race. In fact, here, the indigenous people are the citizens of the new State and the whites sent to Congo will be the provisional tutors to the Black population who will only be called to run public affairs when their education has been sufficiently carried out.” See Albert Thys, “Lettre du 6 décembre 1887,” as cited in Defauwes, Albert Thys, 3.
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Belgian-French materials technology: “Sustainability,” Umicore, accessed March 28, 2024, umicore.com/en/sustainability/.
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“would have been English”: “Un Colonial par Semaine,” Journal du Congo, 1928; and Defauwes, Albert Thys, 18.
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Tanganyika Concessions was: For more on Tanganyika Concessions, see Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1965), 197.
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“the uncrowned queen of Belgium”: Pierre Loppe, “L’histoire s’arrête pour la Société générale de Belgique,” La Libre, October 29, 2003, lalibre.be/economie/entreprises-startup/2003/10/29/lhistoire-sarrete-pour-la-societe-generale-de-belgique-JFPYEZQK2NAY7EAYN432NOFKB4/.
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the current ownership structures: Just look at the ownership of a copper-and-cobalt mine near the city of Kolwezi called the Congolaise des Mines et du Développement (COMIDE). On February 13, 2024, the state-owned mining firm had put what it called a “firm proposal” on the table to buy assets owned by the Eurasian Resources Group (ERG), a Kazakh company, which owned the COMIDE mine. ERG was partly owned through a corporate structure based in Holland, but it wasn’t a Dutch company. Headquartered in the European microstate of Luxembourg, the company was 40 percent owned by the Kazakh government, and it had been founded by three of Central Asia’s most powerful oligarchs. See Felix Njini and Veronica Brown, “Congo’s Gecamines Offers to Buy Some of Kazakh Miner ERG’s Copper Assets,” Reuters, February 13, 2024, reuters.com/markets/commodities/congos-gecamines-offers-buy-some-khazakh-miner-ergs-copper-assets-2024-02-13/.
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“modest engineering success”: Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost, 171.
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the Qing court: David Shinn and Joshua Eisenman, China and Africa: A Century of Engagement (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 26.
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the firm’s general manager announced: Peter Johnson, “This Chinese Brand Is Launching a Semi-Solid-State Battery EV in 2025, and It Won’t Be Expensive,” Electrek, December 16, 2024, https://electrek.co/2024/12/16/new-semi-solid-state-battery-ev-launching-2025/.
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counted thirty-six Chinese companies: “Firms Are Exploring Sodium Batteries as an Alternative to Lithium,” Economist, October 25, 2023.
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Scientists at research institutions: Prabhat Ranjan Mishra, “Sodium-Ion Batteries Hit 458 Wh/kg: Breakthrough Material Closes Gap with Lithium,” Interesting Engineering, December 22, 2024, https://interestingengineering.com/energy/sodium-batteries-breakthrough-material.
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money made at TFM: Jean Luc Kayoko, interview with the author, March 2022.
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The firm had to pay: Voluntary Announcement: Announcement on the TFM Copper-Cobalt Mine in the DRC (CMOC Group Limited, July 18, 2023), 1–2, https://www1.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconewssehk/2023/0718/2023071800667.pdf.
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“External actors have frequently”: Kevin C. Dunn, Imagining the Congo: The International Relations of Identity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 9.
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“own self-interested objectives”: Howard W. French, “A History of Denial,” New York Review of Books, April 19, 2018, nybooks.com/articles/2018/04/19/africa-history-of-denial/.
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“even subhuman nature”: French, “A History of Denial.”
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“If investment doesn’t happen”: Brian Menell, interview with the author, November 2023.
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Selected Bibliography
Afoaku, Osita G. “The U.S. and Mobutu Sese Seko: Waiting on Disaster.” Journal of Third World Studies 14, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 65–90.
Africa Watch. “Zaire: Inciting Hatred: Violence Against Kasaiens in Shaba.” News from Africa Watch 5, no. 10 (June 1993).
Amnesty International. “Democratic Republic of the Congo: Artisanal Miners at Risk as the Army Moves In.” June 28, 2019. amnesty.org/en/documents/afr62/0625/2019/en/.
———. “This Is What We Die For”: Human Rights Abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Power the Global Trade in Cobalt. Amnesty International, 2016. amnesty.org/en/documents/afr62/3183/2016/en/.
Anderson, Jon Lee. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. Grove Press, 1997.
Anvil Mining Limited. “Annual Information Form for Financial Year Ended December 31, 2004,” 2004.
Aris, Muhammad, and T. Tamrin. “Heavy Metal (Ni, Fe) Concentration in Water and Histopathological of Marine Fish in the Obi Island, Indonesia.” Jurnal Ilmiah Platax 8, no. 2 (July–December 2020): 221–33.
Asimov, Isaac. Asimov on Chemistry. Doubleday, 1975.
Askin, Steve, and Carole Collins. “External Collusion with Kleptocracy: Can Zaire Recapture Its Stolen Wealth?” Review of African Political Economy, no. 57 (1993): 72–85.
Assemblée Générale du Haut-Katanga. “Extrait du Procès Verbal de l’Assemblée Générale du 15 Novembre 2012.” Lubumbashi, November 15, 2012.
AVZ Minerals Limited. “AVZ Minerals Completes Acquisition of Additional 5% of Manono Lithium and Tin Project.” Australian Securities Exchange, April 18, 2019.
Bakajika Banjikila, Thomas. Épuration ethnique en Afrique: Les “Kasaïens” (Katanga 1961–Shaba 1992). L’Harmattan, 1997.
Baptista, P. J., and Amaro José. “Across Africa from Angola to Tette on the Zambeze.” In The Lands of Cazembe: Lacerda’s Journey to Cazembe in 1798, translated and annotated by Captain R. F. Burton. John Murray, 1873.
Baumann-Pauly, Dorothée. Cobalt Mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Addressing Root Causes of Human Rights Abuses. NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights and Geneva Center for Business & Human Rights, February 2023. gcbhr.org/insights/2023/02/cobalt-mining-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-addressing-root-causes-of-human-rights-abuses.
Bazano. “Response to the Article Published by PREMICONGO on the Subject Mining Exploitation, Environmental Management and Social Responsibility of Mining Companies in Katanga.” January 2013.
