War and Extractivism – a view from Sudan and Congo
Copied from: https://freedomnews.org.uk/2025/10/06/war-and-extractivism-a-view-from-t...
Two activists from Sudfa (a media outlet founded by Sudanese exiles in France) and Génération Lumière (a decolonial ecology association founded by young Congolese people in Lyon) discuss the ongoing wars in Congo and Sudan
Hamad (Sudfa): In Sudan we are witnessing one of the most serious disasters in the world. We’re talking about 80% of hospitals that are out of service. We’re talking about 20 million Sudanese, or half of the Sudanese population, who have left their homes, either abroad or displaced within the country. We’re talking about 90% of Sudanese who are suffering from hunger today in war zones. We’re talking about 15 million children who have not been able to attend school since 2023. So there you have it, we are witnessing one of the most serious disasters in the world: but what is not normal in all of this is the silence of the entire world.
Jordi (Génération Lumière): Unlike Sudan, what’s quite unusual about the Congo case is that it’s a very well-documented conflict. Basically, the Congolese question is quite simple to understand. It’s purely a question of resources, in fact. It is about recovering a resource from a colonized territory and extracting value from it to target an external market.
Hamad (Sudfa): The wars in Sudan and Congo demonstrate how a country’s natural resources fuel instability, instead of the local population benefiting from this wealth. It is a strategic country, which bordered nine countries until 2011, and which has an opening to the Red Sea, a very strategic area in military terms. So, the current conflict is not only linked to the reasons most often presented, when we say that it is a war over power between two generals. This war has its roots in the colonial era, which largely contributed to the division of the Sudanese population, the stigmatization of certain parts of the population, and the racial, ethnic and tribal division of the country.
The British, who colonized Sudan, adopted a system of segregation: they divided the Sudanese population, which is multicultural, into two categories. The first is those who benefited from the colonial system and were considered allies, who benefited from all the country’s wealth and the systems that were implemented, and on the other side there are those who were marginalized.
The “Coltan Boom”
Jordi (Génération Lumière): In Congo, the war was really centred in the east of the DRC, at the time when there was what is called the, “coltan boom.” Without coltan, you can’t make computers, telephones, etc. Towards the end of the 1990s, there was the internet boom, the boom of a whole new generation of products that needed this resource. And the Congo has nearly 60 to 80% of the world’s coltan reserves. However, this boom came at the time of a political transition in the DRC. For nearly 32 years, Mobutu, the one we called “the friend of the West,” was in power. Upon his death, the question arose as to which political leader would take over this enormous coltan market and arbitrate the country’s strategic interests. And that’s when new players came into play, primarily Rwanda and Uganda, which are the border countries to the east of the Congo. In this region, the borders are porous, the populations are used to moving around, and it is quite easy to finance the possibility for groups to enter the Congo and recover the minerals located there.
Now we see an extreme militarization of the conflict, with armed gangs massacring everywhere. Until now, we have had more or less 6 million deaths in 30 years in this region. In the 1990s, there were 5 or 6 armed gangs; today, we have more than 200. Why? In this border region, there are a lot of gold, coltan, tin, etc. And some of these militias, these warlord leaders, go to the Congo because it is easier to recover the minerals. It does not require industrial efforts, you do not have to drill, you do not have to go through large companies, to be able to get rich. Coltan is harvested in an artisanal way, by shovel. So the bulk of coltan activity is not at all in the hands of the State, it is done clandestinely.
In 2020, it was discovered that Congo was no longer the world’s leading producer of coltan; it had just been overtaken by a few thousand more tons. Rwanda had become a hub for minerals recovered from the Congo. Today, there is no digital company that can certify, with real proof, that the coltan minerals in its products do not come from these war zones. It’s tragic.
Hamad (Sudfa): In Sudan, the divisions created during the colonial era created a state that has been very weak since independence and this has opened the door wide for imperialist powers to intervene in Sudanese affairs. Often, this is done through alliances aimed at supporting the current government so that it can allow others to benefit from the country’s natural resources. External countries push local groups to take up arms and create an armed conflict by promising them to control that region one day, in order to be able to benefit from that region’s resources.
Foreign Involvement
When we talk about the imperialist powers intervening in Sudan and creating instability, we are talking about the conventional powers, Germany, France, and all the Western countries, which manufacture military components found in the weapons used by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militiamen. But in the case of Sudan, there are other imperialist powers that are much more discreet and silent, but which intervene in a very brutal manner. In particular, the Gulf countries, which have a whole host of interests in Sudan, whether for geopolitical, economic, or security reasons. The United Arab Emirates, which is the primary financial supporter and arms supplier of the RSF, is seeking to seize Sudan’s agricultural land and livestock because it lacks arable land and wants to guarantee its food self-sufficiency in the context of global warming.
The war that broke out in April 2023 is not a war between Sudanese people. It is a proxy war between these different powers. For example, between Egypt and Ethiopia, which are in conflict over the Renaissance Dam on the Nile: instead of directly confronting each other, each is supporting one of the two armies fighting in Sudan.
Jordi (Génération Lumière): Another driving force behind the imperial logic of extractivism is, at the political level, to block the state apparatus. The objective of the extractivist economy is for the bulk of wealth to depend on a single sector of activity. We will therefore have a form of militarization of the economy. In Congo, for example, the areas where resources are exploited are areas that even local populations cannot access. They are barricaded, militarized, or prey to armed conflict.
Hamad (Sudfa): This does not mean that there is no demand for democracy by the local populations. In 2018, a revolutionary mobilization erupted in Sudan. This mobilization brought great hope to the Sudanese, to put an end to the regime that had remained in power for 30 years. This mobilization was extraordinary in terms of demands and organization. But it faced many challenges: we inherited a system where the state apparatus no longer functions, a very fragile economic system, and a divided and war-torn society in all four corners of the country. Even though it was able to put an end to Omar al-Bashir’s regime, the mobilization was unable to achieve its initial objective, which was: “Peace, Justice, and Freedom.”
The former dictator created a military system that aimed to serve the regime’s interests. Thus, the army is not independent of the state: it intervenes in a very brutal manner in the political system, in the economic system, and the army controls the entire country, with all its political, economic, etc. aspects. Then, it is an army that is composed of several units, including paramilitary groups like the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The RSF militia was created at the time of the war in Darfur in 2003 to do the work that the Sudanese army does not want to do: the massacre, ethnic cleansing and mass displacement of the population of Darfur. The RSF was able to do this work with the support of certain foreign countries, and notably the European Union, through the Khartoum process. This is an agreement signed in 2014 between the Sudanese government and the European Union to control immigration to Europe, on the border between Sudan and Libya. Border control was delegated by the Sudanese army to the RSF, which was able to benefit from technological and financial support from the European Union. And this is one of the reasons why the RSF was able to become a much stronger military force or power than the Sudanese army, so much so that in 2023 they turned against the army to take power in its place.
Jordi (Génération Lumière): European states are also involved in the conflict in eastern Congo, through the military support provided to the Rwandan army. The French government has cooperation agreements with the Rwandan government, which means that some of the military personnel receive their training in France.
These excerpts that we have chosen to publish from the cross-discussion on the current conflicts in Congo and Sudan highlight the interdependence of the global economy with that of extractivism, an activity based on the exploitation of resources and populations. It is the legacy of a colonial and racial order that justifies foreign intervention in these areas, as well as the opacity and violence of the actions perpetrated to maintain this economy. For us at Sudfa, it is important to think about local issues while maintaining an international perspective that allows us to highlight the globalized logic of colonial capitalism, as well as the paths of solidarity between peoples.