It would be interesting to hear people’s opinions about this argument by writer Adam Hochchild (the author of King Leopold’s Ghost: ) published earlier this year in  Mother Jones magazine:

In the 1960s, many Americans boycotted California table grapes to help farmworkers unionize; in the ’70s and ’80s, we boycotted South Africa to help the anti-apartheid movement. In the late 1990s there was the push to ban “conflict diamonds,” which led to the 2002 agreement, now signed by some 75 countries, to boycott diamonds produced by armed rebel groups in Africa and elsewhere. Shouldn’t we help war-torn Congo by boycotting “conflict minerals”?

Unfortunately, it’s not clear that a boycott would do much more than put tens of thousands of miserably paid miners out of work. Take the rather toothless conflict diamonds accord (which came about only because the international diamond cartel saw “blood diamonds” undercutting its inflated prices): It already applies to Congo, but makes no practical difference since the country’s diamonds, like the overwhelming majority of its other exports, don’t come from areas currently at war. And even when there is a direct connection between war and mining (as with the minerals sold by the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda, the genocidaires who have taken refuge in Congo), those exports are vexingly difficult to trace. You can quickly tell where an imported automobile was manufactured, but even the best laboratory tests cannot easily prove where an ounce of gold comes from. Congo’s lengthy borders are impossible to police, and certificates of origin are easily forged.

The real problem is not conflict minerals, but the fact that Congo’s long-suffering people reap only a tiny share of their country’s vast wealth. Yet an alternate example is only a few hundred miles away from Congo’s southern border: Diamond-rich Botswana has used its mines, which are partially owned by the state, to fund infrastructure, education, and health care, as well as set aside a rainy-day fund of nearly $7 billion. A recent joint venture between the government and the diamond giant De Beers is even bringing in some of the cutting and polishing work that used to be done in London, generating thousands of jobs. But Botswana has something essential Congo does not: a government known for being both functional and honest.

Further Reading

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.