The peace agreement signed in June 2025 between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) under the auspices of the Trump administration raises serious concerns about whom it truly serves. Rather than securing lasting peace for the Congolese people, the deal appears poised to benefit corporate and financial interests eager to access the country’s vast mineral wealth. Investigating these interests, this Policy Brief alerts that the US firms and oligarchs set to profit from the deal lack the interest, history, and know-how to make peace happen and last. Barring a radical shift, this deal may only perpetuate the deadly cycle of exploitation that has plagued the country for centuries.

On June 27, 2025, a peace agreement was signed between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) under the auspices of the Trump administration, after extensive diplomacy work and mediation by Qatar. On the surface, the deal offered hope to a country devastated by three decades of war, which have claimed over six million lives, displaced millions more, and inflicted widespread suffering.

The most recent escalation began in 2024, when the M23 rebel group and the Rwandan Defense Forces launched a violent offensive, exacerbating an already massive humanitarian crisis. The United Nations has gathered overwhelming evidence that Rwanda was actively supporting and directing M23’s offensive in eastern DRC. President Kagame has framed the intervention as a defense of the Tutsi population – targeted during the 1994 genocide – but it has been extensively documented that Rwanda’s illegal extraction of the DRC’s highly valuable minerals has been a major driver of the conflict. The DRC, rich with mineral reserves worth US$24 trillion, produces 70 percent of the world’s cobalt, and has large reserves of several critical minerals. Rwanda’s support of M23 has allowed it to take over much of eastern DRC, capture many mines, and perpetrate massacres and egregious human rights abuses. It is estimated that up to 90 percent of Rwanda’s coltan exports are illegally sourced from eastern DRC and that many of the armed groups involved in the area are financed by this illegal extraction.

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The peace deal came under criticism even before it was signed. The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Denis Mukwege warned that the deal “would amount to granting a reward [to Rwanda] for aggression, legitimizing the plundering of Congolese natural resources, and forcing the victim to alienate their national heritage by sacrificing justice in order to ensure a precarious and fragile peace.” In June, a coalition of 80 Congolese non-governmental organizations and public interest attorneys, called for “the rejection of the hasty and ill-conceived peace and business agreement.” The appeal from the Mobilisation pour la Sauvegarde de la Souveraineté et de l’Autonomie Congolaise (MOSSAC) alerted on a number of critical shortcomings in the agreement, a draft of which had been leaked in previous weeks. Their concerns included impunity the deal provides to perpetrators of violence and abuses; and that it was forced upon the DRC and thus may not benefit the country and its people. It was also criticized for allowing Rwanda’s continued plundering of the DRC’s mineral resources while ultimately catering to the interests of US mining and corporate interests.

These concerns are legitimate given the deal is not just a peace agreement between two warring countries – it unusually also involves the expansion of mineral exploitation in partnership with the US government and American investors. President Trump even claimed at the signing of the deal: “We’re getting, for the United States, a lot of the mineral rights from the Congo as part of it.”

At the launch of the “Declaration of Principles” that preceded the peace deal in April 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated, “Our firms are good corporate citizens, American firms, and they’ll bring good governance and ensure responsible, reliable supply chains for things like critical minerals that benefit regional governments and our partners and allies as well.”

However, the terms of the peace agreement are vague on business arrangements with US interests. The text does not indicate which US firms would be involved and how they would deliver on the above promises. Details on specific business interests are expected to be disclosed in a forthcoming US-DRC critical minerals agreement.

Read full report: oaklandinstitute.org

Source: The Oakland Institute