DRC: discovering pyrochlore, a mineral more expensive than coltan, looted by Rwanda and Uganda

More than 120 people were killed by the M23 rebels during the massacre of November 29, in Kishishe, a locality of Rutshuru territory (North Kivu) in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The Congolese government is furious, accusing the Kigali regime of supporting the M23 to unfairly occupy its territories.

According to Julien Paluku, the DRC Minister of Industry, the progression of the M23 in Kishishe aims to control natural resources of the Mining and Industrial Company of Kivu (SOMINKI) to extract minerals from the Congo, specifically pyrochlore which contains niobium, a highly sought-after raw material in aeronautics and IT.

“What is happening in eastern DRC is an economic war. It is coltan, cassiterite, gold and above all pyrochlore that are targeted. It is the SOMINKI mine that is targeted. What justifies the advance of the Rwandan army towards Kishishe is to control the SOMINKI mine in order to extract the Pyrochlore'', claimed Julien Paluku during the weekly briefing organized Monday, December 5 by Patrick Muyaya, government spokesperson.

The North Kivu former governor denounces the actions of the Kagame regime.

“Everyone has to know that there is no hate against an ethnic group in the DRC. There is no speech against a community in the DRC. These are ingredients used by the Kigali regime to survive internationally. The President of the Republic has clearly indicated that the DRC has no problem with the Rwandan population but rather with the Kigali regime which has constituted itself as terrorist in the region, feeding from the blood of the Congolese to survive the internationally”, he said.

In addition, the boss of the Congolese Industry, also called on the international community, which is criticized for not playing fair in the war in the east which opposes the DRC to the M23 supported by Rwanda, to stop providing all kinds of support to Rwanda, the DRC's main aggressor.

“The international community must stop serving those who feed from Congolese blood. If the international community wants peace in the Great Lakes region, it must support the DRC in its approach to establish peace definitively”, said Julien Paluku.

The Pyrochlore and the Kivu war

Pyrochlore contains niobium, a rare substance that is more expensive than coltan. According to information from an independent investigation into the plunder of mineral resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo published in 2019, Niobium is an extremely expensive rare metal, more expensive than coltan. It is shiny gray, ductile, which takes on a bluish color when exposed to air, at room temperature for a long time. The chemical properties of Niobium are almost identical to those of tantalum. The metal begins to oxidize in air above a temperature of 200°C.

Niobium is a strategic mineral, the metal of which is used in the manufacture of the alloys that make up the nozzles of rockets and the engines of satellites. Known deposits of Niobium only exist, according to the Magazine Affaires, in two places on the planet: Malaysia and DRC. Unknown to the general public until the publication of the report by UN experts which cites it extensively among the Congolese riches currently looted by Rwanda and Uganda, Niobium has been exploited in semi-clandestinity for three decades. No statistics, no figures have ever been made public. We have to rely on indiscretions to learn that this ore has been extracted and marketed since 1972 on an experimental basis and that an American firm was already exploiting it before the war of aggression by sending it by plane from the place of extraction to Kivu to the port of Mombasa from where he was embarked on boats for the United States.

The revenue generated by the sale of Niobium has never supplied the Congolese public treasury and this ore does not appear on the official list of the nomenclature of metals mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo either. The operating infrastructure has been reduced to the strict minimum so as not to attract the attention of the curious. Fate willed that the DRC is a country that is both rich and large, poor and fragile. In doing so, his destiny is often delivered to all the demons, that is to say to all the stakes, to all the looting.

Jordan MAYENIKINI/Traduction ACTUALITE.CD