think-tank
Who pays when an American president needs a victory?
In Washington, the answer is usually someone far from the cameras. For us, it is a mother in Masisi, a miner in Rubaya, a child in a displacement camp outside Goma. The United States has just handed Donald Trump a Congress that can slow him down. He is not going to slow down. He is going to sprint, and the continent will be the track.
Democrats swept the 3 November 2026 midterms and will control both chambers of Congress when the new session opens on 3 January 2027. On paper, that is a check on a president. In practice, history tells us that a president who loses Congress does not retreat. He reaches for executive power, sanctions, emergency declarations and personal deals. Bush escalated in Iraq after 2006. Obama used regulation to force through the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris agreement without Senate approval. Trump himself declared a national emergency in 2019 to redirect funds to his border wall. Expect the same playbook now, with Africa on the table.
Consider what has already happened. Trump has announced his intention to end South Africa's and Rwanda's eligibility under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, even though Congress extended that programme to December 2028. Read that again. The legislature voted to keep the trade preferences alive, and the president is trying to kill them anyway. Trade access that thousands of African factory workers, farmers and exporters depend on is being treated as a bargaining chip in a personal quarrel.
Rwanda's case is the sharpest illustration. Washington has sanctioned Rwanda's defence ministry and the Zigama Credit and Savings Society. The sanctions are not a reaction to Kigali's conduct in the abstract. They are a response to a war Rwanda has been waging inside the Democratic Republic of Congo for years. Let us be precise, because precision is what separates evidence from propaganda. The UN Group of Experts has documented the Rwanda Defence Force operating inside Congolese territory, with full combat units as the operational core, numbering an estimated 14,000 to 18,000 troops. That is roughly 40 to 50 percent of Rwanda's army. M23 supplies the mass manpower and the deniability. This is the Donbas model: a sovereign state sends its own soldiers across a border, dresses the operation in a local proxy, and then insists it is not a party to the conflict. If the world calls Moscow an invader in Ukraine, it must call Kigali an invader in Congo. The label does not change because the uniforms are a different colour.
The human cost is not an abstraction. Satellite imagery has documented more than 1,171 new graves at Kanombe military cemetery in Kigali since 2021. Rwanda hides its dead because admitting them means admitting the war. M23's ranks have swelled from around 3,000 fighters to more than 30,000, not through recruitment, but through forced conscription of Congolese civilians and captured prisoners. That is slavery in military uniform. And yet Kigali hosts international conferences, markets gorilla tourism and presents itself to the world as a model of order. We are asked to admire the clean streets while the eastern provinces burn. Sportswashing and invasion cannot be separated, and the world should stop pretending they can.
Meanwhile, the DRC is being courted for its cobalt, coltan and copper, the raw materials of the electric car and the smartphone. Washington sees Congo as an asset in its contest with China. Trump's peace agreement, which the source reporting describes as a central priority, gives the White House a ready-made headline. But a deal that rewards the occupier's sponsor with minerals access and a signing ceremony, while Congolese civilians remain under the boot, is not peace. It is a sale. Our analysts have warned that the DRC risks trading long-term security and mineral sovereignty for short-term diplomatic applause. We should believe them.
This is the new scramble for Africa. The actors have changed from the 19th century European empires to a crowd that now includes Washington, Beijing, Moscow, Ankara, Abu Dhabi, Doha and Riyadh. Each arrives with loans, arms, ports, media influence or religious funding. Each claims partnership. Each extracts. China builds our railways and holds the debt. Turkey sells drones and seeks bases. The UAE buys ports. Russia sends mercenaries to guard gold mines. And the United States, which lectures us about democracy, now tells us to fall in line with its personal priorities or lose our trade privileges. Our leaders must stop mistaking one patron's attention for another's respect.
The same pattern shows up elsewhere in the reporting. Egypt has received waivers on human rights conditions attached to US military aid, because its strategic weight outweighs its record. Nigeria faces mounting pressure over religious violence while Washington continues counter-terrorism cooperation, and the people being slaughtered in Plateau and Benue are left to hope someone is counting their dead. Kenya, Zambia and Morocco are positioned as valuable partners because of counter-terrorism work, copper reserves in the Lobito Corridor, and defence industries. Value to Washington is not the same as protection for citizens. A partner that is useful is not necessarily a partner that is accountable.
What should we do? The answer begins with institutions, not with slogans.
African governments must stop negotiating with whoever sits in the Oval Office and start building strength that outlasts any administration. Botswana built a diamond economy on transparent contracts and independent institutions. Mauritius became an investment hub by protecting property rights and the rule of law. Senegal's peaceful transitions of power prove that democratic alternation is not a Western luxury. These are the blueprints. Copy them. Insist on open mineral contracts published in full, on parliamentary oversight of every deal, and on revenue flowing to public budgets rather than offshore accounts.
The African Union must stop issuing communiqués about Congo that read like condolence cards. It should suspend Rwanda from its decision-making organs until the RDF withdraws, demand an independent accounting of the graves and the forced recruits, and back the UN Group of Experts instead of quietly disowning its findings. The UN Security Council must impose targeted sanctions on the officers commanding the RDF operations in Congo and on the networks moving minerals out of occupied territory. Washington, for its part, should attach any AGOA eligibility and minerals partnership to verifiable troop withdrawal and human rights benchmarks, applied equally to Rwanda, South Africa and everyone else. Principles that bend for the powerful are not principles.
Civil society and the private sector have a role too. Journalists must follow the minerals from mine to smelter to smartphone. Businesses that buy Congolese coltan must audit their supply chains. Citizens must demand that their own leaders explain every deal signed in their name.
So here is the demand, plainly stated. Parliaments across Africa must hold their executives accountable for every minerals contract and every security pact. The AU must name Rwanda's invasion for what it is. The UN must sanction the commanders. Washington must stop trading human lives for a legacy photo. And every African reading this must refuse to accept that our wealth and our dead are bargaining chips for other people's ambitions. The midterms may have changed the balance in Washington, but they have not changed who bears the cost. We do. Let us make sure those who profit from our suffering know we are watching.
Based on reporting by ISS