Why the DRC’s Ebola Outbreak Is an American Strategic Failure

Excerpt

The Trump administration’s mineral diplomacy in the eastern reaches of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is being undermined by a disease outbreak that its own policy decisions helped accelerate. Now, Chinese medical crews are responding to the Ebola virus outbreak—filling the void left by the dismantlement of US global health aid. 

The Ebola outbreak in the DRC is spreading quickly, with roughly 500 confirmed cases. The virus spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids, making healthcare workers, caregivers, and burial workers particularly vulnerable. This outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo strain, against which the vaccines and therapeutics used in recent outbreaks have not been shown to be effective. Early detection and rapid response are thus critical. Yet the outbreak went undetected for weeks, a failure that experts attribute in part to the gutting of USAID’s health security programs. 

Less appreciated is what this outbreak means for American economic and security interests in the region. The Trump administration has emphasized that the DRC is critical for breaking America’s mineral dependence on China. The region sits atop some of the world’s most significant deposits of the four minerals the US Congress designated as conflict-prone under the Dodd-Frank Act—gold, tin, tantalum, and tungsten—whose extraction and processing underpin the global technology economy. The DRC also holds roughly 70 percent of the world’s known cobalt deposits—a mineral essential for electric vehicle batteries. 

While cobalt extraction is concentrated further south in Katanga, outside the immediate outbreak zone, the disease’s rapid spread, its chilling effect on the workforce, and the broader collapse of local health systems mean that the outbreak will affect the entire DRC mining economy. The Washington Accords—the administration’s initiative to stabilize the eastern DRC and challenge China’s grip on the region’s critical minerals—depends on projecting confidence that the DRC is open for business. A country with a collapsing health system cannot project that confidence.

Daniel Swift is a senior research analyst for economics, finance, and trade for the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.