Ace Anan Ankomah
It’s almost performance art at this point.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo sits atop a mineral jackpot so absurd it could probably finance half the global pharmaceutical industry before breakfast.
Yet every Ebola outbreak makes international news headlines by becoming another season of the toxic mix of citizens’ helpless desperation combined with the repeated international charity spectacle, where hundreds die waiting for “developed” nations to parachute in vaccines, aid workers and carefully staged compassion.
This, in a country drowning in cobalt, copper, gold, diamonds and coltan.
Why? Because apparently centuries of extraction, mutilation and looting under colonialism were merely the opening act.
After the Europeans finished treating the Congo like a Black Friday liquidation sale, the sequel arrived: kleptocrats, proxy wars, foreign-engineered instability, neighbouring opportunists and multinational corporations all wrestling over who gets exclusive rights to empty the vault.
Meanwhile, ordinary Congolese people are left with healthcare systems that resemble abandoned warehouses with flickering lights.
The DRC is Africa distilled into one brutal sentence: unimaginably rich, systematically plundered from both outside and within, then smugly lectured for failing to thrive under the weight of everybody else’s greed.
© they call me “Ace”, and this is that kind of morning! 😢
