Geoffrey York Africa Bureau Chief
Johannesburg – Published April 17, 2025
The Trump administration obtained help from Rwanda to secure a rebel retreat and allow Toronto-listed Alphamin Resources Corp. AFM-X -1.19% decrease to reopen a shuttered tin mine in eastern Congo, a U.S. official says.
Massad Boulos, senior Africa adviser to President Donald Trump, said the Rwandan move was a “good faith” gesture in response to U.S. concerns about private mining investments, which he relayed in his eight-day trip to Africa this month.
Rwanda’s pressure, he said, led to the withdrawal of its close allies, the M23 rebel militia, from the Congolese town of Walikale. The Alphamin tin mine, just 60 kilometres from Walikale, was shut down last month and its employees evacuated after the rebels advanced close to the town.
The Trump administration’s move to protect Alphamin, largely owned by U.S. investors, is a sign of its strong interest in lucrative mining opportunities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has vast mineral resources, including gold, coltan and tin. The Congolese government has been touting a potential minerals-for-security deal, hoping to obtainU.S. security help in exchange for access to minerals.
Rwanda has officially denied any links to the M23 militia, which has swept through a vast swath of eastern Congo, capturing the cities of Goma and Bukavu. But reports by United Nations experts have provided many pages of witness testimony and satellite photos documenting Rwanda’s extensive military support for M23, including the deployment of several thousand Rwandan troops to reinforce the rebels.
Mr. Boulos, a Lebanese-born U.S. businessman and father-in-law of Mr. Trump’s daughter Tiffany, was appointed to the Africa adviser role this month. He made clear that he sees Rwanda as the key to controlling M23′s actions, including its retreat from Walikale in recent days.
“Following our discussions with conflict participants, M23 pulled back from the town of Walikale,” he told journalists in an online briefing Thursday.
“M23, through the assistance of the Rwandan government and probably with some pressure or push from the Rwandans, were able to withdraw from Walikale back towards the east, probably 100 km eastwards,” he said. “This move allowed our U.S. company Alphamin to reopen.”
Last week, after the rebel withdrawal, Alphamin announced a phased resumption of operations at its Bisie mine, which it describes as the world’s highest-grade tin operation, producing 7 per cent of global output.
Alphamin had evacuated staff from the mine in mid-March as M23 moved closer. It said that monththat it had appointed a U.S. firm to lobby for the Trump administration’s diplomatic intervention on the security threats it faced.
In a statement Thursday, the company said it had reduced its tin production forecast to 17,500 tonnes in the current fiscal year, from a previous forecast of 20,000 tonnes, as a result of the security-related shutdown. It said the mine had resumed tin production this week and will resume its underground operations later this month.
The M23 threat to Alphamin “affected the entire world,” Mr. Boulos said. “It affected the global market for tin. Very shortly after that shutdown, the tin market rose by 30 per cent or more. And then, within a couple hours of the announcement last week that they would reopen, it went down considerably.”
If the United States had not intervened, M23 would have marched a further 400 kilometres to the west to capture Kisangani, the fourth-biggest city in Congo, he said.
“We all know the plan was to continue all the way to Kisangani, and that would have been detrimental, from a strategic point of view.”
The M23 offensive in eastern Congo, which began in 2022, has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe in the region, with hundreds of thousands of people forced to abandon their homes and move into makeshift camps. UN reports have documented the militia’s involvement in massacres of civilians and other atrocities.
Story continues below advertisement
As part of its offensive, M23 has captured mining sites and smuggling routes that provide it with an estimated US$800,000 in monthly revenue, the UN says. Minerals from those sites are smuggled across the border into Rwanda, it says.
madaraka.online 