ERTITREA

LOCATION (RIVERA)
Eritrea of The State of Eritrea is a country located in East Africa, boarded by
Ethiopia in the south, Sudan in the west, and Djibouti in the southeast. Eritrea has
also an extensive coastline along the Red Sea, and has approximately the total area
of 117,600 km2 (45,406 sq mi).

HISTORY AND ITS MILITARIZATION (RIVERA)

After gaining its own independence form the British Military Administration in
1952, Eritrea would govern itself with its own parliament and under a federal
status by Ethiopia for foreign and defense concerns for 10 years. However, in 1962
Ethiopia annexed Eritrea and annulled its parliament that sparked a 30-year
conflict for independence between the Eritrean secessionist movement or the
Eritrean Liberation Front and winning the Eritrean War of Independence.

After gaining de jure independence, Eritrea was under a unitary presidential system
led by a one-party system led by the Isaias Afwerki as president since its
independence in 1993, gaining the position without national elections. The
repressive regime with government human rights records is one of the worst in the
world, the Eritrean government has instituted a rigidly militarized society.

Compulsory military service was instituted in 1995.Conscripts of male and female

have to serve for minimum of 18 months and any refusal will led to a punishment
of imprisonment from six months to 6-10 years.

PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE (ROMAN)

With the military focused government, majority of the resources are drained and
public infrastructures was not in priority. Government facilities, roads, bridges,
airports, railway, and seaports is either lacking or on poor condition.
INDUSTRIES AND ECONOMY (ROMAN)
The State owns the entirety of land and property rights, and being non-existent, the
main drivers of the economy are the state-owned or foreign mining companies,
remittances, and agriculture industries such as farming, fishing, and forestry that
have no significant economic impact and lastly the lack of support of the
government to the manufacturing and tourism sector which can help them
revitalize and bring more investors. With these, economic development was
limited, not ideal characteristics needed for a developing country. With
dependence on these two sectors (mining and agriculture) it doesn’t give an impact
on the economy due to the volatility of the global market which is their primary
customer. And also, the risk of environmental damage by the quarrying of mineral
resources and the destruction of forests, itntributes to the declining economic
development of the country. Eritrea’s GDP was at $2.1 billion in 2020, o $6.4
billion on a PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) basis in comparison to the
PPhilippine’s$361.49 billion in 2020. Their economy grew at a 3.9% annual rate
from 2010 to 2020, an improvement from the 1.3% annual rate from 2000 to 2010.
Still, According to worldpopulationreview.com, Eritrea is no. 7 in the 10 poorest
countries with a Gross Domestic Income per capita of ($510).

CONGO (LIMONERO)
LOCATION:
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is located in central sub-Saharan
Africa, bordered to the northwest by the Republic of the Congo, to the north by
the Central African Republic, to the northeast by South Sudan, to the east
by Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi, and by Tanzania (across Lake Tanganyika), to
the south and southeast by Zambia, to the southwest by Ang, and to the west by the
South Atlantic Ocean and the Cabinda Province exclave of Angola. The size of
Congo, 2,345,408 square kilometers (905,567 sq mi), is slightly greater than the
combined areas of Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, and Norway. It is the second-
largest country in Africa by area, after Algeria.

Intro:
Look at your Mobile phone for a second.
If you opened it up, you would see something similar to this…lots of microchips,
small semiconductors, and circuits. To manufacture all of this, you need a very
special element: TANTALUM.

Where does this tantalum come from?

Well, mainly from one country: the Democratic Republic of CONGO.
One of the World’s poorest countries.
It’s impossible to estimate how many people have died to manufacture the phone
you have in your hands right now

Tantalum is one of the most highly demanded materials on the planet.

And Congo has the largest reserves.

It could be an enormous source of wealth for them. A country that also has lots of
natural resources. Nonetheless, Congo is one of the poorest and most violent
countries on Earth.

So why is Congo so poor?

We’re talking about one of the biggest countries on the planet. It has more than 80
million inhabitants living within a territory the size of Western Europe. They have
a hell of a fortune under their feet: cobalt, gold, and, of course, COLTAN.

Coltan is the ore that tantalum is taken from. So we all have products imported
from Congo in our homes. Many of you might say: wow!

They’re so lucky, to have so many natural resources, right? The opposite is true.
All this gold, cobalt, and, especially, coltan, is a curse for Congo.

Yes, Congo is one of the poorest countries on the planet.

And we’re talking about so-called absolute poverty here.

Most of the population lives on less than a dollar a day.

Starvation is common and guerrilla warfare is so typical in this country that it’s no
longer newsworthy.

Imagine all of this on a massive scale and you have a good high-level picture of
Congo. So in this case Congo is unique in history that we can’t even compare it
with other African nations.

So the question here is why is Congo so poor?

Why do we say that their natural resources are a curse?

Today we’re going to answer all of these questions but, before we do, let’s take
a look back at the history.

CONGO IN 19TH CENTURY (HEMENTERA)

In 1877 King Leopold II of Belgium bought Congo. With no established form of
government, he exploited Congo in producing rubber and create his factories and
plantations.

He enslaved the population and forced them to reach production quotas.

If they didn’t, he would chop off one of their hands.
The massacre was so terrible even other colonial powers such as the United
Kingdom denounced Leopold for his atrocities.

After Leopold II died, he passed his property over to the state of Belgium.
This is how Congo became a colony in its own right. Belgium’s government was a
little more compassionate than the king but, still, the Congolese were kept in slave-
like conditions.

FUN FACT: KING LEOPOLD ALMOST BOUGHT THE PHILIPPINES

FROM SPAIN.

20TH CENTURY CONGO (DELA PENA)

In 1960, Congo got its independence but that doesn’t mean things got better for
them.
Their first president, PATRICE LUMUMBA, was no big fan of his former
colonizers.
This is why both France and Belgium helped other groups to overthrow and
execute him.

This is how MOBUTU SESE SEKO’s dictatorship started and the country changed
its name to ZAIRE.

Mobutu is known as one of the bloodiest dictators in history.

You know, it was the cold war, and Congo was an ally of the West.
So there was always money to finance his army. But things changed in the 90s.
Without a USSR to be afraid of, America stopped supporting Mobutu. And all
those groups he was oppressing rebelled against him.

This is how the first Congolese civil war started and the country got back its
current name.

A civil war that led to another second civil war.

For a better understanding of just how devastating this conflict was, the Second
Congolese civil war is considered to be the deadliest conflict after World War II,
with over 5 million deaths
and countless acts of torture, mutilation, and other atrocities.

But…Here’s the worst thing the violence has not stopped.

In 2003, the war ended. Since then, Joseph KABILA has tried to be a dictator who
rules over the country with an iron fist.

But, let’s be honest as authoritarian and corrupted as he is, he can’t control the
country.
There are guerrillas looting neighboring countries all the time.

And you might wonder. Why is there so much guerrilla warfare?

How can one country have so many armed groups?
How do they pay for those guns?
Let’s have a look, shall we?

COLTAN RUSH

Do you remember the NOKIA 6110?

This phone was launched at the end of the 90s and was one of the first cell phones
to reach a massive audience. Suddenly, everybody had a mobile phone.
And this meant more and more tantalum was required to produce those.
Until that moment, the main tantalum producer was Australia.

The problem?
Getting that material was more expensive than you might imagine.
You see… it’s almost impossible to find pure chemical elements in nature. In this
case, Australia had mines where you could find some ore and, after a complex
chemical process, get a little bit of tantalum out of it.

But there is an easier way to obtain it. Yes, I’m talking about COLTAN.

COLTAN is a rock that contains a lot of tantalum and it’s very cheap to refine.
And guess where you can find the biggest coltan reserves on the planet?

In Congo.
Congo is the Saudi Arabia of coltan. There’s plenty of it, it’s easy to extract and
easier to refine.

You don’t even need technology to get coltan: just a pick and shovel and
there you go! This is why thousands of Congolese joined the coltan hunt.
And, despite the high demand, tantalum became cheaper and cheaper.

The financial crisis of 2008 had some consequences in Australia with the closure
of its tantalum mines. Australia at that time was the world’s main tantalum
producer. Its closure meant that tantalum prices skyrocketed.

It’s hard to estimate the market price for this material because, unlike oil, there are
no public indexes. But, according to some consultancy firms, tantalum prices
almost doubled from one year to the next.

And what was the consequence for Congo?

The answer is coltan rush!

Due to a corrupt and mismanaged government All of a sudden, everybody was

willing to sacrifice their lives for a fistful of rocks.
Especially the warlords.

This is how most of those guerrillas were financed: by selling coltan. And the more
tantalum they sold, the more violent they became.

The Dood Frank Law (PENAFLORIDA)

We’re talking about such a huge massacre that even America had to pass a law for
it. Dodd-Frank Act Becomes Law Basically, Dood Frank law was meant to
protect consumers.

One of its sections referred to the so-called‘conflict minerals. One of which was
tantalum. According to this law, companies buying tantalum should know where
it comes from.

Many of you might wonder since it’s so profitable, Why aren’t there any big
mining companies? Aren’t their incentives to create companies that can mass-
produce coltan?
The answer is NO.

Why?
Well, here’s an example!
Biggest Congo coltan miner resumes buying after output halt
In this case, BISUNZU is one of the few Congolese mining companies.
It was founded by a Congolese senator that wanted to industrialize mining.
Instead of risking lives to get coltan, BISUNZU wants to use machines.
That way, they can offer better security for the workers and extract a lot more
minerals.

So what’s their problem, then?

First, all of this machinery is expensive. And Money is seldom abundant in Congo.
Second, nobody would invest in a place where corrupt politicians are going to
make your life impossible.

And, if politicians don’t do it, then some guerrilla will.

So what happens then?
Nobody invests in this industry and those who do, like BISUNZU, have to stop
their production all the time due to smugglers and warlords.

And this is how we can understand the vicious cycle of coltan.

The more demand there is, the more incentives there are for warlords to exploit it.
And the more warlords we have exploiting coltan, the fewer incentives there are to
create an industry that would provide quality jobs and create real wealth.

This is why,even thought half of the tantalum on the planet comes from this
area, Congo doesn’t grow any faster.

CONCLUSION:
Corruption, violence, and conflicts were the main reasons why most African
countries are poorly developed. Mismanagement of abundant natural
resources due to self-interests led to conflicts.