US offered infrastructure incentive to achieve peace in eastern DRC

A senior United States diplomat said Washington had offered to extend an important railway infrastructure project into the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The US has been supporting the Lobito Corridor that links the resource-rich but landlocked DRC and Zambia to a port on Angola’s Atlantic coast.

Outgoing assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Molly Phee, said the proposal was seen as an incentive for a peace deal between the DRC and Rwanda, but that Kigali seemed to have walked away from it.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame did not attend a summit in Luanda in December during President Joe Biden’s visit to Angola.

The eastern part of the DRC has struggled for decades with armed violence as more than 120 groups fight for power, land, and valuable mineral resources.

This includes the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels who have seized large swathes of the region.

Kagame has never admitted his country is directly involved in the fighting, which the United Nations has displaced close to two million people in the province.