"I Survived 21 Hours Buried Alive": DRC Mine Collapse Survivor Speaks

📣 Journalists from Al Jazeera managed to track down and interview one of the survivors of the January 28 landslide at the Rubaya coltan mine in the DRC's AFC/M23-controlled territory.

According to Grace Barata, he and other miners were trapped when they took shelter in the mine from the rain:

🔴 It started raining around 3 PM local time, and we took shelter from the rain in the mine... I heard rocks rubbing together and thought it was just pebbles being washed away by the water. Then I found myself in total darkness.

Ironically, the same rain that softened the soil and triggered the landslide may have saved Barata and his colleagues as they were inside the mine when the collapse happened and weren’t crushed by falling rocks.

After 21 hours underground, rescuers finally pulled Barata from the earth on Thursday at around 1 PM.

🔴 We saw the light from afar and knew we would be rescued. The others died before our eyes, without saying a word.

➡️ Stay informed - @devilsbelow

🔵They Remember the People: Mining Ministry Reminds Foreign Companies of the Law🔵

🌐 In the wake of Félix Tshisekedi’s US visit and the massive American takeover of Congolese deposits, the Congolese Ministry of Mines (not as a distraction, for sure) has publicly reminded companies that a portion of their shares must belong to local workers.

⏩ The ministry’s generous PR gift for pro-government media is based on its reading of what the ministry call legal requirements that local workers must own up to 5% of mining companies’ shares.

⏩ No one will actually hand out shares to miners, for sure. After all, DRC law doesn’t force companies to give away 5% to workers for free — it only mandates 10% Congolese ownership. So, most likely, the ministry will be ignored—at best, companies with shaky relations with Kinshasa might be pressured to bring in a local contractor or union boss as a token partner.

In the end, everyone stays where they are—because the real point of this announcement is for the government to drown out the endless headlines about handing over assets and mineral rights to the US.

➡️ Stay informed - @devilsbelow

🌐 Weekly News Digest [ February 2 – February 8 ]

That was a week when we learned about what Epstein had to do with Africa's oil...

💡...and, there were other highlights:

🇦🇴 Angola

— Opposition Group Declares Independence of Oil-Rich Enclave of Cabinda from Angola

🇧🇫 Burkina Faso

— Burkina Faso Boasts of Record Gold Extraction

🇨🇩 DR Congo

— DRC Government Releases Official Response to Rubaya Mine Collapse
— US State-Backed Consortium Buys 40% Shares of Two Large Copper-Cobalt Mines From Swiss Company
— US Virtus Minerals to Purchase Congolese Copper Producer Chemaf

🇬🇭 Ghana

— Private Refinery Makes First Bars From Artisanal Gold Collected by State
— French Troops Train Ghanaian Army to Fight Illegal Gold Miners

🇱🇷 Liberia

— Ivanhoe Atlantic Appoints Team of US Nationals to Its Board to Facilitate Its Iron Project

🇳🇦 Namibia

— Brazil’s Petrobras and France’s TotalEnergies Acquire 85% of Namibia's Oil Field

🇳🇬 Nigeria

— Nigeria’s State Oil Corporation Faces Corruption Lawsuit from Local NGO
— Nigerians Protest Against Rampimg Up Oil Production In Niger Delta
— Nigerian Court Delivers Guilty Verdict Against UK

🇿🇲 Zambia

— Delegation From Finland Arrives in Zambia

🌍 Global

— US Creates Reserve of Critical Minerals for Civilian Industry

#NewsDigest

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

🔵I Don't Want to Play with You Anymore🔵

Why Does Mali Need So Many State-Owned Mining Companies?

🇲🇱 On Friday February 6, Mali’s government established a new state-owned company, SOPAMIM, which is expected to manage the state’s stakes in mineral projects. But what did Bamako do to their previous, 2022 public mining company, SOREM?

🔸 Few countries can boast two state-owned mining companies operating in the same sector. Typically, one corporation is created — like Nigeria’s NNPC — which does it all: produces, manages state shares, and collects sector-wide bribes. This makes sense because the line between production and managing state stakes is razor-thin.

⏩ Rejecting Occam’s Razor as a colonial relic Mali has now created another separate company for everything: SOREM — for new projects, SOPAMIM — for state shares. Nice, but what's actually the reason?

1️⃣ First, SOREM clearly lacked competence and efficiency. Since its creation in 2022, it has taken over several gold assets, but there’s no evidence of it succeeding in running them. At best, it managed to attract a foreign partner.

2️⃣ Second, the government is increasingly demanding maximum state participation (35% by law) in new projects. This means neither SOREM nor the traditional ministries who previously managed the stakes may be able to handle the new volume and responsibility. It makes sense to gather all assets in one place with professional accountants and auditors.

In other words, the new company is Bamako's second attempt to find a workable model for state involvement in the mining sector—this time, with higher stakes.

➡️ Stay informed - @devilsbelow

🔵U.S. Bureau of African Affairs Reveals Its Strategy🔵

A unique offer—two news stories in one! First, a State Department official revealed the US strategy for Africa. Second, there essentially is no strategy.

➡️ In a new interview with Semafor, the head of the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs attempts to outline what the US plans to do in Africa. First the US won’t engage in all-out competition with China across the board. This is considered pointless and too costly. Instead, the US intends to displace Chinese influence in key areas—primarily in mineral extraction and supply chain projects.

➡️ Second, the era of moralizing and unconditional aid is over: it’s all about mutual benefit and equal investment in projects now. Even humanitarian programs will now be evaluated through the lens of political and economic returns.

🔴 With a lot of African countries, [we] went in and were lecturing, moralizing about different things. And that’s not what they want to hear. Security, economic growth—that’s what they want.

❓ ...And, that's it. No fine-tuned approach, no region-specific details. A year into this administration, they still haven’t decided which countries are priorities — and Africa as a whole remains a secondary focus.

The Bureau's head may have chosen not to reveal much, but, from what he told journalists, Washington seemingly knows what it doesn't want to do, but has no fresh vision. Instead of a strategy, there is opportunism — or a "ready, fire, aim" approach. US is more likely to grab whatever projects come its way than to actively seek out strategic opportunities.

➡️ Stay informed - @devilsbelow

Nigerian Company Loses Asset in Equatorial Guinea

🌐 American oil giant Chevron has terminated its partnership with Nigerian company Atlas Petroleum for the joint development of an offshore oil block in Equatorial Guinea, with Atlas’s 27.55% stake set to be transferred to the state-owned GEPetrol.

⏩ The Nigerians let Chevron down by delaying mandatory payments. The American company had been trying to ditch its Nigerian partner since at least September, but struggled to secure the support of Equatorial Guinea’s government, which had no intention of investing in the project after Atlas’s exit.

⏩ In the end, a solution acceptable to all was found: the Guinean government will receive Atlas’s stake for free, but Chevron will take an equivalent share of the state’s future gas sales revenue.

Atlas Petroleum is owned by Nigerian businessman Arthur Eze, whose business empire is going through tough times—just recently, Atlas lost assets in Senegal as well. Meanwhile, Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea have plans to build a gas pipeline to Bioko Island, and its fate will soon reveal whether Atlas’s owner still has enough influence in Abuja to protect his projects.

⚠️ Not only for Arthur Eze, but for West Africa as a whole this is a troubling trend: nascent local companies may compete with international giants at home, but they still appear to be systematically blocked from expanding into neighboring countries.

➡️ Stay informed - @devilsbelow

🔵Policy Induction: What Is the U.S. Strategy in Africa?🔵
Explaining What State Department Officials Couldn’t

[ Policy Review ]

Since the head of the Bureau of African Affairs left gaps in his explanation, I’ve gathered the facts from the past few months to reconstruct the U.S. strategy on African minerals myself. Note: since I’m not an expert on visas, humanitarian aid and military operations, I won’t touch on those.

So, what do the facts say about the U.S. strategy for economic expansion?

1️⃣ The U.S. has adopted China’s model of state-backed business expansion.

For a long time, Americans shied away from ambitious projects due to risks—something Chinese miners never worried about, relying on government loans and diplomacy. Now, the U.S. is using the US Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and the Export-Import Bank to push its own projects.

2️⃣ Washington isn’t leading—it’s picking from proposals by private partners and local elites.

Almost all US-backed economic expansion currently revolves around the DRC, but this is largely thanks to Félix Tshisekedi, who invited the Americans himself. In other cases, the U.S. operates on a grant basis: a private firm comes forward, promises to build supply chains without China, and gets loan support.

🗺 This also explains why regional and country priorities still haven’t been set: specific opportunities come and go, and Washington doesn’t yet have its own clear preferences.

3️⃣ The US is entering both ends of the supply chain: mining and mineral processing.

The US has secured copper supply deals with the DRC and launched Project Vault to redirect ore exports from other countries to itself. This matters because, until now, any purchase of a mine was complicated by the fact that intermediate processing plants were only in China. Now, for the first time in decades, the US is opening new processing facilities at home.

4️⃣ Finally, US economic interests don’t always align with military or political ones.

For example, there’s no clear articulation of US intent to re-enter the oil sector or pursue minerals in Nigeria, even though that’s where American troops are most active.

💡 All of this suggests that, at this stage, the U.S. strategy is inductive — moving from specific cases to general policy, testing individual countries and projects, and later declaring the most successful ones as priorities. This is just the warm-up. It’s easy to imagine that in the coming years, the U.S. will grow bolder, moving beyond Congolese copper—perhaps toward Nigerian lithium or something more marginal on the periodic table in East Africa.

#PolicyReview

➡️ Stay informed - @devilsbelow

Why Is South Africa’s Minister Unhappy — and Why Does It Matter?

🔥 At a closed-door meeting during Indaba Mining Week, South Africa’s Minister of Resources, Gwede Mantashe, sharply criticized his counterpart from the DRC — echoing the same frustrations we’ve expressed in our channel about Congo’s deal with Washington.

But there's more to it than just one minister’s criticism. It signals a paradigm shift of South Africa-DRC relations. Just 5 days ago, South Africa suddenly withdrew its troops from the UN MONUSCO mission in the DRC. The minister’s words clarify why: Pretoria believes Kinshasa is ignoring pan-African solidarity and undermining South Africa's interests with its actions.

🔸 Mantashe suggested that the DRC had been exempted from the Trump administration’s high import tariffs because of the critical minerals deal, accusing this of enabling a US "divide and conquer" strategy in Africa. Last year, the US imposed a 10% tariff on DRC imports — far less than the punitive 30% slapped on South Africa.

The South African minister has long been staunchly anti-American — but while his hostility toward the US stayed within his administrative domain, his grievances toward the DRC now seem to correspond to the new main narratives of South African policy toward Kinshasa.

Amid this row, it is worth noting that the South African contingent in MONUSCO didn’t do much to help the DRC with its crises either, spending most of its time in the southern part of the country, far from the fighting.

➡️ Stay informed - @devilsbelow

Libya’s First Oil License Auction in 17 Years Is Total Failure

🌐 Perfectly illustrating what happens to nations "saved" from dictatorship by European armed forces, Libya’s Government of National Unity has botched its new oil license auction. Out of 20 oil blocks up for grabs, only 5 found eager investors.

Libya's last honest and transparent license auction took place under Muammar Gaddafi. But its oil industry has since faced significant challenges after a NATO-backed revolt toppled and killed the longtime leader in 2011, leaving the country divided between rival authorities.

🔍 Speaking about the reasons only a quarter of the offered assets found buyers, analysts point to backroom deals as the main obstacle. Amid total political chaos, major companies tend to ask whatever they want directly from the authorities — without bothering with public tenders.

Just last month, the government used this exact playbook to strike $20 billion deals with TotalEnergies and ConocoPhillips.

➡️ Stay informed - @devilsbelow

Nigeria: Dangote Refinery Hits Full Capacity

Do We to Celebrate?

🌐 Africa’s largest and the world’s most powerful single-train refinery, the Dangote Refinery in Lagos, has finally reached its design capacity for the first time. All key units are now operating at the full 650,000 barrels per day.

⏩ This milestone is less about technical efficiency and more about symbolism. First, it retroactively justifies all the controversies and scandals surrounding Aliko Dangote: his clashes with local oil and fuel regulators, labor unions, and rival businessmen.

⏩ Second, it’s a critical signal for future expansion. Dangote aims to scale the refinery up to 1.4 million barrels per day, and this achievement reminds current and potential partners that he knows what he’s doing.

⏩ Finally, for Dangote himself, this is another symbolic cementing of his legacy. The 68-year-old billionaire repeatedly states that this refinery is his entrepreneurial magnum opus — the crowning achievement of Africa’s richest man.

Unfortunately, for ordinary Nigerians, this news isn’t as unequivocally positive as it is for Dangote. Now that the oil magnate has crushed fuel imports and monopolized the market, Nigeria is unlikely to see new refineries emerge anytime soon—it’s simply too hard to compete with such a giant.

➡️ Stay informed - @devilsbelow

🚨 Mad Max in Niger: Is the Army Finally Getting Its Act Together?

🌐Niger’s military press service announced that on February 10 it repelled an attack by MPLJ militants on Chinese oil facilities near Agadem. Reports say the militants crossed into Niger in ten vehicles from Chad.

Unlike similar incidents in 2025, this time Niger’s army claims to have successfully fended off the attack, forcing the militants to retreat. Official government statements, however, make no mention of casualties on either side.

💥 In its response, MPLJ claims to have lost 1 fighter and 1 vehicle, while allegedly inflicting around 24 deaths on the army. The militants then reportedly drove the same vehicles back into Chad.

Even taking MPLJ’s unverified claims at face value, Niger’s army is still making significant progress in protecting the country’s main revenue source—a critical achievement now that the stakes involve not just China’s CNPC, but also new partners eyeing Niger’s oil.

➡️ Stay informed - @devilsbelow