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Corporations Are Arming Militants and Threatening Global Peace
These shadowy alliances are reshaping how wars are fought, who profits from them, and why traditional peacekeeping doesn’t work anymore.
Oct 22, 2024
Picture a weapon that can level a city block, manufactured in Belgium, assembled in Dubai, financed through Swiss banks, and delivered to militants by a “logistics company” registered in Singapore. This isn’t the plot of a thriller—it’s how modern warfare works.
When a sophisticated drone strike hit Saudi oil facilities in 2019, investigators traced the weapons technology not to a nation-state, but to a complex network of corporate suppliers and militant groups.
When corporations can effectively arm and support militant groups with impunity, concepts like state sovereignty and international law begin to break down.
Welcome to the new face of global conflict, where the most dangerous relationships aren’t between countries, but between corporations and armed groups. These shadowy alliances are reshaping how wars are fought, who profits from them, and why traditional peacekeeping doesn’t work anymore.
The New War Profiteers
The old image of arms dealers as shady men with briefcases full of cash is hopelessly outdated. Today’s weapons trade runs through legitimate-looking corporations, tech companies, and financial institutions that have mastered the art of working in war’s gray zones.
Take the ongoing conflict in Yemen. While media attention focuses on state actors, private military contractors and defense corporations have formed intricate relationships with local militant groups. These companies don’t just supply weapons. They provide training, maintenance, and even operational support, all while maintaining a veneer of legitimate business operations.
“What we’re seeing is the corporatization of conflict,” explains Sarah Martinez, a specialist in non-state armed groups at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “These aren’t simple arms deals anymore—they’re long-term business relationships that create sustained cycles of violence.”
Follow the Money (If You Can)
The financial web supporting these alliances is deliberately opaque and designed to evade accountability. Private military companies, often registered in offshore jurisdictions like Dubai or Singapore, form partnerships with shell corporations based in the Caribbean. These shell entities, in turn, subcontract their operations to ambiguous “logistics companies” operating out of Eastern Europe. This elaborate system of front companies and subcontractors allows weapons and military equipment to flow freely into conflict zones without raising red flags. Responsibility is diffused across a web of corporate structures, making it nearly impossible to trace the ultimate source of arms shipments or hold anyone accountable for fueling conflicts.
In Africa’s resource-rich regions, the situation is becoming even more alarming. Here, private security firms, often funded by Western investors, forge alliances with local militant groups under the pretext of protecting valuable oil and mineral installations. What starts as a “security” operation to safeguard resources often escalates into these firms operating as de facto private armies, controlling entire regions and undermining the authority of national governments. These alliances not only destabilize local politics but also complicate international peacekeeping efforts, creating power vacuums where non-state actors can thrive. In such an environment, financial backing for these operations becomes a critical tool, turning what appears to be routine corporate transactions into a driving force behind some of the world’s most enduring conflicts.
The Tech Factor Changes Everything
Modern conflict isn’t just about guns and bombs. Today’s militant groups need sophisticated technology, which they’re getting from seemingly legitimate sources. Communications equipment, surveillance technology, and cyber tools flow through corporate channels that straddle the line between legal and illegal. These tools allow groups to operate covertly, communicate securely, and execute sophisticated cyber-attacks, which can be as damaging as conventional warfare. For instance, militant groups are using encrypted communication tools to evade state surveillance, while also acquiring drones and other high-tech surveillance equipment through corporate gray markets.
This access to advanced technology extends beyond just weaponry. It’s also about operational capacity. “The real game-changer isn’t the weapons themselves, but the support systems,” notes James Wilson, a former United Nations weapons inspector. When militant groups can access corporate-level logistics, training, and technical support, they become far more dangerous than traditional armed forces. These corporate partnerships allow militant organizations to mimic the structure of formal military forces, combining guerrilla tactics with modern technology to disrupt state control, launch cyberattacks, and even hold territories with a level of sophistication unseen in previous decades
A Pattern Emerges
The pattern repeats across regions. In Syria, corporate entities linked to Russian military industries provide not just weapons but entire support ecosystems to various armed groups. These companies deliver everything from logistical support and advanced weaponry to financial aid, creating a symbiotic relationship with local militias. This dynamic allows both the corporations and the armed groups to thrive in a perpetual state of conflict.
There is a growing call for the development of new international legal frameworks that hold corporations accountable for their roles in conflicts, particularly when they profit from or directly contribute to violence.
Similarly, in the Horn of Africa, Chinese companies, while officially involved in building infrastructure projects, are simultaneously supplying militant groups with equipment and technical expertise under the radar. These companies are benefiting financially from both sides—securing government contracts for infrastructure while also arming insurgents. According to the U.N. Security Council, these arrangements contribute to what conflict researchers call “sustained instability zones”—regions where violence is deliberately prolonged because it becomes profitable for both corporate actors and armed groups.
As a result, traditional peacekeeping missions, which were designed to manage conflict between state actors, are increasingly ineffective. These missions are often incapable of addressing the complex web of corporate and non-state alliances that fuel these conflicts. As the International Peace Institute highlights, peacekeepers find themselves irrelevant in these new conflict ecosystems, where the drivers of violence are no longer solely state actors but profit-driven corporations and armed factions operating outside the bounds of state control.
Why Traditional Solutions Don’t Work Anymore
U.N. peacekeeping was designed for a world where states were the primary actors in conflicts. But what happens when the real power lies with corporate-militant alliances that operate across borders? Traditional diplomatic tools and peace agreements often miss the real drivers of conflict.
“Peacekeepers can monitor cease-fires between armies, but they can’t address corporate supply chains that fuel conflicts,” explains former U.N. peacekeeper Colonel Maria Rodriguez. “We’re using 20th-century tools to fight 21st-century wars.”
These alliances don’t just threaten local stability. They’re undermining the entire international system. When corporations can effectively arm and support militant groups with impunity, concepts like state sovereignty and international law begin to break down.
The numbers are staggering. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, corporate-militant alliances now influence conflicts affecting over 250 million people globally. These arrangements have created shadow economies worth an estimated $300 billion annually.
What Can Be Done?
Traditional sanctions and arms embargo often fail because they target state actors rather than the increasingly influential corporate-militant networks that drive modern conflicts. Some experts argue for a completely new approach to international conflict management. First, they suggest recognizing that these corporate-militant alliances, rather than state actions, are the primary forces behind many of today’s wars. Without this shift in focus, sanctions will continue to miss their mark.
Second, there is a growing call for the development of new international legal frameworks that hold corporations accountable for their roles in conflicts, particularly when they profit from or directly contribute to violence. This would address the legal gaps that allow companies to evade responsibility when operating in conflict zones.
Finally, experts propose peacekeeping operations that disrupt these corporate-militant alliances instead of merely focus on separating armed forces. By cutting off the financial and logistical support that such networks provide to militant groups, peacekeeping efforts could become more effective in curbing conflict.
The real question is whether the international community can adapt fast enough to address this new reality, and whether global institutions are equipped to deal with conflicts that no longer fit neatly within the old rules of engagement.
The future of global conflict isn’t just about nation-states anymore. It’s about complex alliances between corporations and armed groups that profit from sustained instability. As one U.N. official put it (speaking on condition of anonymity): “We’re still playing checkers while they’re playing a much more dangerous game.” This sentiment underscores the growing complexity of global conflict, where traditional methods of diplomacy and peacekeeping are falling behind the rapidly evolving alliances between non-state actors.
The question isn’t whether these alliances will reshape global conflict. They already have, as seen in regions from the Middle East to Latin America. The involvement of multinational corporations in resource-driven conflicts, alongside insurgent and militant groups, adds layers of complexity that traditional state-based frameworks struggle to address. These alliances transcend borders, ideologies, and legal frameworks, creating new kinds of power dynamics that the international system was not designed to manage.
The real question is whether the international community can adapt fast enough to address this new reality, and whether global institutions are equipped to deal with conflicts that no longer fit neatly within the old rules of engagement. This crisis requires not only new thinking about conflict resolution, peace enforcement, and international law, but also a reevaluation of how power is distributed in a globalized world where non-state actors hold increasing sway. Until then, corporate-militant alliances will continue to challenge not just regional stability but the very foundation of the international order, undermining the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and governance that have long underpinned global relations.
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The Cost of War for Women and Girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo
The conflict raging in DRC is largely for the control of the country's important raw materials, with the most vulnerable paying the highest price.
Oct 14, 2024
Decades long conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has ravaged lives of millions. Nearly six million people have been killed since 1996 and the country has the largest population of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Africa with 7.1 million people forced from their home or community. North Kivu Province is particularly impacted with almost one million IDPs living in makeshift camps with limited access to essential services like water, shelter, sanitation and food around the capital city of Goma.
Sexual Violence – A Weapon of War
One of the most distinct elements of this conflict is the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. From 2021 to 2022, there was a 91 percent rise in reports of gender-based violence (GBV) in North Kivu. Between January and March 2024, more than 12,600 cases of sexual violence were recorded. These numbers, however, are only the tip of the iceberg. Many survivors are unable to access life-saving GBV services; and many do not report abuse out of fear of stigmatization by their communities or retaliation by perpetrators. Both Human rights groups to humanitarian relief organizations report that tens of thousands of women and girls have been victims of systemic sexual violence, including rape, sexual slavery, and forced prostitution.
Most cases of sexual violence involve armed combatants and militias with majority of victims being women and girls—some as young as three years old and others as old as 80. These acts have profound and lasting health consequences for the victims, ranging from physical injuries and psychological trauma to the risk of sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies. Unfortunately, 2024 has been marked by an increase in this violence against women and girls in North Kivu. According to a recently released report, We Are Calling for Help, Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provided treatment to 25,166 victims and survivors of sexual violence across the country in 2023. Between January and May 2024, it had already treated 17,363 victims and survivors in North Kivu alone – 69 percent of the total number of victims treated in 2023.
Displacement resulting from heavy fighting between the Congolese armed forces (FARDC) and the M23 rebel group has exacerbated the vulnerability of individuals to sexual violence. Victims are often attacked when they venture outside the IDP camps to gather firewood or seek food. The disruption of humanitarian aid due to insecurity has compounded the challenges. Women and girls are being forced to take greater risks to meet critical needs. Food insecurity and the lack of livelihood opportunities have also led to women being forced to resort to harmful coping mechanisms, including prostitution.
Urgent International Response Needed to Protect Women & Children
The situation in North Kivu is an ugly reminder of the human toll of armed conflicts, with the worst price paid by women and children. Despite the horrors unleashed on the most vulnerable, international response has yet to meet the need of the hour.
With 25.4 million people affected, DRC has the highest number of people in need of humanitarian aid in the world and yet remains one of the most underfunded crises. The United Nations $2.6 billion Humanitarian Response Plan to assist 8.7 million people in 2024, is only 16% funded. At the end of 2023, World Food Programme reported the need for $546 million to sustain its emergency response in the region over the next six months, or be forced to sharply cut assistance, provide reduced support to fewer people — and over a shorter time period. The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, received only 41% of the required $298.9 million for the emergency situation in DRC. In the absence of sustained humanitarian support, strengthened protection measures for civilian populations, and increased funding for the Humanitarian Response Plan, especially for programs addressing GBV, displaced women are endlessly enduring violence day after day.
A Resource Curse
The conflict raging in DRC is largely for the control of the country's important raw materials—tin, tungsten, coltan and gold, collectively known as 3T or 3TG. Electronic products from cell phones, laptops to the surge in electric cars have boosted the demand and competition for DRC’s mineral wealth. 2018 Nobel Prize winner, Denis Mukwege, a Congolese doctor, condemned the global demand for these minerals for fueling conflict and consequently, rape in his country. In April 2024, lawyers representing the Congolese government notified Apple of concerns about its supply chain, stating “their products are tainted by the blood of the Congolese people.” International community and the multinational corporations who benefit from Congo’s mineral wealth have the primary responsibility to ensure the return of peace in the country.
Two neighboring countries, Rwanda and Uganda, are extensively involved in illegal exploitation of DRC’s mineral resources and the violence that has plagued the eastern region in the past three decades. The Rwanda-backed M23 has intensified its activities in recent years, resulting in the resurgence of widespread violence and massive displacement of people. For years, the United Nations has sounded the alarm over Rwanda’s continued assistance to the M23, putting forward solid evidence of the “direct involvement” of Rwandan Defense Forces in the conflict in eastern Congo-Kinshasa, as well as Rwanda’s provision of “weapons, ammunitions, and uniforms” to the M23 rebels. The United Nations has also implicated Uganda, which has allowed M23 “unhindered” access to its territory during its operations.
Despite this evidence, Western countries, especially the United States, have continued to provide support to the two countries, including military aid. This, despite the legal restrictions that are supposed to prohibit the U.S. from releasing International Military Education & Training (IMET) funds to countries in the African Great Lakes region that “facilitate or otherwise participate in destabilizing activities in a neighboring country, including aiding and abetting armed groups.” It was only in October 2023 that the U.S. State Department placed Rwanda on a blacklist for violating the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA) due to Rwandan support for M23, which recruits child soldiers. Support to Uganda continues.
Armed groups, competing for control of profitable minerals, will continue to unleash terror and perpetrate violent crimes against humanity until the impunity for the warring parties is brought to an end; Rwanda and Uganda end military support for M23; and the international community, including the United States, suspends military assistance to governments supporting armed groups. If not, the price of war and conflict will continue to be paid by women and children—victims of DRC’s “resource curse.”Keep ReadingShow Less
The Green Energy Revolution's Colonization of Africa
If capitalist interests continue to drive this crucial transition, which is all too likely, while global energy consumption isn’t scaled back radically, the amount of critical minerals needed to power the global future remains unfathomable.
Oct 12, 2024
Considered Angola’s crown jewel by many, Lobito is a colorful port city on the country’s scenic Atlantic coast where a nearly five-kilometer strip of land creates a natural harbor. Its white sand beaches, vibrant blue waters, and mild tropical climate have made Lobito a tourist destination in recent years. Yet under its shiny new facade is a history fraught with colonial violence and exploitation.
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to lay claim to Angola in the late sixteenth century. For nearly four centuries, they didn’t relent until a bloody, 27-year civil war with anticolonial guerillas (aided by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces) and bolstered by a leftist coup in distant Lisbon, Portugal’s capital, overthrew that colonial regime in 1974.
Lobito’s port was the economic heart of Portugal’s reign in Angola, along with the meandering 1,866-kilometer Benguela Railway, which first became operational in the early 1900s. For much of the twentieth century, Lobito was the hub for exporting to Europe agricultural goods and metals mined in Africa’s Copperbelt. Today, the Copperbelt remains a resource-rich region encompassing much of the Democratic Republic of Congo and northern Zambia.
Perhaps it won’t shock you to learn that, half a century after Portugal’s colonial control of Angola ended, neocolonialism is now sinking its hooks into Lobito. Its port and the Benguela Railway, which travels along what’s known as the Lobito Corridor, have become a key nucleus of China’s and the Western world’s efforts to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources in our hot new world. If capitalist interests continue to drive this crucial transition, which is all too likely, while global energy consumption isn’t scaled back radically, the amount of critical minerals needed to power the global future remains unfathomable. The World Economic Forum estimates that three billion tons of metals will be required. The International Energy Forum estimates that to meet the global goals of radically reducing carbon emissions, we’ll also need between 35 and 194 massive copper mines by 2050.
It should come as no surprise that most of the minerals from copper to cobalt needed for that transition’s machinery (including electric batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels) are located in Latin America and Africa. Worse yet, more than half (54%) of the critical minerals needed are on or near Indigenous lands, which means the most vulnerable populations in the world are at the most significant risk of being impacted in a deeply negative fashion by future mining and related operations.
Having lagged behind that country’s investments in Africa for years, the U.S. is now looking to make up ground.
When you want to understand what the future holds for a country in the “developing” world, as economists still like to call such regions, look no further than the International Monetary Fund (IMF). “With growing demand, proceeds from critical minerals are poised to rise significantly over the next two decades,” reports the IMF. “Global revenues from the extraction of just four key minerals — copper, nickel, cobalt, and lithium — are estimated to total $16 trillion over the next 25 years. Sub-Saharan Africa stands to reap over 10 percent of these accumulated revenues, which could correspond to an increase in the region’s GDP by 12 percent or more by 2050.”
Sub-Saharan Africa alone is believed to contain 30% of the world’s total critical mineral reserves. It’s estimated that the Congo is responsible for 70% of global cobalt output and approximately 50% of the globe’s reserves. In fact, the demand for cobalt, a key ingredient in most lithium-ion batteries, is rapidly increasing because of its use in everything from cell phones to electric vehicles. As for copper, Africa has two of the world’s top producers, with Zambia accounting for 70% of the continent’s output. “This transition,” adds the IMF, “if managed properly, has the potential to transform the region.” And, of course, it won’t be pretty.
While such critical minerals might be mined in rural areas of the Congo and Zambia, they must reach the international marketplace to become profitable, which makes Angola and the Lobito Corridor key to Africa’s booming mining industry.
In 2024, China committed $4.5 billion to African lithium mines alone and another $7 billion to investments in copper and cobalt mining infrastructure. In the Congo, for example, China controls 70% of the mining sector.
Having lagged behind that country’s investments in Africa for years, the U.S. is now looking to make up ground.
Zambia’s Copper Colonialism
In September 2023, on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in India, Secretary of State Antony Blinken quietly signed an agreement with Angola, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the European Union to launch the Lobito Corridor project. There wasn’t much fanfare or news coverage, but the United States had made a significant move. Almost 50 years after Portugal was forced out of Angola, the West was back, offering a $4 billion commitment and assessing the need to update the infrastructure first built by European colonizers. With a growing need for critical minerals, Western countries are now setting their sights on Africa and its green energy treasures.
“We meet at a historic moment,” President Joe Biden said as he welcomed Angolan President João Lourenço to Washington last year. Biden then called the Lobito project the “biggest U.S. rail investment in Africa ever” and affirmed the West’s interest in what the region might have to offer in the future. “America,” he added, “is all in on Africa… We’re all in with you and Angola.”
BothAfrica and the U.S., Biden was careful to imply, would reap the benefits of such a coalition. Of course, that’s precisely the kind of rhetoric we can expect when Western (or Chinese) interests are intent on acquiring the resources of the Global South. If this were about oil or coal, questions and concerns would undoubtedly be raised regarding America’s regional intentions. Yet, with the fight against climate change providing cover, few are considering the geopolitical ramifications of such a position — and even fewer acknowledging the impacts of massively increased mining on the continent.
In his book Cobalt Red, Siddharth Kara exposes the bloody conditions cobalt miners in the Congo endure, many of them children laboring against their will for days on end, with little sleep and under excruciatingly abusive conditions. The dreadful story is much the same in Zambia, where copper exports account for more than 70% of the country’s total export revenue. A devastating 126-page report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) from 2011 exposed the wretchedness inside Zambia’s Chinese-owned mines: 18-hour work days, unsafe working environments, rampant anti-union activities, and fatal workplace accidents. There is little reason to believe it’s much different in the more recent Western-owned operations.
“Friends tell you that there’s a danger as they’re coming out of shift,” a miner who was injured while working for a Chinese company told HRW. “You’ll be fired if you refuse, they threaten this all the time… The main accidents are from rock falls, but you also have electrical shocks, people hit by mining trucks underground, people falling from platforms that aren’t stable… In my accident, I was in a loading box. The mine captain… didn’t put a platform. So when we were working, a rock fell down and hit my arm. It broke to the extent that the bone was coming out of the arm.”
An explosion at one mine killed 51 workers in 2005 and things have only devolved since then. Ten workers died in 2018 at an illegal copper extraction site. In 2019, three mineworkers were burned to death in an underground shaft fire and a landslide at an open-pit copper mine in Zambia killed more than 30 miners in 2023. Despite such horrors, there’s a rush to extract ever more copper in Zambia. As of 2022, five gigantic open-pit copper mines were operating in the country, and eight more underground mines were in production, many of which are to be further expanded in the years ahead. With new U.S.-backed mines in the works, Washington believes the Lobito Corridor may prove to be the missing link needed to ensure Zambian copper will end up in green energy goods consumed in the West.
AI Mining for AI Energy
The office of KoBold Metals in quaint downtown Berkeley, California, is about as far away from Zambia’s dirty mines as you can get. Yet, at KoBold’s nondescript headquarters, which sits above a row of trendy bars and restaurants, a team of tech entrepreneurs diligently work to locate the next big mine operation in Zambia using proprietary Artificial Intelligence (AI). Backed by billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, KoBold bills itself as a green Silicon Valley machine, committed to the world’s green energy transition (while turning a nice profit).
It is in KoBold’s interest, of course, to secure the energy deposits of the future because it will take an immense amount of energy to support their artificially intelligent world. A recent report by the International Energy Agency estimates that, in the near future, electricity usage by AI data centers will increase significantly. As of 2022, such data centers were already utilizing 460 terawatt hours (TWh) but are on pace to increase to 1,050 TWh by the middle of the decade. To put that in perspective, Europe’s total energy consumption in 2023 was around 2,700 TWh.
“Anyone who’s in the renewable space in the western world… is looking for copper and cobalt, which are fundamental to making electric vehicles,” Mfikeyi Makayi, chief executive of KoBold in Zambia, explained to the Financial Times in 2024. “That is going to come from this part of the world and the shortest route to take them out is Lobito.”
Makayi wasn’t beating around the bush. The critical minerals in KoBold mines won’t end up in the possession of Zambia or any other African country. They are bound for Western consumers alone. KoBold’s CEO Kurt House is also honest about his intentions: “I don’t need to be reminded again that I’m a capitalist,” he’s been known to quip.
In July 2024, House rang his company’s investors with great news: KoBold had just hit the jackpot in Zambia. Its novel AI tech had located the largest copper find in more than a decade. Once running, it could produce upwards of 300,000 tons of copper annually — or, in the language investors understand, the cash will soon flow. As of late summer 2024, one ton of copper on the international market cost more than $9,600. Of course, KoBold has gone all in, spending $2.3 billion to get the Zambian mine operable by 2030. Surely, KoBold’s investors were excited by the prospect, but not everyone was as thrilled as them.
“The value of copper that has left Zambia is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Hold that figure in your mind, and then look around yourself in Zambia,” says Zambian economist Grieve Chelwa. “The link between resource and benefit is severed.”
Not only has Zambia relinquished the benefits of such mineral exploitation, but — consider it a guarantee — its people will be left to suffer the local mess that will result.
The Poisoned River
Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) is today the largest ore producer in Zambia, ripping out a combined two million tons of copper a year. It’s one of the nation’s largest employers, with a brutally long record of worker and environmental abuses. KCM runs Zambia’s largest open-pit mine, which stretches for seven miles. In 2019, the British-based Vedanta Resources acquired an 80% stake in KCM by covering $250 million of that company’s debt. Vedanta has deep pockets and is run by Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, affectionately known in the mining world as “the Metal King.”
One thing should be taken for granted: You don’t become the Metal King without leaving entrails of toxic waste on your coattails. In India, Agarwal’s alumina mines have polluted the lands of the Indigenous Kondh tribes in Orissa Province. In Zambia, his copper mines have wrecked farmlands and waterways that once supplied fish and drinking water to thousands of villagers.
The Kafue River runs for more than 1,500 kilometers, making it Zambia’s longest river and now probably its most polluted as well. Going north to south, its waters flow through the Copperbelt, carrying with them cadmium, lead, and mercury from KCM’s mine. In 2019, thousands of Zambian villagers sued Vedanta, claiming its subsidiary KCM had poisoned the Kafue River and caused insurmountable damage to their lands.
The British Supreme Court then found Vedanta liable, and the company was forced to pay an undisclosed settlement, likely in the millions of dollars. Such a landmark victory for those Zambian villagers couldn’t have happened without the work of Chilekwa Mumba, who organized communities and convinced an international law firm to take up the case. Mumba grew up in the Chingola region of Zambia, where his father worked in the mines.
“[T]here was some environmental degradation going on as a result of the mining activities. As we found, there were times when the acid levels of water was so high,” explained Mumba, the 2023 African recipient of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. “So there were very specific complaints about stomach issues from children. Children just really wander around the villages and if they are thirsty, they don’t think about what’s happening, they’ll just get a cup and take their drink of water from the river. That’s how they live. So they’ll usually get diseases. It’s hard to quantify, but clearly the impact was there.”
Sadly enough, though, despite that important legal victory, little has changed in Zambia, where environmental regulations remain weak and nearly impossible to enforce, which leaves mining companies like KCM to regulate themselves. A 2024 Zambian legislative bill seeks to create a regulatory body to oversee mining operations, but the industry has pushed back, making it unclear if it will ever be signed into law. Even if the law does pass, it may have little real-world impact on mining practices there.
The warming climate, at least to the billionaire mine owners and their Western accomplices, will remain an afterthought, as well as a justification to exploit more of Africa’s critical minerals. Consider it a new type of colonialism, this time with a green capitalist veneer. There are just too many AI programs to run, too many tech gadgets to manufacture, and too much money to be made.
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