Sawt Falasteen - Nobel winner Mukwege warns of predatory US deal for DR Congo

The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been riven by decades of conflict with multiple armed groups fighting over its mineral-rich territory, including the Rwanda-backed M23 that seized swathes of the region last year.

Washington brokered a peace deal between the DRC and Rwanda in December aimed at ending the long-running conflict on the insistence of US President Donald Trump.

The deal included an economic component aiming to secure access to the DRC's vast reserves of strategic minerals for US businesses.

However, the agreement failed to halt clashes in the east.

Mukwege won the 2018 Nobel prize in recognition of his decades of work as a surgeon treating female survivors of sexual violence in the eastern DRC.

Speaking to AFP on a visit to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Wednesday, Mukwege said the US peace deal "could be described as transactional at the outset".

"But today it looks more like predation. We give, but in return we don't receive the desired security," he said.

"It is quite clear that, as far as minerals are concerned, shipments are already leaving, but in return we are not receiving the security we need," he added.

French President Emmanuel Macron -- who also visited Nairobi this week to co-host a two-day France-Africa summit -- insisted that European former colonial powers were not "the predators of this century", directing criticism instead at China.

While Mukwege acknowledged that the African continent "needs to open up to the world when it comes to business", he cautioned that such deals must be fair otherwise they would harm Africans.

"Unfortunately, sometimes these deals are struck with a focus on individual power rather than the common good. And that is where Africans lose out," he said.

"That is simply taking Africa back to the era of slavery and colonisation, and that is unacceptable."

- 'Hostage' -

Since running unsuccessfully for the presidency in 2023, Mukwege has become a prominent opposition figure.

The surgeon told AFP that it was "not acceptable" that President Felix Tshisekedi was eying constitutional changes to enable him to stand for a third term in office.

"It would simply be an attempt to hold the population hostage and seize power by force," Mukwege said.

He warned that the suggestion of a referendum to pass the constitutional changes would likely exclude some 12 million people in the east in areas that are only loosely under the government's control.

This, he warned, could lead to a possible "balkanisation" of the vast central African country.

M.AbuKhalil--SF-PST