The world is moving from the age of oil to the age of so‑called “green minerals.” Electric‑vehicle batteries, smart grids, wind turbines and solar panels all rest on cobalt, lithium, manganese, copper and a range of rare metals. A significant share of these critical resources lies in Africa, yet for most African citizens this geological wealth has not translated into social welfare, stability, or genuine sovereignty.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is at the heart of this paradox. It produces the majority of the world’s cobalt – a metal essential to today’s battery technologies – and possesses immense reserves of copper and other strategic minerals. Yet large parts of the country, especially in the east, remain trapped in chronic insecurity, weak governance and humanitarian crises.

This article proposes a way to read that paradox: a mental and political model we call the “contradiction trap.” It is a pattern by which dominant powers construct and exploit contradictions inside target societies – between law and reality, ethics and outcomes, narrative and daily experience – so that the system remains dependent and fragmented even when it is formally decolonised.

If African countries can recognise, map and deliberately exit this contradiction trap, they can turn their mineral, demographic and geographic strengths into the foundations of a responsible economic order. BRICS, and especially an expanded BRICS+, can become one of the institutional spaces where this new mindset is translated into concrete financial instruments, industrial projects and diplomatic coalitions.

1. The Architecture of the Contradiction Trap

The contradiction trap is not a conspiracy slogan. It is a pattern we can observe empirically in many post‑colonial contexts, where the same actors who speak the language of peace, human rights and sustainable development help to design rules, contracts and narratives that keep conflict and dependency structurally in place.

It operates on three interlocking levels:
1) legal and institutional design,
2) so‑called ethical tools with perverse effects,
3) psychological and narrative engineering.

1.1 Legal and institutional design for managed conflict

At the legal level, the international system produces resolutions, sanctions regimes and technical committees that seem to aim at ending violence. In practice, they often manage and contain violence rather than resolving its structural causes.

In the DRC, the UN Security Council has maintained an arms embargo, a panel of experts and multiple peacekeeping mandates for years. These mechanisms document violations and recommend sanctions, yet they coexist with an economic and logistical architecture that still allows armed groups and foreign actors to benefit from the exploitation and export of minerals from conflict zones. The result is a form of “governed disorder”: enough control to reassure markets and diplomatic forums, without a real transformation of power relations on the ground.

1.2 Ethical tools with reverse outcomes

The second layer of the trap consists of tools that are framed as moral or humanitarian but produce outcomes opposite to their declared purpose. A classic example is the family of “conflict minerals” laws adopted by Western powers. These regulations were ostensibly designed to prevent armed groups in eastern Congo from financing their operations through the trade of tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold.

In practice, many international buyers and manufacturers reacted defensively: rather than investing in traceability and local governance, they simply withdrew from high‑risk Congolese regions. Artisanal miners were left without legitimate buyers, incomes collapsed, and smuggling networks became even more attractive. Armed groups adapted, new intermediaries emerged, and the trade continued – only more opaque and more profitable for those able to navigate it.

An instrument presented as morally superior ended up deepening poverty and fragility, while allowing global supply chains to keep accessing Congolese minerals through indirect channels.

1.3 Narrative engineering and social self‑erasure

The third layer is narrative. When the daily experience of communities (violence, unemployment, land dispossession) radically contradicts the official story told by international institutions (peace, human rights, responsible sourcing), a deep psychological tension emerges.

Over time, this tension can lead to two unhealthy outcomes. Some citizens internalise a sense of inferiority: “we are incapable of governing ourselves, the problem is our culture or our people.” Others conclude that all politics is deceit and that collective action is pointless. In both cases, the energy that could be directed towards structural change is redirected into social fragmentation, resentment and withdrawal from public life.

That is the essence of the contradiction trap: the combination of legal design, ethical discourse and narrative framing that keeps a society oscillating between self‑blame and cynicism, without building the confidence and clarity needed to reform its institutions.

2. Eastern Congo: A Compressed History of the Trap

Eastern Congo is a condensed illustration of this architecture. Several historical layers are superimposed:

• The colonial legacy of extractive borders and weak, highly centralised governance.
• The spillover of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the flight of militias and the emergence of groups such as the FDLR.
• Local disputes over land and citizenship between communities often labelled as “indigenous” and “Rwandophone”.
• The discovery and global electrification of cobalt, coltan and other minerals that suddenly made these territories strategically vital.

On top of this, neighbouring states and global corporations have pursued overlapping agendas. Armed movements like M23 have taken control of key towns, trade routes and mining sites. The Congolese state, weakened by decades of crisis, struggles to project legitimate authority. International missions, sanctions regimes and corporate procurement policies operate around this landscape but rarely change its fundamental logic.

The Congolese case is therefore not an anomaly. It is an extreme version of a wider pattern in which the very resources that should finance development become the fuel of a managed disorder, keeping societies in a perpetual transition that never fully arrives.

3. A Mindset for Exiting the Trap: Towards Responsible Development

Escaping the contradiction trap does not start with a cheque or a peacekeeping mission. It starts with a change of mindset among African elites, institutions and communities. We can summarise this mindset in three movements:

1) consciously mapping contradictions,
2) redefining value within supply chains,
3) redesigning diplomacy from single‑partner dependency to intelligent multi‑alignment.

3.1 Mapping contradictions instead of internalising them

The first movement is intellectual and civic. Societies must learn to name and publicly debate contradictions such as:

• Actors who present themselves as mediators of peace while benefiting economically from prolonged instability.
• Laws and standards that claim to protect communities but in practice cut them off from markets.
• Narratives that depict Africa simultaneously as an eternal victim and as inherently incapable of good governance.

Turning these contradictions into objects of analysis – in universities, parliaments, media, and civic forums – breaks the spell of self‑erasure. It allows citizens to see that their suffering is not the result of some cultural defect, but of specific institutional designs that can be changed.

3.2 Redefining value in supply chains

The second movement is economic. African countries cannot remain exporters of raw ore if they wish to build resilient, just societies. Mineral wealth must be integrated into strategies for industrialisation and technological learning.

This implies, at minimum:
• Requiring a substantial share of processing and value addition to happen within the continent as a condition of mining licenses and export contracts.
• Using continental frameworks – such as the African Mining Vision and the African Continental Free Trade Area – to harmonise policies and avoid destructive tax competition between neighbours.
• Designing financial instruments that recognise the collateral value of in‑situ resources without forcing countries into unsustainable debt.

In the Congolese case, this could take the form of integrated value‑chain projects linking cobalt and copper extraction to refining, precursor production and battery assembly in regional industrial hubs, rather than simply feeding global factories elsewhere.

3.3 Re‑wiring diplomacy: beyond the West–China binary

The third movement is diplomatic. Too often, African foreign policy is framed as a choice between Western partners on one side and China (or other emerging powers) on the other. This binary keeps the continent reactive and prevents it from setting its own terms.

An exit from the trap requires intelligent multi‑alignment: working with all major players – West, East and South – but on the basis of African priorities and benchmarks. Agreements with any partner should be assessed against the same criteria: do they increase domestic value addition, strengthen institutions and respect environmental and social standards, or do they perpetuate extractive patterns under new labels?

4. Why BRICS Can Be a Natural Space for This Model

In this context, BRICS – especially in its expanded BRICS+ form – is not a magical alternative to the West, but it can be an important institutional space for implementing a new African mindset.

Several features make BRICS particularly relevant:
• Its official discourse emphasises multipolarity, reform of global financial governance and respect for the choices of the Global South.
• The New Development Bank (NDB) provides a platform for financing infrastructure and industrial projects without the same conditionalities often attached to traditional creditors.
• BRICS members include both major resource‑importing economies and technologically advanced manufacturers that urgently need stable, responsible access to African minerals.

If African states approach BRICS passively, they risk reproducing extractive patterns with new partners. But if they come with a clear agenda – grounded in value addition, transparency and environmental responsibility – BRICS can become a laboratory for a different type of integration and co‑development.

5. From Theory to Practice: Four Policy Pillars for African States

Translating this conceptual framework into policy requires at least four complementary pillars.

5.1 Transparency and structural diagnosis

African governments, think‑tanks and civil‑society organisations should jointly develop:
• regular mapping of how minerals from conflict‑affected areas enter global supply chains,
• impact assessments of existing regulations and trade agreements on local livelihoods,
• and public reports that highlight contradictions between official rhetoric and concrete practices.

Such transparency tools empower negotiators and citizens alike. They shift the conversation from abstract morality to verifiable structures.

5.2 New generation mining and corridor contracts

A second pillar is contractual. New agreements around mines, transport corridors and ports should:
• mandate minimum levels of domestic processing and local procurement,
• integrate binding social and environmental safeguards,
• and be aligned with continental industrialisation strategies rather than negotiated in isolation country by country.

Export bans or quotas on raw ore can be powerful tools if they are part of a coherent plan to build refining and manufacturing capacity. If they are improvised without industrial backing, they risk simply shifting trade routes while leaving the underlying dependency intact.

5.3 Aligning African corridors with BRICS value chains

Key transport corridors – from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean and from Southern Africa to the Great Lakes – should be envisioned as backbones of regional value chains, not just as export pipelines.

This means co‑financing industrial parks, training centres and logistics hubs along the corridors, including with BRICS actors and institutions such as the NDB, under governance arrangements that guarantee African ownership and fair distribution of benefits.

5.4 An Africa–BRICS compact for responsible critical minerals

Finally, African states could collectively propose an “Africa–BRICS Compact for Responsible Critical Minerals” built on three principles:

• Recognition of African policy frameworks (such as the African Mining Vision) as the reference for cooperation.
• Commitment to value‑addition targets, technology transfer and skills development in African partner countries.
• Joint monitoring mechanisms including African institutions, BRICS partners and local communities.

Such a compact would not magically solve deep historical injustices, but it would mark a clear departure from the passive role that Africa has too often played in global resource politics.

Conclusion: Africa as Architect, Not Victim

The age of green minerals will define the next decades of global politics and economics. Whether Africa emerges from this era as a mere quarry for other peoples’ transitions, or as a co‑architect of a responsible global order, depends largely on the mindset it applies to its own resources, institutions and alliances.

Recognising the contradiction trap – the gap between moral language and material structures, between promised peace and managed instability – is the first step. The second is to deliberately construct new legal, economic and diplomatic arrangements that align mineral wealth with social justice, ecological care and genuine sovereignty.

BRICS, if approached with clarity and ambition, can be one of the arenas where this transformation begins. But the driving force must be African: a generation of leaders, thinkers and citizens ready to move from being objects of other people’s strategies to authors of their own responsible development story.

Alireza Mohammadi, Coordinator of House of Wisdom
Global Order Expert