Congo-Kinshasa seems such a dismal country. Your first USGS article notes that at least 3 million people have been killed, recently. Mineral rights disappear arbitrarily by government decree. A mineral discovery quickly leads to a renewed civil war as various factions try to grab it. Half of eastern Congo is "Kagamist" (Rwandan Tutsi Pres. Paul Kagame) and the other half is with the exiled Hutu genocidistes. UN Peacekeepers and other outsiders are coolly murdered, as are the locals en masse.
I met a US medic who had vaccinated people in Congo villages a few years ago. When he passed through later, all the people with vaccination scars had had their vaccinated limbs hacked off. Nice people.
Last year I wandered alone happily in the cities and back country of Ghana; I dropped in on some gold mines. I had a wonderful time everywhere and the whole place seemed friendly and civil. If I'd tried that in Congo, I'd be dead.
I read the book "King Leopold's Ghost" -- not only is Congo horrifying now, it has been horrifying for at least 150 years. The Belgians were awful, chopping off hands of those natives who failed to make their rubber quotas. Mobutu was awful. The resource-grabbing governments and factions now are awful. (And what business has a country like Zimbabwe in the Congo anyway?)
West Africa has a long and rich cultural history: kingdoms, empires, sagas, art, scholarship, coastal castles, trading routes, varied cultures, etc. What history does Congo have? Basically huts and horror. The reason King Leopold of the Belgians originally grabbed the Congo around 1880 was that there was basically nothing there and nobody else had wanted it.
An old scotsman in the tropics once told me "Where the bugs are bad is where the money's to be made." That's a reason to invest in Congo, I guess. Congo and Sudan are arguably the world's worst countries now. And mineral or oil discoveries just seem to make them even worse.
[ duplicate of message on West Africa Gold Exploration board ]
