The DRC’s American story
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The DRC’s American story
America’s links with the DRC stretched back a long time and makes for fascinating reading.
By Leon Louw for WhyAfrica
In 2009 I got wind of a captivating story.
Through the grapevine I heard that the French nuclear company Orano (the predecessor of Areva) signed a uranium exploration deal in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The exploration would be focussed on an old mining site called Shinkolobwe.
Shinkolobwe rang a bell.
I consulted a few history books (that was the good old days of library’s not ChatGPT). And so began my obsession with the history of the DRC and especially America’s links with the country.
I wrote Shinkolobwe in my notebook (which I still have today) and put the DRC and visiting Shinkolobwe on my bucket list of things to do.
Richest uranium ore in the world
In its heyday Shinkolobwe, in southeastern DRC, produced the richest uranium ore in the world.
It’s no secret that Shinkolobwe’s uranium was used in America’s Manhattan Project and ultimately in the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan to end World War II in 1945.
America’s links with the DRC stretches back more than 126 years.
United States geologists, engineers, intelligence officers and military personal were active in what was then the Belgian Congo from the early 1900s.
During WWII the US Army Corps of Engineers and mining specialists were deployed to secure and protect uranium production. The mine’s location was removed from maps for security reasons.
Between 1942 and 1944 Shinkolobwe’s ore was put on trains to Ilebo in the Congo, transported on river barges down the Kasai and Congo Rivers and railed to the Matadi Port.
From Matadi it was shipped across the Atlantic to Staten Island, New York where the ore was stored in a warehouse.
Today Staten Island is a US National Park historic site.
Will Shinkolobwe re-open?
Shinkolobwe was initially an open pit but later evolved into becoming a deep underground mine, which remain sealed today.
The records say that “ore quality was so exceptional that even waste rock contained commercial-grade uranium”
For several reasons Areva never re-opened Shinkolobwe.
In 2011 I did do a story about the DRC and visited the Congo Basin in the East of the country.
But I couldn’t get to Shinkolobwe.
The image below is an aerial shot of the magnificent forest in the Congo Basin where I spent some time in 2011. Image credit: Leon Louw for WhyAfrica
Visiting Shinkolobwe is still on my bucket list.
More than 126 years after the first American geologist set foot the DRC, America still regards it as one of the most strategic countries in the world.
The DRC’s American story