Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo signed a US-brokered peace agreement last Friday, raising hopes for an end to fighting that has killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands more.

The agreement marks a breakthrough in talks held by the US President Donald Trump also aim to attract billions of dollars of Western investment to a region rich in tantalum, gold, cobalt, copper, lithium and other minerals.

At a ceremony with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Department of State, the two countries’ foreign ministers signed the agreement pledging to implement a 2024 deal that would see Rwandan troops withdraw from eastern DR Congo within 90 days.

Five months ago, with a single social media post, Trump put half a million people in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) at risk when he announced the closure of USAID – the single biggest aid donor in the country.

Critics insist Uthat the US’s main interest in the agreement is to further foreign extraction of eastern DRC’s rare earth minerals, which could lead to a replay of the violence seen in past decades, instead of a de-escalation.