After some reshuffles at the Suluhu crew – Ben Radley recently joined as the managing editor for the Suluhu working papers – we are now able to run our second publication. After Babwine’s and Ruvunangiza’s paper on mining cooperatives in the Kivus, we now feature Thomas Salter and Gregory Mthembu-Salter with a riposte on an academic piece on mineral traceability in eastern Congo.

Responding to ‘Terr(it)or(ies) of Peace? The Congolese Mining Frontier and the Fight against “Conflict Minerals”’ – an article published 2016 in the journal Antipode – the authors attempt to draw attention to how the critique of the existing policy framework for reducing conflict funding in the Great Lakes Region is made possible by the privilege of an academic viewpoint. In this instance, that viewpoint appears to obscure how messy the nature of the compromises in policy formulation and implementation inevitably are. In the absence of a clear articulation of an alternative policy framework for reducing conflict funding, they risk weakening the already shaky resolve to progress from reducing conflict funding associated with tin, tantalum and tungsten supply chains in the Great Lakes Region to implement a program for the more problematic case of gold.

You can read and download the Suluhu working paper #2 here and drop Ben a line if you are interested to submit a manuscript.