The D.R. Congo holds some the world’s largest deposits of copper, diamond, cobalt, manganese, and other important resources and is home to the Congo River—the world’s second most powerful river after the Amazon, and it continues to garner international attention because of its vast rain forest. Despite these rich, natural resources and potential, the D.R. Congo is known as a geological scandal and is ranked among the poorest countries, as it has been plagued by failed leadership, bad governance, and conflict for the past two decades.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele is a writer, foreign policy analyst, and independent journalist. Dizolele is a professorial lecturer in African studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, and he is the author of the forthcoming biography Mobutu: The Rise and Fall of the Leopard King (Random House). He served as an election monitor with the Carter Center in Congo in 2011 and 2006 and embedded as a reporter with UN peacekeepers in Congo’s Ituri district and South Kivu province. Dizolele received a BA in political science and French from Southern Utah University and an International MBA and an MPP from the University of Chicago. He is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and is fluent in French, Norwegian, Spanish, Swahili, Kikongo, and Lingala and is proficient in Danish and Swedish.