In this episode of Micro Journeys Inside Access, host Daniel Marrujo sits down with Mvemba Dizolele, Managing Director, Dizolele Advisory at the African Land Forces Summit to explore a continent often misunderstood by the outside world. Dizolele, a professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS, former senior fellow and director of the Africa Program at CSIS, and host of his own Africa Program podcast, brings decades of expertise to a wide-ranging conversation covering cybersecurity, mobile money innovation, drone technology, and the geopolitics of critical minerals. The discussion moves fluidly between grassroots stories of African youth using technology to organize and connect, and high-level analysis of how global powers are competing for access to the continent’s resources.
At the center of the conversation is a tension between extraction and partnership. Dizolele traces a throughline from the colonial-era rubber trade in Congo to today’s race for rare earth minerals, cobalt, and lithium, resources critical to modern technology and clean energy. He points to historical examples, including the little-known fact that uranium used in the Manhattan Project came from Congo, to illustrate how the continent has long fueled global progress without receiving proportional benefit. The episode raises a pressing question: as the U.S. and other powers seek access to Africa’s critical minerals, will history repeat itself, or can a new model of mutual benefit emerge?
Dizolele points to a different model already proven elsewhere: the kind of technology transfer and capability-building the U.S. provided to South Korea and Taiwan, as a blueprint for how partnership, rather than pure extraction, can help African nations build their own industrial base while still meeting global demand.