The World's Poorest Country is Sitting on $24 Trillion

With GDP per capita of just $2 per day, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the poorest, if not the poorest nation on Earth. However, this does not have to be the case. The country has massive deposits of rare earth minerals including Cobalt, which is an essential input to the production of lithium-ion batteries. The mineral resources are estimated to be worth $24 trillion. So why is the DRC so poor?

0:00 - 2:50 Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
2:51 - 3:54 Brilliant
3:55 - 5:41 The Congo Crisis
5:42 - 9:03 Lack of investment
9:04 - 11:46 Extreme poverty
11:47 - 13:50 Self-sufficiency
13:51 National leaderboard

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[orboakin]

Another great video, friend. Congo is a sad example of wasted potential borne out of bad external and internal factors. As a African myself (Nigerian) it annoys me when most people only attribute Africa's current problems to "colonialism or racism", effectively removing personal responsibility of us Africans, and ignore more important factors like geography, climate, socioeconomic systems, political unity and leadership. Thanks for focusing on those areas in this video regarding Congo.

[moors]

A friend of mine (we worked as adjunct professors one year at the same institution) who had worked in the copper mines in Congo for six months in the 1980's . He was on loan from the mines in South Africa where he was a mining engineer at the time. His company sent him on loan to the copper mine under a contract with the mine administration. He said it was not very good living conditions. The water was not sanitary and the ability to get goods was limited to whatever the company had in its commissary, and he did not dare leave the mine site.

[DogokonPlays]

I was able to visit DRC for a conference, there are 2 sides there. Rich people live in good conditions in gated areas, and if you go 1 street down, you can see people living in harsh conditions and some teenagers lying on the ground because of "moonshine" etc.

[MiningTheWorldYT]

To add to your point at 6:46, most of the DRC's mineral wealth is concentrated in Katanga Province, which is so far and disconnected from DRC's ports that it's essentially a landlocked state within a state. Mining companies in Katanga ship through Tanzania, Kenya, Angola, Namibia, Mozambique and even South Africa, journeys which can take weeks and involve multiple border crossings.

[SirBoggins]

We should take into consideration that the Congo is essentially filled with warlords and so, the government cannot accept responsibility for making deals, as there's barely any of it left.

[Astriker]

Possibly the best example of several important economic concepts at play in the span of a 15 minute video I’ve ever seen. Great content.

[Verpal]

Living in Hong Kong must be extremely tough, hard to imagine how to forage for food in the concrete post apocalyptic wasteland with the economic rating of 0.

[bolt]

I appreciate you putting your sources on screen when you are referring to them. But if you could also put links in the description that would be great.

[SirBoggins]

Speaking of Africa, you should take a look into the East African Federation and its economy and how it'd effect the rest of the region and of Africa itself.

[EEVblog]

Nice work. Is there a link to the economic leader board somewhere, like a public spreadsheet?

[joewanyoike]

Thanks EE for honouring your pledge to cover more African countries. Special request ; can you do a video on Kenya, I would really look forward to watching it.

[PJTierney]

Small editing observation: I see your font has changed from a serif typeface to (what I assume is) DIN.

Just wondering why. This isn’t a criticism as I like DIN, but I also quite liked the previous typeface choices as well and was curious about the change 🙂

[micaelsantos]

Very very interesting, as always. When will we see one of these about Portugal. Once (one of) the richest country in the world and now with one of the highest debt ratio in Europe. So many possibilities but we keep wasting our resources... Let's hope you'll have time for this one. Congrats and continue the great job.

[jfhucka]

Another thing you didn’t mention is that it is very hard to value bartering. If everyone is bartering their own good they “specialize” in making and they barter with one another then you cannot track economic value in a currency like dollars.

[aroto]

Thank you for another great video. Even though I don't know anything about economics I can follow and understand these videos pretty easily and learn something new. Keep going with the countries, I love learning about the DRC, Nauru, or other countries I wouldn't bother looking up, but now i know something about them, and through that you also understand economic principles and how the world works in general. Keep it up 💛

[frankunderbush]

I think it would be a lot more useful to compare GDP per capita at PPP. That's a better comparison of how well a nation is doing at an individual level. (Still has a lot of the issues as nominal GDP per capita but much more "fair" or "realistic")

[theconqueringram]

I've been researching the DRC for years, trying to figure out it's economics, make sense of its issues and hopefully find a light at the end of the tunnel. This video does make figuring the country's economic conditions easier.

[lasvegasluca]

Every family has that one person who will break the family's financial struggle, I hope you become the one 😊

[jannyboe]

Congo had a difficult start as a nation. Different industries had interrests in the country and wanted to keep or even expand their influence. So they created rebellions, military coups etc. Resulting in a corrupt elite total negligent of the country and the people. This will require some very morally strong people to pull Congo out of the mire. I hope they will emerge one day.

[bruns.like.spoons]

This was a particularly fascinating and informational video. I love them all, but this one really opened my eyes to how things work elsewhere in the world. Well done!