Before 1940, the US considered the African continent to be within the European sphere of influence. Africa was known as the “dark continent,” and was mysterious and difficult to explore. Americans, for the most part, knew little about it.
After 1940 things changed.
The US Launches a Nuclear Program
Concerned that Nazi Germany was on the verge of developing atomic weapons, the United States launched a nuclear program of its own in December 1941. It was called the Manhattan Project.
The research and development lab associated with the project was the Los Alamos Laboratory, located in the high desert of northern New Mexico, 35 miles from the state capital of Santa Fe.
The lab’s director, J. Robert Oppenheimer, is known as the ‘father of the atomic bomb’. Many of you have probably seen the movie Oppenheimer, 2023’s summer blockbuster about him.
Anyway, the lab ended up looking at several methods for developing bombs. One method required uranium, the other plutonium.
In the end, The U.S. dropped two types of bombs on Japan. The first, Little Boy, was a gun-type weapon with a uranium core. Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima. The second weapon, dropped on Nagasaki, was called Fat Man and was an implosion-type device with a plutonium core.
The Little Boy type of bomb had a much simpler design than the Fat Man model that had been tested at Trinity, and was later dropped on Nagasaki.
What’s important to know, though, regarding Little Boy’s development, is that the US didn’t have the uranium they needed to build it, and they weren’t sure where to get it. This is where Africa comes in – specifically, the Congo.
(Want to know more about the science? There are a couple of good sources listed at the end of the post.)
The Search for Uranium
After surveying the known uranium sources worldwide, it was concluded that the Shinkolobwe Mine in the Belgian Congo, the Eldorado Mine in Canada, and the Colorado Plateau in the United States were the three most important locations of uranium mining in the world.
The richest deposits were found in the Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo.
. . . the Congo ore contained as much as 7,000 times the concentration of uranium [as that] mined in the United States. Between 1942 and the late 1950s, the U.S. nuclear weapons program plant processed approximately 20,000 tons of uranium oxide from the Shinkolobwe mine.
In comparison, by the end of the war, the Colorado Plateau provided less than 1400 tons of uranium oxide.
Clearly, Africa’s Belgian Congo – neglected by America for years – was now strategically important to the US.
But there was a problem: US deposits of uranium were not robust enough to provide all of the uranium that was needed.
(That’s enough science for me. If you want more, check out “Designs of Two Bombs.“)
A Look Back: The Scramble for Africa
I’m sure most of you’ve heard mention of ‘the scramble for Africa’. I had, but I didn’t know until recently that the saying was first used in a conference held in Berlin in 1884-1885.
At the conference, the European nations – including Britain, France, and Germany – partitioned Africa among themselves. They colonized African territory so that they could acquire natural resources and expand their markets. The Congo was awarded to King Leopold II of Belgium. His Congo Free State lasted until 1908 when Leopold was forced to cede his personal control to the Belgian government.
A struggle for North Africa was ongoing from 1940-1943. While the Allies eventually took control of the region in the first major Allied victory of World War II, the US Army, fearing German invasion, began construction of strategically located air bases in other areas of the continent.
An Africa Section was created in America’s new intelligence service, the Office of Strategic Services (the OSS), the forerunner of today’s CIA. The new section grew rapidly. By the end of the war it had 93 agents on the African continent – 45 covert, 36 semi covert, and 12 overt.
The Congo was especially important.
The Congo
During World War II, Congolese mines – especially the heavily guarded uranium mine of Shinkolobwe – produced materials for the Allies.
The OSS station in the Belgian Congo had a singular focus: to protect the export of uranium from the Congo to the US and to keep it out of enemy hands.
As stated above, Congolese ore from the Shinkolobwe mine in Katanga Province was essential for the Manhattan Project. Its uranium was used in the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9, 1945.
In 1949, the West was shocked when the Soviet Union tested its own atomic bomb. After this occurrence, the US became even more determined to obtain all Congolese uranium available.
Efforts were ongoing to prevent Soviet access to the Shinkolobwe mine; security around the mine and the adjacent processing plant massively increased.
Shinkolobwe’s uranium underpinned the value of the Congo to the US throughout the 1950s. But there were other minerals also: in 1959 the Congo had about 9% of the world’s copper; 39% of cobalt (rising to 54% in 1960); 69% of industrial diamonds; and 6.5% of the world’s tin.
Several comments reinforce the importance of the Congo.
In 1995, Richard Bissell, a former CIA official, asserted:
In all of underdeveloped Africa, which really meant southern Africa up to the Sahara, the Congo was the most important prize in the contest between the Soviet Union and the United States.
In 1967, Kwame Nkrumah’s book Challenge of the Congo was published. In it he writes:
Foreign powers clearly regard the Congo as the key to the military control of Africa. . . . This is the reason why there are eight international airports, thirty principal and over a hundred secondary and local airports in the Congo.
Nkrumah went on to say that the Congo was a buffer state between independent Africa in the North and the lands beset by colonialism and white supremacy in the South . . .
The Congo gained independence on June 30, 1960. But the American desire to control the nation’s uranium held.
In her book, White Malice (2021), Susan Williams writes:
Intrinsic to the Cold War struggle was America’s wish to maintain absolute control over the uniquely rich uranium at the Shinkolobwe mine in the Congo. The aim was achieved in the 1960s and maintained until at least . . . 1997 …
After the Cold War
Warnings
The new world that Oppenheimer helped create and the nuclear nightmare he feared still exist today.
A recent article in The Conversation asserts:
Russian President Vladimir Putin is threatening to use nuclear weapons in his war in Ukraine. Iran is doing everything it can to develop nuclear weapons. China is expanding its nuclear arsenal. Hostile governments like China are stealing U.S. defense technologies, including from Los Alamos.
Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, writing in Scientific American asserts:
Oppenheimer became known as “the father of the atomic bomb.” Despite his misplaced satisfaction with his wartime service and technological achievement, he also became vocal about the need to contain this dangerous technology. . . .
Oppenheimer’s example holds lessons for us today, too. We must not make the same mistake with artificial intelligence as we made with nuclear weapons.
The Congo
Those of you with a literary bent may want to pick up John Le Carre’s 2006 novel The Mission Song. I’m reading it now.
In the book you’ll read about an African interpreter named Salvo who’s asked to act as interpreter at a meeting “between a syndicate of anonymous business interests and key Congolese power brokers, held in a secret location under the aegis of British intelligence.”
On the surface the characters include bureaucrats, mercenaries, and intelligence contractors. But forces behind them are a “who’s who of American corporate and political power.”
You can read the full book review here.
While economic interests in Africa have diversified since the development of the atomic bomb and the search for uranium, the ‘scramble for Africa’ continues.
Addendum:
President Biden is designating nearly a million acres of land near the Grand Canyon as a new national monument to protect the area from uranium mining. The area is sacred to Native American tribes.
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Featured Photo: Wikipedia
Selected Sources:
The Science Behind the Drama of Oppenheimer
If you’d like more information on uranium mining and the US weapons program click here.
The role of Congolese uranium in the Project was shrouded in secrecy. The Trinity test took place in New Mexico in July 1945. You can read about Trinity and its legacy here.
The role of Congolese uranium in the Project was shrouded in secrecy. The Trinity test took place in New Mexico in July 1945. You can read about Trinity and its legacy here.
