In scale and scope, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are facing the world’s largest humanitarian and human rights crises. The numbers are staggering. In Sudan, more than 12 million people have been displaced and 30 million are in critical need of food and medical aid. In Congo, roughly 8 million people have been forced to leave their homes, while 28 million face acute food insecurity.
Compassion fatigue, hyper-politicized news cycles, and other factors have resulted in these two conflicts being largely off the world’s radar. But whether they know it or not, global consumers remain deeply connected to Sudan and Congo.
In addition to a range of everyday products, some of the most popular sports teams and leagues in the world are linked to these conflicts. The United Arab Emirates and Rwanda—the two main external contributors to Sudan and Congo’s human devastation—have struck deals with the U.S. National Basketball Association (NBA) and English Premier League teams, to name just two.
But this also creates an avenue for ordinary people to push back. Fan-based pressure in response to these sportswashing arrangements yielded its first victory earlier this month, as Bayern Munich announced changes to a sponsorship deal with Rwanda. Now the stage is set for further action.
Beyond sports, the list of products we consume that use ingredients from Congo or Sudan is endless. From Sudan, they include soda, energy drinks, cookies, cakes, marshmallows, candy, watercolor paints, pharmaceutical drugs, lipstick, shoe polish, incense, postage stamps, and newspapers. From Congo, the list includes electronics products (such as phones and laptops); tin cans; coins; airplane engines; cameras; medical implants; and anything with a rechargeable battery, including electric and hybrid cars.
In Sudan, the media focuses on oil and gold, which have indeed fueled conflict for decades. But there’s another ubiquitous raw material that uniquely links that country to global consumers: gum arabic. It’s a natural substance harvested from acacia trees that is used to mix and thicken ingredients in many of items listed above.
Sudan has become the world’s biggest exporter of gum arabic due to its extensive groves, producing 80 percent of the world’s supply. However, most of Sudan’s gum arabic is now being trafficked from rebel-held areas by a genocidal paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, further fueling the conflict. (The Association for International Promotion of Gums (AIPG), an industry lobbying group, said in a January statement that it “does not see any evidence of links between gum [arabic] supply chain and the competing [Sudanese] forces.”)
In Congo, the links are even deeper and long-standing. The history of exploitation started with slave-raiding shortly after Europeans reached the shores of Africa, continuing with ivory and rubber during the colonial era, and then copper and uranium during the 20th century. In the late 1990s, demand began to explode for cell phones, laptops, and video game consoles. This triggered a spectacular increase in the price of the three Ts—tin, tantalum, tungsten—that power most electronic products. Some of the world’s largest deposits of these three minerals are in Congo.
This new source of consumer demand generated yet another cycle of violent looting in Congo. The result was one of the deadliest wars globally since World War II, which officially ran from 1998-2003 but whose ripple effects continue to this day. This time, Rwanda and Uganda led the plunder while multinational corporations profited. Estimates suggest that more than 5 million people perished as a result. Rwanda’s latest invasion of eastern Congo over the past year is just the most recent chapter in this centuries-long raw materials feeding frenzy. Rwanda and Uganda have thousands of troops in Congo, reportedly focused on looting the three Ts and quantities of gold that are worth billions.
Today, green technologies are stoking global demand for cobalt and copper, which are key ingredients in lithium-ion batteries, raising new concerns about massive corruption, safety, and child labor in Congo’s vast mines. The country produces more than 70 percent of the world’s cobalt, and Congolese child miners are hand-digging a good portion of the supply. China has become a major player in this latest feeding frenzy, although the United States is playing catch-up, as the Trump administration negotiates a series of minerals and peace deals with the regimes in Congo and Rwanda.
Today’s conflicts in Sudan and Congo wouldn’t be nearly as deadly or persistent if not for the two main governments that are fueling and profiting off them. In Sudan’s case, it is the United Arab Emirates. In Congo’s, it is both the UAE and Rwanda.
The UAE is by far the largest importer of conflict gold from both Sudan and Congo, totaling billions of dollars a year. Rwanda exports massive amounts of conflict minerals smuggled from Congo and into global markets. (The UAE has denied allegations of support for the Rapid Support Forces as well as for importing conflict gold from Sudan and Congo. Rwanda has denied all involvement in smuggling minerals from Congo and similarly denies having troops in Congo.)
If Rwanda and the UAE faced sustained pressure, they might reconsider the extent and nature of their involvement in Africa’s wars. To date, however, these governments are engaged in high-profile and often successful efforts to launder their reputations on the international stage.
For both countries, these efforts have often put international athletics front and center. It’s a phenomenon sometimes called sportswashing—countries using their involvement in or hosting sporting events to whitewash their reputations. Think Benito Mussolini hosting the 1934 World Cup in Italy and Adolf Hitler hosting the 1936 Summer Olympics in Germany.
Rwanda’s visionary but authoritarian president, Paul Kagame, loves basketball and soccer, and thus he has pursued partnerships with the NBA in the United States and soccer teams throughout Europe. Rwanda co-sponsors and hosts a new NBA-owned league in Africa, the Basketball Africa League, which holds some of its playoff games in a new $100 million arena in Rwanda’s capital city. (When asked for comment, NBA spokesperson Mark Bass told Foreign Policy, “We believe engagement through sports is positive, and we’ll continue to follow U.S. government guidance and policy regarding the more than 200 countries and territories around the world where we engage fans.”)
For soccer, Rwanda has partnerships with Arsenal, Bayern Munich, Atlético Madrid, and Paris Saint-Germain (none of whom responded to our requests for comment). The results include the words “Visit Rwanda” printed on jersey sleeves while thousands of Rwandan troops oversee massive resource looting and human rights abuses in Congo.
The UAE is a much bigger player in the sportswashing world. Emiratis have deals with Formula 1 racing, golf, tennis, horse racing, wrestling, and other sports. Like Rwanda, Emirati leaders appear to have invested most heavily in the NBA and soccer. The UAE underwrites an in-season NBA tournament called the Emirates NBA Cup. And the recent sale of the Los Angeles Lakers for $10 billion—the biggest in professional sports franchise history—looks like it may have been quietly underwritten with Emirati money. Just months before the sale, the U.S. company that bought the team, TWG, had raised $10 billion from Mubadala Capital, the investment arm of the UAE sovereign wealth fund. (Mubadala does not hold a direct stake in the Lakers. TWG and Mubadala did not respond to requests for comment.)
In soccer, Emirati investments are even more noticeable. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the vice president of the UAE and younger brother of the Emirati president, owns the Manchester City team, among other European clubs, and has struck major investment deals—such as shirt sponsorships and stadium naming rights—on behalf of the UAE with teams including Arsenal and Real Madrid (neither of which responded to requests for comment). His sports investment group is the principal owner of a New York City soccer team that will be building a $780 million stadium in Queens right across from Citi Field, the stadium for the New York Mets baseball team. All this while the sheikh allegedly serves as the point person for his government’s relationship with a militia committing ethnic cleansing and mass rape in Sudan.
In the face of these cynical efforts, what can ordinary consumers and sports fans do?
Regarding Rwanda, Arsenal supporters in the United Kingdom have started a campaign—Gunners for Peace—to end Arsenal’s uniform deal with Rwanda. They’ve initiated a cheeky campaign that basically says it would be better to visit anywhere in the world than Rwanda, even the north London neighborhood of Tottenham, home to Arsenal’s hated rival, Tottenham Hotspur. The activists have a video called “Visit Tottenham” that features dreary footage of Tottenham as a way of mocking the Visit Rwanda logo on the Arsenal uniforms.
The fan group Arsenal Supporters Trust conducted a survey of their members as to whether they want the relationship between Rwanda and Arsenal to continue and found that 90 percent of the respondents want the contract to end “as soon as possible or when the current contract ends in 2026.”
The first crack in the armor came in early August. Bayern Munich announced that it would reduce its “Visit Rwanda” branding and replace the sponsorship deal with an arrangement focused on supporting the development of young Rwandan soccer players. Combined with the buzz around Arsenal possibly dropping Rwanda as a sponsor, this should help supercharge anti-sportswashing efforts in Europe and the United States.
Civil society organizing around the UAE’s connections to mass atrocities is at an early stage. Speak Out on Sudan, a nongovernmental organization campaign coordinated by the nonprofit Refugees International, is calling out the UAE’s complicity in Sudanese atrocities. In the tradition of the anti-apartheid movement, the blood diamonds and conflict minerals campaigns, and the Save Darfur efforts, activists will work over the coming years to affect Emirati calculations toward these strife-torn states.
Congo’s and Sudan’s problems are not just Congolese and Sudanese problems. They are also global problems, requiring global solutions. For a long time, Sudan and Congo have been blood-stained by massive, unchecked, transnational greed. Recognizing how this implicates all of us, in the food we eat, the electronics products we use, and the sports we watch, is the first step toward fighting back.