Eastern DRC is usually described as a place without governance; a security vacuum where “conflict minerals” flow unchecked. This talk argues the opposite: the region isn't ungoverned,  it's governed by competing authorities. Armed groups like M23 don't extract minerals by force; they tax trade routes, license mining and transport, and adjudicate disputes, functioning, in practice, as parallel states.

Drawing on time spent in Goma and embedded with militia groups to understand their operational and economic systems firsthand, Kevin Banister will unpack how these parallel governance structures actually work, who profits, how legitimacy is built and enforced, and why global value chains (from your phone to your EV) run straight through them regardless. The talk then turns to what this means for development: why standard industrialisation and formalisation frameworks, which assume a state with a monopoly on authority, break down in eastern DRC and what more realistic interventions look like when that assumption doesn't hold.