BBC News - DR Congo: Cursed by its natural wealth

Congo has given the world so much. It has given slaves, ivory, rubber, copper, uranium, diamonds, tin, cobalt, and coltan to develop the western world.
In return, it's people live in deadly extreme poverty. I see it every day. They try to survive without clean water, basic health care, electricity, roads, basic food and more.
Read Dan Snow's article for about Congo's giving. Oops! It's receives charity and foreign aid to survive another day so they can keep on giving.
The full article at http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24396390
(excerpt) The Democratic Republic of Congo is potentially one of the richest countries on earth, but colonialism, slavery and corruption have turned it into one of the poorest, writes historian Dan Snow.
The world's bloodiest conflict since World War II is still rumbling on today.
It is a war in which more than five million people have died, millions more have been driven to the brink by starvation and disease and several million women and girls have been raped.
The Great War of Africa, a conflagration that has sucked in soldiers and civilians from nine nations and countless armed rebel groups, has been fought almost entirely inside the borders of one unfortunate country - the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It is a place seemingly blessed with every type of mineral, yet consistently rated lowest on the UN Human Development Index, where even the more fortunate live in grinding poverty.