Resource-rich countries have been observed to often have lower development achievements. Challenges include but are not limited to envy and interference by super-powerful countries, as well as corruptible practices or incompetence by their political leaders who mortgage the resources of their nation for personal gain and power. The unstable situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo may in large part be related to the resource curse as it is theorised (Gylfason 2004). In the past, this resource-rich land had been a victim of its resources even in the times preceding the half-baked independence from the Belgium Kingdom. In those years, the world needed heveas, and the production of rubber for the making of industrial plastic, tyres and other products.Coltan and cobalt are uniquely associated with the DRC, have global strategic and industrial importance, and constitute key minerals concerned with resources in the DRCs economy. The DRC is amongst the poorest countries globally. Its Human Development Index (HDI) in 2017 was 0,45, with the country ranked 176th out of 189 assessed. Despite this, there have been significant improvements in life expectancy and educational achievements since the end of the 1995-2002 war, as shown in Fig 1. CITATION:Elisee Isheloke, B and von Blottnitz, H, 2019. Dimensions of the coltan and cobalt resource curse in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Proceedings 9th International Conference on Sustainable Development in the Minerals Industry, pp 131133 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).