{"id":8286,"date":"2026-09-30T10:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T09:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openafricantribune.com\/?p=8286"},"modified":"2026-09-20T22:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T21:06:10","slug":"congos-copper-and-cobalt-the-people-behind-the-supply-chain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openafricantribune.com\/fr\/2026\/09\/30\/congos-copper-and-cobalt-the-people-behind-the-supply-chain\/","title":{"rendered":"Congo’s Copper and Cobalt: The People Behind the Supply Chain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before copper or cobalt becomes part of a battery, a car, or another finished product, someone must bring it out of the ground. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), that work takes place in mining communities that can be thousands of kilometres from the factories and industries that depend on the minerals they produce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The DRC is the largest producer of cobalt and one of the leading producers of copper in the world. Its mineral resources are integral to international supply chains that connect the DRC\u2019s Copperbelt to manufacturers and technology companies worldwide. According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), the DRC produced 75 percent of the world\u2019s cobalt in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The value of copper and cobalt does not begin at the export terminal or in the factory. It begins in the ground, with the people who bring the minerals out. For many workers within the country’s artisanal mining sector, mining is a way of life. Yet, the sector remains difficult to trace and regulate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The artisanal miner, therefore, is not some distant figure in the supply chain but the starting point of it. Cobalt makes the distance between the miner and the consumer particularly hard to ignore. The metal is important to many products at the forefront of the global energy transition, but its extraction has also been associated with dangerous working conditions and child labour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The International Labour Organization (ILO), through its GALAB project, has sought to address these challenges by intensifying efforts to uncover and respond to the situations of child labourers in the artisanal cobalt mining sector, as well as promote alternative livelihoods for vulnerable households.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This raises a more fundamental question. If responsible sourcing is meant to make the mineral trade more ethical, what does that responsibility actually mean for the people at the beginning of the supply chain?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That question becomes harder to ignore as the DRC seeks to capture more value from its mineral wealth. In June 2026, the government announced a new policy to restrict the export of copper and cobalt concentrates in favour of downstream processing. Why? It is assumed that processing may keep more value within the country. But will any of that value reach the people who begin the process by digging the minerals out of the ground? To answer that, it is necessary to go back to where the supply chain begins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The work that feeds the chain<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Mining is not one kind of work in the DRC. Alongside large industrial operations is a substantial artisanal and small-scale mining sector, where workers extract and handle minerals in conditions that can leave them outside the protections available to formal employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ILO says more than 100,000 artisanal and small-scale miners work in the country’s cobalt sector. Workers in these operations face risks to their safety, health and labour rights. The ILO has also identified unsafe working conditions and exposure to hazardous substances among the risks associated with artisanal mining in the DRC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some formalisation projects have introduced protections such as personal protective equipment, healthcare, potable water and measures to control mine access and pit construction. But their implementation has been uneven. A review of formalisation projects in Kolwezi found that while PPE was provided and enforced at one site, it was not used systematically at another, illustrating the gap between putting safety measures in place and ensuring that miners consistently use them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When poverty enters the mine<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A child can enter a mine for reasons that have little to do with the mineral itself. This is seen in the DRC’s cobalt-producing communities, where poverty, limited employment opportunities and weak access to education can push families towards mining. A UNICEF guidance note on child labour in the cobalt sector identifies poverty as one of the main underlying causes, along with other factors including limited access to education, parental illness, migration and displacement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kabedi was nine when she began working in an artisanal copper and cobalt mine in Kipushi. Her father had died, and she told UNICEF that she went to the mine \u201cto help my mother\u201d. For three years, she collected, crushed and transported ore from morning until night, earning an average of 5,000 Congolese francs, about $2.50, at the end of a day’s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The work itself can be dangerous. Children involved in artisanal mining may carry heavy loads, handle tools, and work around dust and other hazardous substances. UNICEF’s documentation of children in mining areas of the DRC has recorded these risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kabedi eventually left the mine and returned to school through a UNICEF-supported programme. After being reintegrated into sixth grade, she said she wanted to study communication. \u201cI want to become a journalist,\u201d she told UNICEF, \u201cto make the voice of Congolese children heard around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UNICEF programmes in the DRC have combined withdrawal from mining with school reintegration, vocational training, social work and support for families. In Kipushi, UNICEF said 271 children had left mining quarries and returned to school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More recent research points to the same economic pressure. A 2026 study by Godelive Kusimwa Batano, published in Society, found that poverty remained a major reason children were involved in artisanal cobalt mining in Kolwezi, Lualaba Province. One 14-year-old girl told the researcher that she and her sister collected minerals to sell and gave the money to their mother to buy food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A community leader interviewed for the study said some families were so vulnerable that preventing their children from going to the mine would leave them unable to survive. This is why remediation matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question is not only whether a child has been removed from the mine, but whether the family has enough support for that child to remain out of mining. This is because the pressures facing these families extend beyond the mine itself. As mining expands, it can reshape the land, water and livelihoods on which communities depend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 2025 study by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) found that artisanal and small-scale copper-cobalt mining in the DRC is increasingly taking semi-industrial forms. It also found weak oversight, widespread misreporting and limited traceability at key points in the chain, undermining the reliability of production and revenue data. The study called for stronger oversight and better-coordinated data systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The DRC has introduced traceability systems that record minerals at different points between the mine, processor and exporter. EITI says these systems can help establish production and revenue levels at traceable artisanal sites. But gaps remain: the study also points to the need for more reliable data and stronger formalisation of the sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For miners, formalisation is therefore about more than obtaining legal status. It raises the question of whether regulation can make the work safer while preserving access to the livelihoods that mining provides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the mines change the community<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For people living around the DRC’s industrial copper and cobalt mines, the consequences of mining do not end at the boundary of a concession. They can reach the water people drink, the fields they cultivate and the livelihoods that have supported families for generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 2024 investigation by UK-based corporate watchdog RAID and Congolese organisation African Resources Watch (AFREWATCH) examined conditions in 25 villages and towns around five major copper and cobalt mines in Lualaba Province. The researchers interviewed 144 residents, as well as medical experts and scientists, and reviewed scientific studies and company documents. Their findings focused particularly on water pollution and its effects on communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The testimonies describe an economy being altered at the local level. Ninety-nine per cent of those interviewed by RAID and AFREWATCH said their crop and field yields had fallen dramatically, while many attributed declining fishing and agricultural income to polluted water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur children are sacrificed because the land that should belong to them belongs to foreigners, but it is the land of their ancestors. They will not know how to hunt, fish, raise livestock or even farm because everything is disappearing,\u201d C\u00e9lestin, a resident of Kashala, told the researchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That account captures a concern that is easy to miss when mining is measured mainly through production figures and investment. For communities dependent on farming and fishing, environmental damage can become an economic loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Residents interviewed in the RAID-AFREWATCH investigation described reduced access to fish and declining agricultural productivity. The organisations reported that 59 per cent had reduced their food intake to one meal a day, while the same proportion said they had taken their children out of school because they could no longer afford school fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question of land is tied to this loss of livelihood. Where mining expands, communities can lose access to farmland or other spaces on which they depend. That makes compensation and relocation more than administrative issues. They determine whether people can rebuild a livelihood after mining changes the place where they live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2026, RAID and AFREWATCH published further research based on testimony gathered from more than 150 residents and medical staff across ten Lualaba communities. Residents described dust, changes in air quality and continuing concerns about water, agriculture and fishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mining companies have taken measures in response to some community concerns, including providing boreholes and undertaking environmental assessments. But RAID and AFREWATCH have questioned whether these measures meet the needs of affected communities and have raised concerns about the transparency of environmental assessments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A mine can generate export earnings while leaving the community around it asking what happened to the value created from its resources. That question becomes even more important when the mineral enters the international supply chain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The supply chain<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The journey of Congolese copper and cobalt does not end at the mine. What happens next determines who handles the minerals, who adds value, and how much of the supply chain remains visible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For cobalt, much of that journey leads to China. Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that between 2016 and 2020, an average of 72 to 79 per cent of artisanal cobalt production passed through processing facilities in the DRC, most of them Chinese-owned. Most of the remaining artisanal production was exported to China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has described the copper and cobalt supply chains as interconnected and warned against treating artisanal and industrial mining as completely separate systems. It has also called on companies using Congolese copper and cobalt to extend due diligence beyond child labour to wider human-rights and governance risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That raises a larger question about who benefits from the chain. The OECD estimated in its 2025 Africa’s Development Dynamics report that the DRC holds approximately 80 per cent of the world’s cobalt but accounts for only about 3 per cent of the battery and electric-vehicle value chain. That imbalance helps explain Kinshasa’s push for domestic processing. But processing more minerals inside the country does not automatically determine who benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The push to keep more value at home<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For the DRC, the argument for processing more of its minerals at home is straightforward: producing the ore is not the same as capturing the value created from it. On June 29, 2026, the government issued an order prohibiting the export of copper and cobalt concentrates, with immediate effect. The order allows for possible one-year waivers in strategic circumstances. The measure was intended to encourage further processing inside the country and retain more value from its mineral resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The decision extends a policy direction that has already seen Kinshasa tighten its control over cobalt exports. In 2025, the government suspended cobalt exports before replacing the suspension with a quota system. For 2026, the quota was set at 96,600 tonnes, including a strategic quota for projects of national strategic importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In June, unused first-half export allocations were to be forfeited and reassigned to the strategic quota. The new concentrate restriction, however, raises a different question. Can the DRC add value at home without simply moving the point at which value is captured further along the same chain?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But processing is only one part of that value chain. In an interview for this feature, Landry Djimpe, Managing Partner at Innogence Consulting in the DRC, argued that the question is not simply where the ore is processed, but who participates in and captures the value created around it. Moving processing from Zambia to Kolwezi, he said, would not automatically produce broad-based economic gains. If the smelters remained foreign-owned, staffed by expatriates and supplied by international contractors, much of the value could still flow outward, just from a different location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That concern extends to the jobs created by industrial expansion. Djimpe said refineries and smelters could provide more stable and skilled employment than artisanal mining, but many of those positions require technical training that remains inaccessible to many young people in mining regions. The question for artisanal miners is whether the expansion of industrial processing will create a route into the formal economy or leave them outside the new value being created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The DRC has also moved to strengthen local participation in the mining economy. The Regulatory Authority for Subcontracting in the Private Sector (ARSP) says the Local Content Law gives priority to the participation of Congolese companies in activities generated by major investments and is intended to strengthen their integration into national value chains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government has also moved to increase Congolese participation in mining transport. In a decision signed on April 17, 2026, the ARSP gave foreign transporters 60 days to comply with a requirement to cede at least 50 per cent of their market share to Congolese operators, according to Bankable. The 50-50 principle originated in a December 2024 ministerial decree but had not previously been enforced, the report said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The policy also illustrates the difficulty of turning local participation into actual economic capacity. Bankable reported that a member of the Mining Chamber of the Federation of Congo Enterprises put the share of DRC-registered trucks in import-export transport flows at less than 5 per cent in 2024 and questioned whether local operators could realistically reach 50 per cent within 60 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Djimpe sees these measures as part of a broader attempt to embed Congolese ownership and capacity in the mining industry’s industrial core. But for him, local ownership and employment are only part of the equation. He argues that industrial expansion must also be accompanied by stronger enforcement of Community Development Agreements, protection of land rights, adequate compensation where communities are displaced, effective environmental safeguards and transparent benefit-sharing. That brings the policy back to the people at the beginning of the chain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What changes for the people who mine it<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The DRC’s attempt to retain more value from its copper and cobalt goes beyond industrial policy. It is about moving more processing into the country, creating skilled employment, expanding opportunities for local businesses and allowing the DRC to retain more of the value generated from its minerals. For years, much of that value has been added outside the country. But none of these benefits is automatic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the people who work in and live around mining areas, the question is whether a larger domestic share of the mineral economy changes the terms on which they participate in it. That means safer work for miners, better opportunities for young people who want to move into skilled employment, protection of land and livelihoods, and communities able to see tangible benefits from the resources extracted around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also means accountability further along the supply chain. Companies buying Congolese copper and cobalt cannot treat responsibility as something that ends once minerals leave the mine. Governments and companies involved in processing, trading and manufacturing also have a role in ensuring that the pursuit of mineral value does not leave its social and environmental costs behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The DRC’s new policy direction therefore presents an opportunity, but also a test. If processing more copper and cobalt at home is meant to change the country’s place in the global mineral economy, its success should ultimately be measured not only in tonnes processed or revenue retained, but in whether the people closest to the minerals are better off because of it.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before copper or cobalt becomes part of a battery, a car, or another finished product, someone must bring it out of the ground. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), that work takes place in mining communities that can be thousands of kilometres from the factories and industries that depend on the minerals they produce. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":8360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"saved_in_kubio":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,30,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-governance","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openafricantribune.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openafricantribune.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openafricantribune.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openafricantribune.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openafricantribune.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8286"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/openafricantribune.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8391,"href":"https:\/\/openafricantribune.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8286\/revisions\/8391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openafricantribune.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openafricantribune.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openafricantribune.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openafricantribune.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}