Tag Archives: Congo minerals

Economic Consequences of Falling Asleep on Wheel: the Geopolitics of Energy Transition

Leave a reply

American officials see Africa as helping to solve two problems. The first is a global shortfall in the minerals that will be needed if the world is to meet its climate goals.The second problem, at least for the West, is China’s outsized influence on supply chains. China refines 68% of the world’s nickel, 40% of copper, 59% of lithium and 73% of cobalt, according to a report in July by the Brookings Institution, an American think-tank. “China has had free rein for 15 years while the rest of the world was sleeping,” says Brian Menell, chief executive of TechMet, a minerals firm.

America views cobalt, which is used in batteries, as a cautionary tale. In Congo, the source of about 70% of global production, Chinese entities owned or had stakes in 15 of 19 cobalt-producing mines as of 2020. America’s decision to allow a US firm to sell one of Congo’s largest copper-cobalt mines to a Chinese one in 2020 is seen in Washington as an enormous act of stupidity. It is little comfort that battery-makers are trying to use less cobalt, in part because of concerns about operating in Congo. “We cannot allow China to become an OPEC of one in critical minerals,” says an American official, referring to the oil cartel.

It is possible to identify three strands in America’s approach. The first is a multilateral effort involving Western allies. In June, Jose Fernandez, America’s under-secretary of state for economic growth, energy, and the environment, launched the Minerals Security Partnership, whose 13 members include all the G-7 countries and the EU. Many of these countries are also looking to secure more scarce rocks. Britain launched a “critical minerals strategy” in July 2022 and later this month the European Commission will propose a Critical Raw Materials Act.

A second strand in America’s approach involves its development agencies “de-risking” projects as they have done in, say, agriculture or the power sector. As well as the us Export-Import Bank, which offers trade-financing, there is the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC)... Another potential success is a memorandum of understanding signed by America, Congo and Zambia in January. America says it will help Africa’s two largest copper exporters do more than just sell the metal in its elemental state. Under it, America agreed to help the two African countries build supply chains to process their raw minerals into battery precursors for electric vehicles.

Excerpts from How America plans to break China’s grip on African minerals, Economist,  Mar. 4, 2023

To Save the Congo Rainforest, We Must Save the People First

Leave a reply

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General in the Democratic Republic of the Congo told the Security Council in December 2021  that “a lasting solution” to the violence” in Congo requires a broader political commitment to address the root causes of conflict.”  Bintou Keita argued that, for stability to return to eastern Congo, “the State must succeed in restoring and maintaining the confidence of the people in state’s ability to protect, administer, deliver justice and meet their basic needs.” 

Starting on November 30, 2021  the Congolese Armed Forces initiated joint military operations with the Ugandan army against the rebel Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in the east.  In May 2021, the Congolese authorities declared a state of siege in the provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, whose duration has just been extended for the 13th time. 

But the challenges facing the Government in implementing the state of siege highlight “the limits of a strictly military approach to the protection of civilians and the neutralization of armed groups.”  In fact, the period of the state of siege saw a 10 per cent increase in the number of violations and abuses of human rights in the country.  


According to the Special Representative, the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate in the restive east, due to insecurity, epidemics, and limited access to basic services.  The number of internally displaced people stands at nearly 6 million, of which 51 per cent are women. This is the highest number of internally displaced people in Africa.  

The Special Representative pointed out the illegal exploitation of natural resources as “a major driver of conflict”, saying it must be addressed, and commended President Tshisekedi’s intervention at the COP26 Summit, where he committed to combat deforestation in the Congo Basin rainforest and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 21 per cent, by 2030….  

Excerpts from DR Congo: Limitations to ‘strictly military approach’ to stem violence, mission chief warns, UN News, Dec. 6, 2021

Gorillas, Murders and Making $1.50 per day-Congo Rainforest

Leave a reply

Protecting the forests of Virunga National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo – home to endangered mountain gorillas – could be described as one of the toughest jobs on the planet. In the past 12 months, more than 20 of the park’s staff have been murdered – and last week rebels were accused of killing the Italian ambassador to DR Congo, his security guard and driver in an attack within the park. “The level of sacrifice that’s involved in keeping this work going will always be the hardest thing to deal with,” says Emmanuel de Merode, who is in charge of more than 800 rangers at Virunga, Africa’s oldest and largest national park.


The Virunga park spans 7,800 sq km (3,000 sq miles) and is home to an astonishingly diverse landscape – from active volcanoes and vast lakes to rainforest and mountains.
The park was set up nearly 100 years ago to protect mountain gorillas, of which there are only 1,000 left in the world. It’s a national park which is part of the Congolese state which has been affected by civil war for the most of its recent history.

In  April 2020, 13 rangers were murdered in what park officials described as a “ferociously violent and sustained” attack by an armed group In January 2021, six rangers, patrolling the park’s boundary on foot, were killed in an ambush by militias. All of those who died were aged between 25 and 30.  It’s a national park which is part of the Congolese state which has been affected by civil war…. 

It’s estimated that a dozen or so armed militia groups survive off the park’s resources – poaching or chopping down wood to sell for fuel. DR Congo’s natural resources have been fought over for decades. The country – which is the size of mainland western Europe – has more mineral wealth, with diamonds, oil, cobalt and copper, than anywhere else on the planet. These are some of the elements essential to modern technology, making up key components in electric cars and smartphones.
Virunga is no different. It’s rich in resources underground as well as in nature and wildlife. But the two million people living in the region of the park mainly live on under $1.50 (£1.08) a day. This tussle for survival is not lost on Mr De Merode who sees protecting the park as essentially a social justice issue.

“It’s not a simple problem of protecting gorillas and elephants; it is overcoming an economic problem at the heart of one of the most horrific civil wars in history,” says Merode. 

Excerpt from Vivienne Nunis and Sarah Treanor, DR Congo’s Virunga National Park: The deadly job of protecting gorillas, BBC, Mar. 4, 2021

At Gunpoint in Congo: Is Coltan Worse than Oil?

Leave a reply

Tantalum, a metal used in smartphone and laptop batteries, is extracted from coltan ore. In 2019 40% of the world’s coltan was produced in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to official data. More was sneaked into Rwanda and exported from there. Locals dig for the ore by hand in Congo’s eastern provinces, where more than 100 armed groups hide in the bush. Some mines are run by warlords who work with rogue members of the Congolese army to smuggle the coltan out.

When demand for electronics soared in the early 2000s, coltan went from being an obscure, semi-valuable ore to one of the world’s most sought-after minerals. Rebels fought over mines and hunted for new deposits. Soldiers forced locals to dig for it at gunpoint. Foreign money poured into Congo. Armed groups multiplied, eager for a share.

Then, in 2010, a clause in America’s Dodd-Frank Act forced American firms to audit their supply chains. The aim was to ensure they were not using minerals such as coltan, gold and tin that were funding Congo’s protracted war. For six months mines in eastern Congo were closed, as the authorities grappled with the new rules. Even when they reopened, big companies, such as Intel and Apple, shied away from Congo’s coltan, fearing a bad press.

The “Obama law”, as the Congolese nickname Dodd-Frank, did reduce cash flows to armed groups. But it also put thousands of innocent people out of work. A scheme to trace supply chains known as ITSCI run by the International Tin Association based in London and an American charity, Pact, helped bring tentative buyers back to Congo.  ITSCI staff turn up at mining sites to see if armed men are hanging about, pocketing profits. They check that no children are working in the pits. If a mine is considered safe and conflict-free, government agents at the sites put tags onto the sacks of minerals. However, some unscrupulous agents sell tags on the black market, to stick on coltan from other mines. “The agents are our brothers,” Martin says. It is hard to police such a violent, hilly region with so few roads. Mines are reached by foot or motorbike along winding, muddy paths.

For a long time those who preferred to export their coltan legally had to work with itsci, which held the only key to the international market. Miners groaned that itsci charged too much: roughly 5% of the value of tagged coltan. When another scheme called “Better Sourcing” emerged, Congo’s biggest coltan exporter, Société Minière de Bisunzu, signed up to it instead.

Excerpts from Smugglers’ paradise: Congo, Economist, Jan. 23, 2021

Living in the World of Tesla: Cobalt, Congo and China

Leave a reply

 A 20% rise in the price of cobalt since the beginning of 2021 shows how the rush to build more electric vehicles is stressing global supply chains. 

A majority of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in central Africa. It typically is carried overland to South Africa, shipped out from the port of Durban, South Africa, and processed in China before the material goes to battery makers—meaning the supply chain has several choke points that make it vulnerable to disruption…

Car and battery makers have been looking for more control over their cobalt supply and ways to avoid the metal altogether. Honda Motor Co. last year formed an alliance with a leading Chinese car-battery maker, Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. , hoping that CATL’s supply-chain clout would help stabilize Honda’s battery supply..

Meanwhile, China plays a critical role even though it doesn’t have significant reserves of cobalt itself. Chinese companies control more than 40% of Congo’s cobalt-mining capacity, according to an estimate by Roskill, the London research firm…China’s ambassador to Congo was quoted in state media last year as saying more than 80 Chinese enterprises have invested in Congo and created nearly 50,000 local jobs…

To break China’s stronghold, auto makers and suppliers are trying to recycle more cobalt from old batteries and exploring other nations for alternative supplies of the material.  Another reason to look for alternatives is instability in Congo and continuing ethical concerns about miners working in sometimes-harsh conditions with rudimentary tools and no safety equipment.

Excerpt from Yang Jie, EV Surge Sends Cobalt Prices Soaring, WSJ, Jan. 23, 2021

Saving Lives (if you can): Conflict Minerals and Covid-19

Leave a reply

The Dodd-Frank Section 1502 forces manufacturers to disclose if any of their products contain “conflict minerals” mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and nine adjoining countries in Africa. Under the law, companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges must audit their supply chains and disclose if their products contain even traces of the designated minerals—gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten—that might have been mined in areas controlled by warlords.

The provision was sold as protecting Congolese citizens from warlords who profited from the mining and sale of these minerals…Manufacturers spent about $709 million and more than six million man-hours attempting to trace their supply chains for conflict minerals in 2014. And 90% of those companies still couldn’t confirm their products were conflict-free. Many decided to avoid the Congo region altogether and source materials from other countries and continents

When mining dropped off due to Dodd-Frank’s effects, Congolese villages were hit by reductions in education, health care and food supply. In 2014, 70 activists, academics and government officials signed a letter blasting initiatives like the Dodd-Frank provision for “contributing to, rather than alleviating, the very conflicts they set out to address”…

Then there is the race for Covid-19 vaccines and related medical supplies. including ventilators, x-ray machines and oxygen concentrators that are manufactured by using “conflict minerals.” The minerals restricted by the Dodd-Frank Act are frequently used in the composition and production of needles, syringes and vials necessary to transport and administer billions of doses of vaccines. The compressors used to refrigerate vaccines also use these minerals to function…Countries, such as China, which are not bound by Dodd-Frank, have access to Congolese tantalum that the U.S. lacks.

Excerpts from John Berlau and Seth Carter,  Dodd-Frank Undermines the Fight Against Covid, WSJ, Oct 28, 2020

The Plight of Electric Cars: Cobalt Batteries and Mining

Leave a reply

About 60% of the world’s cobalt is found in Congo, scattered across the copperbelt that stretches east into Zambia. The people of Kawama, Gongo grumble that too much land has been sold to mining firms. “We used to dig freely,” says Gerard Kaumba, a miner. “But now the government has sold all the hills.” There are still some sites where miners can turn up and dig, but they have to sell to whoever owns the concession. A sweltering day’s work might earn you $7. Many people have found they can make more at night, pilfering cobalt from industrial mines.

Glencore, a commodities giant with two mines in Congo, reckons that some 2,000 people sneak into its pits every day. Other companies have even more robbers to contend with. In 2019 Congolese soldiers chased thieves out of a mine owned by China Molybdenum where, it was reckoned, 10,000-odd people were then illegally digging. Sneaking into Glencore’s mines is hardest, says a Kawaman, as its guards do not collude with thieves—and often chase them away with dogs.

Congo’s industrial miners are not all angels.  Gécamines, the state-owned company, has enriched crooked politicians for half a century. Global Witness, a watchdog based in London, says Congo’s treasury lost $750m of mining revenues to graft between 2013 and 2015. ENRC, which has mines in Congo, has faced allegations of corruption and an investigation by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (it denies wrongdoing). So has Glencore, which has worked with Dan Gertler, an Israeli billionaire. Mr Gertler, a close friend of a former Congolese president, Joseph Kabila, is under American sanctions… 

While big firms rake in millions, many of the little guys languish in jail. The prison in Kolwezi, the largest city in the mining region, is crammed with men caught stealing copper and cobalt. More than a hundred inmates occupy one stinking room, sitting in rows on the ground, each wedged between another’s legs. Prissoners are allowed to use the toilet only once a day, so they often urinate in their clothes

Excerpt from Cobalt blues: In Congo the little guys are jailed for stealing minerals. Economist, Oct. 17, 2020

The Global Gold Rush and Plunder of Congo

Leave a reply

Since March 2020, record amounts of gold dug from artisanal mines in the conflict zones of Eastern Congo have been smuggled across the porous border with Uganda, where it is being stamped with fake certifications before being shipped to international markets in Dubai, Mumbai and Antwerp, according to Ugandan security officials, smugglers and traders. Much of the gold is reaching these overseas markets using cargo planes returning from Uganda after delivering Covid-19 aid and other essential supplies, according to plane manifests seen by The Wall Street Journal.

The trade in conflict gold isn’t new, but it has perhaps never been more lucrative: Gold prices at illegal and unregulated Congolese mines, where supply chains have been disrupted by coronavirus shutdowns and renewed violence between militant groups, have dropped over 40% since April 2020, according to local traders, while on global markets, prices are up by almost a third…Activists and U.N. investigators have long accused Uganda and several of Congo’s neighbors of being complicit in the plunder of Congolese gold…The calls to end the illicit trade grew louder last year after Uganda’s gold exports overtook coffee to become the leading export commodity for the first time—despite the country producing very little bullion.

U.N. investigators estimate that each month between 2 tons and 3 tons of Congo’s conflict gold—with a market value of over $100 million—is crossing the Ugandan frontier, passing border crossings patrolled by heavily armed guards, with metal fencing and razor wire erected to reduce the flow of people due to coronavirus fears…

Smugglers and police say the gold is secreted in trucks that are allowed to bypass coronavirus restrictions to deliver “essential goods” from fuel to food supplies. The yellow bars, weighing between 5 to 20 kilograms, are stuffed underneath truck cabins, inside battery compartments and emptied gasoline tankers. Once inside Uganda, the truckers sell the bars to traders who purchase forged documents in Kampala that disguise the gold’s origin.

The scramble is fueling violence in the eastern Congolese province of Ituri…Fresh spasms of violence have left more than 1,300 civilians dead since March 2020, in what the U.N. says may amount to war crimes. Some six million people are displaced. Armed groups are carrying out predatory raids on mines in search of gold.

In the meantime on Wall Street, on July 24, 2020, gold futures were priced at $1,897.50 a troy ounce eclipsing their August 2011 peak of $1,891.90. The coronavirus has ignited a global gold rush, with physical traders around the world trying to get their hands on more metal and individuals around the world ordering bars and coins.

Excerpts from Nicholas Bariyo and Joe Parkinson, Under Cover of Coronavirus Lockdown, a Booming Trade in Conflict Gold, WSJ, July 9, 2020, Gold Climbs to a High, Topping Its 2011 Record, WSJ, July 24, 2020

Congo Uranium and the CIA

Leave a reply

America’s interest in the Congo—and, specifically, in the resource-rich south-eastern province of Katanga—was one of the best-kept secrets of the second world war. Beneath its verdant soil lay a prize that the Americans believed held the key to victory…The Germans, they feared, might be after it, too: uranium. Congo was by far the richest source of it in the world. As the architects of America’s nuclear programme (the “Manhattan Project”) knew, uranium was the atom bomb’s essential ingredient. But almost everybody else was kept entirely in the dark, including the spies sent to Africa to find out if the heavy metal was being smuggled out of the Congo into Nazi Germany.

The men—and one woman—charged with protecting America’s monopoly of Congolese uranium worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), an organisation set up by President Franklin Roosevelt as the wartime intelligence agency, and the precursor to what in peacetime became the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Shortly after the war ended the focus of America’s nuclear rivalry shifted. In 1949 the Soviet Union tested its own nuclear bomb, launching a new era for America, Congo and the rest of the African continent. Huge sums were pumped into Katanga to facilitate uranium export and to prop up Belgian defences. After Congo became independent in 1960 the CIA lingered there for decades to keep uranium and, later, other minerals out of Russian hands. Much of Congo’s tragic late-20th-century history is attributable to these machinations…. A little-known story, but one with a terribly familiar ring—and ultimately devastating consequences.

Excerpt from Congo’s uranium: Rich pickings, Economist, Aug. 27, 2016 (Book review of
Spies in the Congo: America’s Atomic Mission in World War II. By Susan Williams, 2017)

Fleas in the Barn: a Joseph Kabila et al. story

Leave a reply

Inongo is the provincial capital of the Mai-Ndombe Province, a 13-million-hectare area located some 650 km northeast of Kinshasa, Demoractic Republic of Conglo, DRC.

The forests of Mai-Ndombe… are rich in rare and precious woods (red wood, black wood, blue wood, tola, kambala, lifake, among others). It is also home to about 7,500 bonobos, an endangered primate…The forests constitute a vital platform providing livelihoods for some 73,000 indigenous individuals, mostly Batwa (Pygmies), who live here alongside the province’s 1.8 million population, many of whom with no secure land rights.  Recent studies also have revealed that the province – and indeed the forests – boasts significant reserves of diamond of precious metals nickel, copper, oil and coal, and vast quantities of uranium lying deep inside the Lake Mai-Ndombe.

In an effort to save these precious forests, the World Bank in 2016 approved DRC’s REDD+ programmes aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fight forest’s deforestation and degradation, which it would fund to the tune of 90 million dollars annually.  The projects, which are currently estimated at 20, have since transformed the Mai-Ndombe Province into a testing ground for international climate schemes. And as part of the projects, indigenous and other local people caring for the forests and depending on them for their livelihoods were supposed to be rewarded for their efforts.

However, Marine Gauthier, a Paris-based expert who authored a report on the sorry state of the Mai-Ndombe forest, seems to have found serious flaws in these ambitious programmes.  The report, released a few days before the International Day of Forests on March 21, 2018 by the Rights and Resources’ Initiative (RRI), cited weak recognition of communities’ land rights, and recommended that key prerequisites should be addressed before any other REDD+ funds are invested.  In the interim, it said, REDD+ investments should be put on hold…..

Under the DRC’s 2014 Forest Code, indigenous people and local communities have the legal right to own forest covering an area of up to 50,000 hectares.Thirteen communities in the territories of Mushie and Bolobo in the Mai-Ndombe province have since asked for formal title of a total of 65,308 hectares of land, reports said, adding that only 300 hectares have been legally recognised for each community – a total of only 3,900 hectares.

Pretoria-based Donnenfeld added: “My guess is that the government is more interested in selling these resources to multinationals than it in seeing it benefit the community….Gauthier pointed out that…“REDD+ opens the door to more land-grabbing by external stakeholders appealed…. Local communities’ land rights should be recognised through existing legal possibilities such as local community forest concessions so that they can keep protecting the forest, hence achieving REDD+ objectives.”

Excerpts from DR Congo’s Mai-Ndombe Forest ‘Savaged’ As Landless Communities Struggle,  IPS, Apr. 17, 2018