Mining in DRC: the formalisation of artisanal miners requested by an organisation

Kinshasa, August 6^th, 2026 (CPA).- The need to formalise the status of artisanal copper and cobalt miners in the provinces of Haut-Katanga and Lualaba has been requested on Thursday in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, by an organisation specialized in the good governance of natural resources, according to a report consulted by CPA. “The Congolese authorities must implement effective formalisation of artisanal copper and cobalt miners, accompanied by a social protection policy, or gradually phase out some of the artisanal miners by offering them credible economic alternatives,” we have read in the report of the organisation Ebuteli. According to this report, entitled ‘The Trap of Tolerance: Artisanal Copper and Cobalt Mining in Haut-Katanga and Lualaba’, artisanal mining outside the legal framework has become a mode of governance within the sector. Whilst it helps to temporarily contain social tensions, it indirectly perpetuates legal uncertainty, arbitrary levies, dangerous working conditions and conflicts between various stakeholders around mining sites. The document has specified that the Mining Code nevertheless restricts this activity to artisanal mining zones (ZEA). However, almost all artisanal sites in the two provinces are located within areas granted to industrial operators, highlighting that many miners work on industrial concessions without title or legal certainty. ‘They remain vulnerable to evictions, arbitrary levies and dangerous working conditions. This precarious situation also affects the many households that depend directly or indirectly on artisanal mining. The sector continues to produce, supply commercial channels and provide income for a significant proportion of the population, but without offering any lasting guarantees to those who work in it,” it is read in the report. For Ebuteli, the gap between the law and practice is not merely the result of inadequate enforcement of the legislation. “This tolerance is not simply a matter of a failure to enforce the law. It has become the established way of managing the sector,” the report has stated.  This situation creates opportunities for rent-seeking by various groups, notably cooperatives, intermediaries and certain public officials present at mining sites, along transport routes and within marketing networks, the document has explained. However, this observation highlights a major contradiction: minerals extracted outside the legal framework nevertheless manage to enter commercial channels. It therefore becomes difficult to distinguish between flows originating from artisanal mining and those from industrial production. Ebuteli is a Congolese research institute focusing on politics, governance and violence. Its mission is to promote, through rigorous research, an informed debate on the main challenges facing DRC.