Foreign miners among entities stripping DRC’s natural assets

📅 Published: August 26, 2025

Curated by AllZimNews.com

It is a far cry from the impenetrable greenery, wandering wild animals such as black antelopes and elephants, and hippos in the Kando river, as was the scene back in the 1980s and 1990s in Basse Kando reserve, remembered an octogenarian living in Kisanfu village.

Today there is an illegal occupation of large swathes of land inside the protected area by communities relocated to make way for mining concessions that have destroyed their habitat.

The main cause is the scramble for cobalt, a critical “new energy” mineral used in batteries and electric vehicles.

The DRC supplies an estimated 70% of the world’s demand for cobalt, and its reserves have been occupied by national and international mining companies since the beginning of the 2000s.

Artisanal miners who have joined the rush and the displaced communities resort to poaching and producing charcoal in the protected areas, explained Christian Bwenda, coordinator at environmental NGO PremiCongo.

An estimated 77% of the Basse Kando reserve is currently allocated to mining concessions.

Basse Kando is a protected area measuring 17,500 hectares, according to the1957 Decreethat established it, and it extends over a portion of the territory of Lubudi and Kolwezi in the province of Lualaba.

This decree wasamended in 2006without mention of the limits of the reserve, and mining authorities have been granting concessions in the area for years.

Several companies run by expatriates and nationals hold mining concessions that are encroaching inside the boundaries of Basse Kando.

They include CMOC Kisanfu Mining SARL, a mining company owned by China Molybdenum Co Ltd (CMOC).

In 2023 China’s CMOC Group became the new king of cobalt in the DRC, according to calculations by Bloomberg media cited byCyntia Bashizi,a mining journalist at Radio Okapi, a United Nations media outlet in the DRC. “It [CMOC] dethroned mining giant Glencore, which has not yet made its production data public.

CMOC, through its subsidiary Tenke Fungurume Mining and its new Kinsafu mine (US$1. 8-billion investment) reported that its cobalt production jumped 174% over the previous year, reaching 55,000 tons in 2023.

The DRC is responsible for approximately 70% of the world’s supply of cobalt and is home to the world’s largest producers of this very strategic resource,” Bashizi posted on her X account.

In 2020 CMOC was also part of adealthat saw the transfer of mining assets in the Kisanfu area from American company Phelps Dodge Congo Sarl.

The benefits of this ramped-up production are not evident to local communities, complained Edgard Kyusa, a resident of Kisanfu village. “There are no schools, no hospitals, no roads, no houses in Kisanfu.