The Democratic Republic of Congo is looking to buy all the cobalt mined by artisans – in a bid to offset the price of the mineral in the country. This is will be done by a state-owned company, which will be created for this purpose.
In a decree released to the public, this move by the government seeks to control the entire value chain. Furthermore, it is also an effort to clean up a supply chain that is dominated by Chinese traders. These are notorious for purchasing from who buy from thousands of individual miners, including children, who dig for cobalt by hand without any safety protection and earn between US $1 and $3 a day.
In 2018 the DRC government declared cobalt a “strategic” metal and increased the taxes that large miners in the country had to pay to the state. However, the price of cobalt has fallen from US $40.50 a pound in 2018 to $16.70 after a flood of metal from the country hit global markets last year. The bigger percentage of this was from artisanal mining in the south-eastern part of the country.
The government will create a body under Gecamines, the state-owned mining company, which will oversee acquiring the minerals categorized as strategic. These include cobalt, germanium and coltan.
Tyler Gillard, a senior adviser at the OECD, said that the partnership is very timely and may help the government establish more control and oversight. He was however quick to add that the same is dependent on Gecamines’ ability to control the rollout of the material into the market.
