Democratic Republic of the Congo's mineral resources

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the Congo (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), then a Belgian colony, was recognized as a potentially rich source for raw materials. By the time of Congolese independence in 1960, certain provincial regions, particularly the former colonial province of Katanga, had become the center for the mining and transport, by foreign companies, of a number of major mineral resources, including copper, cobalt, zinc, cadmium, germanium, tin, manganese, and coal.

The Country

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is located in west-central Africa, with its westernmost limit running along the Atlantic coast. The country is separated from the Republic of the Congo by the Congo River. Its other neighbors are the Central African Republic, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, and Angola. Although not all areas of the country receive the massive amounts of rainfall characteristic of the interior Congo basin zone, there is an extensive zone that is heavily forested. Traditionally the world-famous Congo River served as the main artery of access to the interior. Development of modern alternative modes of transport, especially railways, has been gradual and not altogether successful.

The potential global impact of DRC mineral production has been reduced by the country’s chronic political instability, much of which has been concentrated in mineral-rich areas of the country. Another problem affecting the global status of exports from the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the predominance of foreign investors (in the form of multinational concessionaires) in the mining sector. This seems to be less a problem of antiforeign sentiment than a result of “shifting” foreign involvement. Many foreign operations have been hampered by unstable conditions, while others have actually withdrawn entirely from development commitments signed with the government in Kinshasa, the country’s capital.

Copper

The large southern area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly the Shaba (1971-1997) or Katanga (1960-1971, 1997-2009) Province but in 2009 divided into four provinces—Haut-Katanga, Tanganyika, Lualaba, and Haut-Lomami—is part of an enormous metallogenic zone running from Angola in West Africa to Zambia. The area is commonly called the “Copperbelt” of Africa, although other minerals, especially cobalt, are mined in the same area. It is estimated that 10 percent of the world’s copper reserves (approximately 50 million metric tons) are located within the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and copper has become the DRC's primary export. Before the year 2000, the country’s copper was mined primarily by the state-run firm Gécamines (Générale des Carrières et des Mines). About a decade after the country gained independence, Gécamines received world attention for the relatively low cost of its copper, but this advantage was lost in stages as various disruptive factors reversed the situation, making Congolese copper much more expensive on the world market.

Copper production by Gécamines was still relatively high at the beginning of the twenty-first century (about 19,000 metric tons) but fell by about 1,000 metric tons, largely because of an inability to operate many existing mines at full capacity; some mines were completely inactive. A marked example of declining productivity was the Society for Congolese Industrial and Mining Development (Sodimco), a minor “counterpart” to Gécamines, whose output in 2001 was less than 550 metric tons of copper. Sodimco extracted the copper from the Musoshi and Kinsenda mines, whose copper reserves have been estimated to be more than 220 million metric tons.

In an effort to obtain a more competitive global position for DRC copper, the Kinshasha government concluded a partnership between Gécamines and the Finnish-run Outokumpu Mining Group to exploit both copper and cobalt reserves. The trend of seeking collaborative operations with foreign mining firms increased over the next few years. In 2002, Anvil Mining, an Australian firm with operations in Canada, obtained a concession for operating the Dikulushi copper and silver mine in the traditional Katanga mining zone. Results were encouraging: Mining yielded almost 13,000 metric tons of copper in 2003, which was followed by an announcement of plans to expand the Dikulushi mine.

Another foreign concern, International Panorama Resources (IPR) of Canada, joined (at 51 percent participation) with Gécamines to use high-tech methods to reprocess copper- and cobalt-bearing tailings from mines located at Kambove and Kakanda. The initial level of IPR’s involvement, like that of other foreign companies concerned about declining public security in the areas of their concessions, was cut back despite signs that copper prices were returning to reasonably attractive levels.

In fact, the 1999 price of $0.27 per kilogram of copper recovered to $1.70 by 2006. However, in the period between 2006 and 2009, the price fluctuated considerably, and available stockpiles during the 2008 onset of the global financial and economic crisis suggested that decreasing demand would push prices down again, below $1.50 or even lower. And indeed, the price of copper plummeted in 2015 and remained at record lows during 2016-17, cutting deeply into government revenues. Prior to this, refined copper production in the DRC had been rising, increasing steadily from 260,000 metric tons in 2010 up to 890,000 metric tons in 2014.

The DRC's copper production rebounded in the 2020s, largely because of investments from countries such as China. By 2023, the DRC produced more copper than Peru, which had been the second-largest copper producer behind Chile. In 2023, Peru produced 2.6 million metric tons of copper while the DRC produced 2.8 million metric tons. During the same year, the DRC invested $850 million in a road to connect the DRC to Zambia and an East African port.

Cobalt

The DRC is one of ten sub-Saharan countries in Africa with substantial reserves of cobalt (the DRC and Zambia are the most important). The cobalt is frequently found in veins bearing copper and, along with nickel, is separated out as a by-product of copper mining.

The DRC’s location across the central African Copperbelt means that the country has a substantial share, almost 35 percent, of the world’s cobalt. In modern times the metallic element colbalt (Co) is used to make strong alloys and is essential as a radioisotope (Cobalt 60) in producing gamma rays.

Specialized importers’ demand, therefore, is relatively high. Although government-run Gécamines suffered cobalt production setbacks, because of underutilization of partially exploited mining locations, in the years after 2000, the company continued to enter into joint exploitation contracts with foreign firms interested in particularly promising special projects. Perhaps the most outstanding of these projects was the 2004 acquisition, by the London-based Adastra Minerals, of full rights to process massive tailings sites at the Kolwezi location. This ambitious project set as its aim reclaiming major amounts of cobalt (more than 6,000 metric tons annually) from more than 100 million metric tons of oxide tailings at Kolwezi.

Petroleum and Natural Gas

The limited (22-kilometer) stretch of the DRC’s Atlantic coast (running between northern Angola and the oil-rich enclave of Cabinda) was the scene of oil exploration activities as early as the 1960s, but production was not significant until offshore wells in the same region began production in 1976. The Mibale offshore field, eventually estimated to hold almost 50 percent of the coastal basin’s reserves, was discovered in 1973 by Chevron. More than forty wells had been drilled, most offshore, by the mid-1980s, yielding five working oil fields and one natural gas field.

Exploration of inland areas, especially along the eastern border of the DRC and in the central Congo basin, produced less promising results. Some hope for exploitation of proven reserves in the region bordering Uganda was registered, but not effectively pursued. Natural gas reserves in regions close to the Rwanda border await efficient exploitation. In the case of natural gas, not only infrastructural problems, such as the remoteness of the region and lack of effective transport, but also recurrent political instability and regional violence have continued to hamper follow-up to exploratory soundings.

As for the DRC’s more promising offshore petroleum sector, a series of arrangements and rearrangements of foreign oil companies’ involvement in consortium agreements with the Kinshasha government have been made. The most important consortium arrangement involved participation at 50 percent holdings by Congo Gulf Oil (Chevron), 32 percent by Congo Petroleum Company (Teikoku Oil of Japan), and 18 percent by Union Oil of California.

Gold

Mining for gold in the area around Namoya (some 250 kilometers from Bukavu, on the edge of forested areas leading eastward to the Rwandan and Ugandan borders), first by alluvial methods in the 1930s, and then by open-pit mining in the 1950s, was interrupted during the early years of Congolese independence. Although production was restored gradually, periodic outbreaks of civil violence in key ore-producing subzones (Namoya, Twangiza, Kamituga, and Lugushwa) have hampered efforts to effectively exploit gold mining in the northeastern provincial region. Antigovernment rebel forces occupied, abandoned, then reoccupied the key population centers during the entire first decade after 2000.

These disruptive conditions have not prevented key foreign mining concerns from seeking contractual agreements for concessions from the Kinshasha government. In 2021 and 2022, the DRC produced 43,000 kilograms of gold.

Diamonds

Although the DRC, and specifically the Kasai-Oriental Province, is potentially the largest producer of diamonds in Africa, it has fallen far short of fulfilling this potential. Despite the existence of a formal commercial diamond concession, Minière de Bakwanga (MIBA)—a joint operation involving the Belgian company Sibeka and the government of the DRC—only about a third of the country’s diamonds are exported by MIBA. Knowing the origin and channels pursued by many “informal” dealers to commercialize the majority of diamonds mined in the DRC is nearly impossible. A major cause for this comes, again, from extremely unsettled political conditions and recurring outbreaks of violence. Conditions of disorder lend themselves to the possibility of illicit dealings in the diamond market, characterized by a high level of violence, leading such diamonds to be referred to as “blood diamonds.” Some estimates of the Congolese government’s losses because of diamond smuggling have been as high as a half billion dollars annually.

In 2014, artisanal miners produced over 14 million carats of diamonds, while large-scale producers generated only 290,000. In 2022, the DRC production 10 million carats of diamonds, which was nearly 30 percent less than the previous year. Regardless, in 2022, the country was the fourth-largest diamond producer by volume in the world.

Manganese

The DRC produced upwards of 45,000 metric tons of manganese ore annually in the early 1970s, most of which was transported by rail from the Lulua basin to export facilities at Benguela on the Angolan coast. The principal, if not the only, firm involved in these operations, the Kisenge Manganese Mining Enterprise, experienced dramatic declines in exports (down to a little more than 27,000 metric tons in the late 1980s) during the long period of civil war in Angola. In 1993, production came to a de facto end. Kisenge, in its efforts to regain a section of the manganese market by introducing high-tech dry-cell modes to process high-grade electrolytic manganese dioxide, has encountered difficulty, given the fact that several of its African neighbors also produce manganese at attractive prices.

Tantalum and Niobium

The DRC possesses a number of coltan (short for columbite–tantalites) producing mines in the Lake Kivu region. The primary mining operation there is Anvil Mining (with home offices in Australia and Canada), a firm that is heavily involved in DRC copper mining. Coltan is an ore from which the elements tantalum and niobium are extracted. Tantalum, along with a similar metal alloys found alongside tantalum, is a highly corrosion-resistant element used widely as a component in metal alloy processes. Although tantalum could be an increasingly significant DRC export, two factors may limit such development (beyond the fact that Australia produces most of the tantalum for the world market): Almost all the central African neighbors of the DRC—including Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Gabon—also produce tantalum for export; and, after Anvil Mining launched its major mining operations in the first few years of the twenty-first century, controversy over the ecological impact such mining might have, both for surrounding forests and for animal life in the region, has come to the forefront. However, by 2023, the DRC had become the largest tantalum producer in the world, having produced 980 million tons during that year.

Other Resources

Given the extensive forested area of the Congo River basin, the DRC is in a position to export a variety of rare hardwoods and some industrially attractive common lumber. This sector has yet to develop to its full potential because of the lucrative, if risky, mineral industry.

Bibliography

"Democratic Republic of the Congo

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Rupert, James. "In Congo, Peace Means Halt to 'Brutal, Illegal Mining.'" United States Institute of Peace, 1 Mar. 2024, www.usip.org/publications/2024/03/congo-peace-means-halt-brutal-illegal-mining. Accessed 28 Dec. 2024.

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