Ministry of Mines - DRC
@MinMinesRDC
RDC_MINES: 25.07.2023 The Democratic Republic of Congo has for some time been facing direct or veiled threats of a ban on its cobalt for export to the international market, under the pretext of irregularities in the chain of custody and/or extraction of this commodity, whether it comes from the artisanal production sector or the industrial one. The Ministry of Mines wishes to provide the following clarifications: The DRC contains in its soil and subsoil, various mineral substances whose deposits can be exploited in an industrial or artisanal way according to the technical and economic and financial factors of the moment. In its desire to formalize and improve the mineral traceability system in the artisanal sector, several projects have been implemented. Indeed, with a view to developing and evolving from pit extraction to small-scale mining and for the purpose of improving and securing the mining sector, our country has succeeded, with the support of partners, in: - The validation of the normative framework on artisanal and small-scale mining cobalt, with the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), an American organization bringing together more than 400 member companies, which establishes a series of environmental, social and governance requirements for mine sites, enabling optimal traceability of minerals; - The operationalization of the General Cobalt Company, which works to promote cobalt from artisanal production in favor of economic development in the DRC, as does that of the Authority for the Regulation and Control of the Markets of Strategic Mineral Substances, a body for the regulation and cleaning up of the markets for mineral substances strategic minerals; - The establishment of the Interministerial Commission on child labor in the artisanal mining sector, "CISTEMA" in acronym, which implements, with the support of the International Labor Organization and the US Department of Labor (U.S. Department of Labor), the process of identifying and implementing alternative options such as trade schools and agricultural projects, with a view to accelerating the exit of children and vulnerable people from mines as well as their retraining; - Servicing the Artisanal Mining Zones with the support of the BGR, geo-scientific organization of the German Government; - The provision of Geological Research Zones (ZRG) by the National Geological Service (SGN-C) through various geophysical and geochemical prospecting projects. In addition, the close collaboration established between the Democratic Republic of Congo and its partners has made it possible, in particular: 1) The implementation, in the coming days, of the International Visitor Leadership Program, a program financed by the American Government, allowing a real-time revitalization / immersion of young Congolese in the American mining sector through visits of a few weeks to the United States to allow them to discover the mines, extraction and processing plants, from upstream to downstream, the mineral extractive chain. 2) The organization of brainstorming meetings initiated by the Ministry of Mines with technical and financial partners, such as USAID, RMI or BGR, in order to harmonize the efforts of the various stakeholders to test the impact various formalization initiatives suggested and carried out in the field. The Ministry of Mines recalls that the formalization of the artisanal mining sector is done in full respect of the Mining Code and its implementing measures,
