The agency, Entreprise Générale du Cobalt (EGC), which oversees the procurement of hand-mined cobalt throughout the country, says it wants to work more closely with industrial operators to solve the rising issue of unlicensed artisanal miners infiltrating huge mining concessions.
Illegal artisanal mining has long led to operational and safety hazards to Congo’s big companies, like the CMOC Group and Glencore.
These activities are propagated by hundreds of thousands of Congolese laborers, many of whom do so despite the hazardous working conditions.
Owing to the scale of informal mining, both government officials and private firms have struggled to completely safeguard mining sites and prevent unwanted entry.
To solve this, Entreprise Générale du Cobalt intends to work with mining corporations to identify specific pieces of land within existing concessions that can be assigned to artisanal mining cooperatives.
According to CEO Eric Kalala, the strategy is meant to provide a more regulated and safer environment for independent miners while eliminating unlawful operations across key cobalt-producing regions.
“It’s one of the social solutions that we’ve offered to the industrials: To work with us to reduce the pressure,” Kalala told Bloomberg in an interview at the Cobalt Institute’s annual congress in Madrid.
EGC would designate “squares” of land for artisanal use without changing the permit’s legal status, he said.
With the implementation of new regulations last year that permit it to form alliances with mining firms to solve the artisanal issue, EGC hopes to allay such worries.
The group secured its inaugural contract in February with Eurasian Resources Group, an entity managing numerous copper and cobalt assets in the country where these minerals often coexist.
Eric Kalala noted that both EGC and ERG are currently in the process of selecting specific sites for this initiative.
As well as working with Chengtun Congo Resources Sarl, a subsidiary of China’s Chengtun Mining Group Co., to process its copper and cobalt, EGC also intends to partner with the American company, Virtus Minerals Inc, which took over multiple copper and cobalt permits earlier this year.
Congo’s prior plans to protect its mines
According to the country’s General Inspectorate of Mines, the project would be supported by funds from both the United States and the UAE.
An initial $100 million investment will enable the deployment of up to 3,000 armed recruits by December, with long-term goals of increasing the force to 20,000 “mining guards” nationally by 2028.
“The U.S. government is not currently funding any units to patrol or guard mines in the Congo,” the U.S embassy said in a statement, noting that Washington remained committed to advancing economic growth and stability in Congo through the strategic partnership.