DRC: 1,600 companies illegally mining in South Kivu – how accountability in the mining sector can help end the war economy

When he took office in June 2024, the governor launched an overhaul of the mining sector. A month later, on 18 July 2024, an order suspended all mining activity in the province, so that the companies working there could be identified.

“We expected 400 companies, but 1,600 showed up – some had been operating for 8 to 10 years without permits, taxes or registration.”

Jean-Jacques Purusi Sadiki, Governor of South Kivu

Many of these companies, he said, have never paid taxes and hold neither an exploitation permit nor a research permit: they mine, transport and take the ore across the border. Most are Chinese-owned, and they are part of a wider network that exploits gold, coltan, cassiterite, copper and diamonds.

For the governor, as for UN experts, this network benefits Rwanda, which serves as a gateway for multinationals thanks to its infrastructure and supply chains: buyers reach Congolese minerals through the neighbouring country and bypass the DRC’s disorganised market. He put the gold smuggled out for refining in Rwanda, “which has set up refineries right on the border”, at 750 tonnes every six months – a figure that has not been independently verified.

On 17 March 2025, the European Union sanctioned Rwanda’s Gasabo Gold Refinery for contributing to the illegal extraction and trafficking of natural resources from eastern DRC (The EastAfrican). Kigali denies any involvement.

According to the governor, 67% of the province’s minerals go to the Middle East – Dubai, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia – and less than 2% to Europe; the rest goes to China. In January 2025, a report by the UN Group of Experts found that rebels had fraudulently exported at least 150 tonnes of coltan to Rwanda in 2024, from the Rubaya mines they control in North Kivu – the largest contamination of the region’s mineral supply chains on record (Reuters, via Mining Weekly). Too many foreign buyers still turn a blind eye to the origin of what they buy.

The plundering of resources hits the population first. Artisanal mining often takes place in inhumane conditions, with forced labour, child labour and constant danger for the miners. Insecurity also disrupts agriculture, the main livelihood of many families: when farmers cannot reach their fields, food insecurity becomes chronic.

Minerals that leave without a trace pay for weapons, not for schools or health centres. Accountability in the mining sector is a condition for peace. The Centre de Recherche sur l’Anti-Corruption (CERC) calls for:

1. the publication of the list of the 1,600 companies, with the status of their permits, the taxes they pay and their real owners;
2. monthly publication of the province’s mining revenue and of how it is spent, so that citizens can check the results of the reforms;
3. fewer taxes, paid through banks and digital counters, with the receipts made public – fewer cash payments mean fewer opportunities for bribes;
4. traceability of minerals from the mine to the refinery, and sanctions against buyers and refiners who process minerals from areas controlled by armed groups;
5. transparent contracts in any new partnership with foreign companies or States, with independent monitoring by civil society and mining communities.

In its civil society report on the UN Convention against Corruption, CERC found that the DRC has no obligation to disclose the real owners of companies – one of the gaps that lets illegal operators hide. At the Conference of the States Parties to the Convention in December 2023, CERC spoke on the links between corruption, the financing of crime and conflict in eastern Congo: CERC at the United Nations: from the UNCAC conference to Nairobi. With GovCheck, citizens can already document and report irregularities in public projects and budgets.