Beyond the cobalt boom: who really profits in eastern DRC?
The price per tonne has doubled in three years. Yet the mining villages of Lualaba still do not see the colour of the money. An investigation into a system that bypasses the local.
On the road to Kolwezi the contrast is striking. On the left: industrial concessions, their high walls, their gleaming trucks. On the right: the home villages of the diggers — mud-brick houses, schools with holes in the roof, clinics without medicine.
Daraja walked the value chain, from the artisanal pit to the smelter and on to invoicing. The numbers we collected — sources documented in an annex — show that less than 4% of final value returns to local communities.
"They tell us about economic spillovers," Augustin Kabange, a primary-school teacher in Mutoshi, scoffs. "When I look at my pupils, I see what the spillovers do not do."
The six-week investigation identifies four precise leakage points in the fiscal system and outlines three levers the 2025 mining law would allow — if political will follows.