The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has appointed Kompay Koko Ngiemi as interim director general of its artisanal mining agency while the government tightens controls over mineral production and trading in the country's copper-cobalt region.
Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have detained around 300 Chinese nationals in a crackdown on suspected illegal mining in the country’s copper belt, with most of the detentions reported in Kolwezi, a major copper and cobalt mining centre.
The DRC and Angola have signed a new US-backed agreement on the Lobito Corridor, aiming to cut copper and cobalt transit times from roughly 30 days to a week or less as Washington competes with Chinese-backed routes.
Kobaloni Energy is developing a 6,000-tonne-a-year cobalt sulphate refinery in Zambia aimed at European battery makers, positioning it as Africa's first large-scale plant of its kind.
Lobito Atlantic Railway is aiming to roughly double the tonnage of copper and cobalt it carries in 2026, as weekly train frequency rises toward a longer-term capacity target of 4.6 million tonnes a year.
The DRC said it expects no major disruption to copper and cobalt production despite Middle East supply-chain pressure, reporting first-quarter copper exports of 824,000 tonnes.
SSE: 603993CopperCMOCChinese miner, formerly China Molybdenum Company, that has grown into one of the world's largest producers of cobalt and a major copper producer through its Congolese subsidiaries. It is listed in both Shanghai and Hong Kong with state-owned entities holding a minority stake.
DiversifiedEurasian Resources GroupPrivately held mining and metals group formed in December 2013 when its founders and the Kazakh state took Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation private, delisting it from the London and Kazakhstan stock exchanges. Kazakhstan retains a 40% shareholding alongside the founding Ibragimov, Mashkevitch and Chodiev families.
CopperGécaminesCongolese state-owned mining company headquartered in Lubumbashi, successor to the colonial-era Union Minière du Haut-Katanga. It sits on some of the world's largest copper and cobalt deposits and holds minority stakes in most of the DRC's major copper-cobalt joint ventures.
LSE: GLENDiversifiedGlencoreAnglo-Swiss commodity trader and miner listed in London and Johannesburg, and a member of the FTSE 100. Its industrial mining division spans copper, cobalt, zinc, nickel, coal and ferroalloys, complementing one of the world's largest physical commodity marketing businesses.
