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The arrêté signed on 12 February 2025 by Minister of Mines Kizito Pakabomba designated 38 mining concessions — concentrated in the Rubaya artisanal mining zone (Masisi territory, North Kivu) and the Nyabibwe sector (Kalehe territory, South Kivu) — as "red zones" under the DRC Mining Code's supply-chain classification system. Under DRC mining law, red zone status suspends all artisanal exploitation rights and prohibits extraction, transport, and commercialization of the designated minerals until the status is revoked. The affected minerals are coltan (tantalite-columbite), cassiterite (tin ore), and wolframite (tungsten ore) — the "3TG" conflict-mineral triad regulated under international due-diligence frameworks.
The proximate trigger was the December 2024 report of the UN Group of Experts on the DRC (document S/2024/900), which documented in granular detail how M23/AFC armed forces had seized operational control of Rubaya and were taxing artisanal miners at approximately USD 800,000 per month. The report further documented at least 150 tonnes/month of coltan being fraudulently exported to Rwanda, where it was blended with legitimate Rwandan production before re-export to global tantalum processors. The UN characterised this as the largest documented contamination of conflict-mineral supply chains in the Great Lakes region.
Rubaya is among the world's densest artisanal coltan zones; coltan is the ore from which tantalum is refined. Tantalum is a designated "conflict mineral" under US Dodd-Frank Section 1502 / SEC Rule 13p-1, the EU Conflict Minerals Regulation (2017/821), and the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas. DRC accounts for approximately 60–70% of global tantalum mine supply; Rubaya and the artisanal sector in eastern Kivu contribute a material fraction.
The red zone classification means that coltan originating from these 38 concessions from 12 February 2025 onwards is presumptively tainted under all major due-diligence frameworks. Electronics manufacturers (capacitor, hard-drive, semiconductor supply chains) subject to Rule 13p-1 or EU CMR must treat Rubaya-sourced material from this date as high-risk.
The original February 2025 arrêté signed by Minister Pakabomba was not publicly indexed on mines.gouv.cd as of the filing date (the URL mines.gouv.cd/fr/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ARRETE-ZONE-ROUGE-ANNEXES.pdf returns 404). The primary sources cited are the November 2025 prorogation arrêté and its mines.gouv.cd article page, which explicitly confirm the February 2025 original action, its scope (38 concessions, Masisi + Kalehe), and the prohibited activities. Secondary sources from February 2025 (DeskEco, Bankable Africa, Norton Rose Fulbright, Copper Belt Katanga Mining) independently verify the original action with date and ministerial attribution.