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President Tshisekedi's presidential ordinances (ordonnances présidentielles), read on RTNC national television on the evening of February 23, 2026, restructured the boards and executive management of five strategic public enterprises simultaneously. Three of the five are directly in the critical-minerals sector:
Gécamines (copper / cobalt):
SAKIMA — Société Aurifère du Kivu et du Maniema (eastern DRC — 3T minerals + gold):
SOKIMO — Société Minière de Kilomoto (Kilo-Moto gold sites):
Two non-mining entities were also affected: the Régie des Voies Aériennes (RVA — aviation authority) and the Autorité de Régulation du secteur de l'Électricité (ARE — electricity regulator).
The leadership overhaul arrives roughly two months after the December 4, 2025 DRC-US Strategic Partnership Agreement on Trade and Investment, which committed to unlock American private capital into DRC critical-minerals supply chains (cobalt, copper, coltan, gold). Multiple DRC media sources explicitly frame the appointments as a consequence of that accord and the associated need to position loyalist technocrats who can operationalise the US-aligned trajectory.
Gécamines is the DRC's flagship copper-cobalt state company and a royalty/joint-venture counterpart in most large copper-belt concessions (including the Tenke Fungurume and Mutanda joint ventures). SAKIMA covers eastern DRC artisanal and semi-industrial gold and 3T (tin, tantalum, tungsten) production zones — a sector that has faced repeated armed-group interference and ASM formalisation challenges. SOKIMO governs the Kilo-Moto gold concessions in Ituri/North-Kivu, one of DRC's oldest industrial gold districts.
The simultaneous reshuffle of all three mining SOEs — combined with the April 2026 DRC Strategic Reserve decree (2026-04-10) and the April 2026 FX audit (2026-04-24) — constitutes a coherent programme of state-mining-apparatus tightening under Tshisekedi's second term.