Eastern DRC grapples with Chinese gold mining companies

Italian priest Davide Marcheselli has been fighting for years against Chinese companies that illegally mine gold in the town of Kitutu, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

He says mining has ravaged the town located in South Kivu province, polluting rivers and destroying fields.

Hundreds of foreign companies, most of them Chinese, mine gold in this mineral-rich province, often without permits and without declaring profits, according to local authorities.

For a long time, civil society groups and church members in Kitutu were the only ones to take a stand against powerful mining companies, which often have friends in high places.

“From deputies to the village chief, everyone receives something (from companies), money or shares (in companies),” Marcheselli told AFP.

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In July, South Kivu Governor Jean-Jacques Purusi suspended “illegal” mining activities in the province until companies could comply with Congolese mining laws.

Under the legislation, companies would have to renew their mining permits, some of which have expired for decades.

Since the ban, businesses that normally operate in the shadows have flocked to the governor’s office to try to get permission to resume operations.

“Instead of the 117 illegal companies we invited, 540 arrived here overnight,” Purusi said.

Access Denied –

In the town of Kamituga, about forty kilometers from Kitutu, gold mining is booming.

At a site operated by the Congolese cooperative Mwenga Force, around 400 people excavate vast open-air mines in the hope of earning a few dollars a day.

The president of an association of artisanal miners, Félicien Mikalano, says that local operators “do not have the same means” as Chinese companies, such as machines and cash.

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Artisanal mining refers to small-scale mining, carried out by individuals without large machines and not employed by large companies.

The practice is banned for foreigners by the country’s mining code, but Chinese companies use local cooperatives as “partners” to circumvent the ban.

About half of the province’s Congolese cooperatives are in partnership with Chinese companies, according to the scientific and technical studies office (BEST), a Congolese NGO specializing in mining governance.

A few kilometers from Kamituga, at the end of a dirt road, access to a mine operated by one of these cooperatives is controlled at three checkpoints.

AFP was not authorized to transmit them.

Officials responsible for monitoring and inspecting mining sites are also refused entry.

“It is difficult to control these companies,” said inspector Ghislain Chivundu Mutalemba.

“These Chinese partners extract (and) the cooperatives sell the product over the counter. We don’t know what percentage the Chinese take, or how much they produce,” he said.

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“Don’t you dare ask questions” –

“All I know is that the bosses take the gold and bring it to Bukavu, I don’t dare ask questions,” explains Siri Munga Walubinja, gold buyer.

“But I have never seen a Chinese, it is only Congolese who buy,” he adds.

The gold purchased in Kamituga is transported to Bukavu, the capital of the South Kivu province, by “large traders”, most of them Congolese.

Once arriving in the provincial capital, some declare only a fraction of their merchandise and sell the rest illegally in the DRC, which is then transported by smugglers to Rwanda, according to BEST.

In December 2022, the government granted a monopoly on gold exports from South Kivu to the Congolese state-owned company Primera Gold.

This approach aimed to “break ore export routes to Rwanda” and “target political opposition companies”, according to a note from the French Institute of International Relations published in February 2024.

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South Kivu’s gold exports have exploded from 42 kilograms (92 pounds) in 2022 to more than five tons (11,200 pounds) in 2023, or about a sixth of officially reported national production.

But Primera Gold now lacks the cash to buy the ore and has failed to curb the black market, according to BEST.

The channels used by Chinese companies, none of which responded to AFP’s requests for comment, remain unknown to authorities and NGOs.

Even Purusi is having trouble getting responses from companies.

“Their representatives put you in communication with this general (telephone line) or a minister in Kinshasa on the phone, to tell you not to disturb them,” explains the governor of the province.

Source: AFP