Gold mines – “They benefit from support in high places”, Chinese companies in the crosshairs in the DRC

But in July, the governor of the province Jean-Jacques Purusi suspended “illegal” extraction activities while these companies came into compliance with Congolese law: establishment of specifications, repair of infrastructure, renewal permits that have sometimes expired for decades. Since then, representatives of these companies, usually discreet, have paraded through the governor's office. “Instead of the 117 illegal companies that we invited, 540 showed up here overnight,” explains Jean-Jacques Purusi.

This university professor and former UN expert was appointed by the Congolese presidency “so that minerals now generate prosperity”, according to him, in a province where the poverty rate reaches 80%.

Access denied

In Kamituga, a mining town 40 km from Kitutu, gold extraction is in full swing in vast open-air mines. In the deposit exploited by the Congolese cooperative Mwenga force, some 400 diggers descend into the galleries for a few dollars a day despite the risk of collapse.

“We don't have the same means as the Chinese. State services come to our sites. We pay the duties and we bring the gold legally,” assures Félicien Mikalano, president of the artisanal diggers.

Semi-artisanal extraction is prohibited to foreigners by the mining code, but Chinese companies use these local cooperatives as “partners” to extract the ore. Half of the province's cooperatives are affected, according to the Bureau of Scientific and Technical Studies (BEST), a Congolese NGO specializing in mining governance issues.

A few kilometers from Kamituga, at the end of a dirt track, access to a mine operated by one of these cooperatives is controlled at three checkpoints. Journalists are asked to turn back. The same fate was reserved for the mining brigade responsible for recording extraction statistics every week on site. “We have difficulty controlling these companies,” admits Ghislain Chivundu Mutalemba, his commander. The Chinese partners extract, the cooperative sells the production to the counters. We do not know what percentage the Chinese take, nor how much they produce. »

Daily threats

Is the production sold in the hundreds of gold purchasing offices that line one another in the alleys of the city center? “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 trader. “But I have never seen a Chinese, it is only Congolese who buy. » The evaporation of mineral resources is not just the fault of foreigners. The gold purchased in Kamituga is transported to Bukavu, the provincial capital, by large traders, mainly Congolese.

Some only declare a fraction of their merchandise and sell the rest illegally to neighboring countries like Rwanda, according to the BEST.

In December 2022, the Congolese government granted the monopoly on the export of gold to South Kivu to the company Primera Gold, to “break the ore export circuits to Rwanda” and “neutralize certain business networks of the political opposition, according to a note from the French Institute of International Relations published in February 2024.

Exports of artisanal gold from South Kivu then increased from 42 kg in 2022 to more than five tonnes in 2023, or around a sixth of the volumes of gold exported each year by the DRC and officially declared. But Primera Gold now lacks the liquidity to buy this mineral and has failed to curb the black market, according to the BEST.