New waivers granted on concentrates as a lack of capacity frustrates country’s bid to expand local processing and refining
Excavators and drillers at work in an open pit copper and cobalt mine in the DRC. Picture: REUTERS
The DRC, the world’s leading producer of cobalt and Africa’s biggest copper producer, banned exports of copper and cobalt concentrates in 2013 to encourage miners to process and refine the ore in the country. Alphamin, which runs a tin mine in the DRC’s North Kivu province, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
But even at full capacity, LCS cannot process all the DRC’s copper. The DRC produced 765,000 tonnes of copper concentrate in the first half of the year alone, the central bank said, up 13.4% year on year. Elsewhere in the African mining sector, Sierra Leoneans living next to the country’s largest diamond mine are taking their government to West Africa’s regional court for failing to protect them from alleged environmental lapses by the company that runs it, a subsidiary of Octea.
The complaint follows a lawsuit filed by the residents against Octea in Sierra Leone’s high court in March seeking an unspecified amount in damages for “degradation or destruction of land, destruction of homes and loss of livelihoods and ... dumping of toxic mine waste” among other allegations.
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