A Congolese watchdog on the extractive industries, working so that the cobalt, copper and critical minerals dug from the DRC leave behind rights respected and an environment protected, not communities paying the cost.
Founded in Lubumbashi in 2013, African Resources Watch (AFREWATCH) documents how industrial and artisanal mining affect the people who live alongside it. From the copper-cobalt belt of Haut-Katanga and Lualaba to the mineral zones of the Kivus, its teams investigate pollution, forced relocations and unpaid community dues, and turn what they find into evidence that reaches companies, regulators and the courts.
The DRC supplies most of the world's cobalt, the metal at the heart of the energy transition. AFREWATCH works so that the transition is not built on the backs of Congolese communities, pairing field investigation with national and international advocacy.
AFREWATCH was created in 2013 by Congolese human-rights and natural-resource specialists who had watched the mining boom transform Haut-Katanga and Lualaba without transforming the lives around it. Constituted as a non-profit and led by executive director Emmanuel Umpula, it built its credibility the hard way: documenting cases on the ground, naming companies, and standing with affected communities through the consequences.
Its method is evidence first. Teams measure pollution, map relocations and trace the community-development levies that mining is meant to fund, then publish investigations that put names and numbers on the harm. That work has been picked up by national institutions and international partners alike, and earned the organisation a United Nations award for business and human rights.
AFREWATCH does not stop at exposure. It trains community leaders to defend their own rights, convenes other African organisations around the governance of transition minerals, and carries the demands of mine-affected communities into the rooms where mining is decided.
AFREWATCH works the full chain of mining accountability, from documenting harm on the ground to shaping how transition minerals are governed.
AFREWATCH documents the effects of industrial and artisanal mining on communities and ecosystems, pollution, water, health and forced displacement, and publishes the evidence so it cannot be ignored.
A major investigation into the human and environmental cost of industrial cobalt mining, published with international partners
Field enquiries into the impact of processing plants on neighbouring villages in the copper-cobalt belt
Headquartered in Lubumbashi, AFREWATCH works the copper-cobalt belt and beyond, with a presence in the east and the capital.
Headquarters: investigation, advocacy and the African green-minerals coalition, in the capital of Haut-Katanga.
AFREWATCH is founded in Lubumbashi by Congolese specialists to watch over the extractive industries reshaping Haut-Katanga and Lualaba.
AFREWATCH is recognised with a United Nations award for its work on business and human rights in the mining sector.
A major joint investigation puts the human and environmental cost of industrial cobalt mining on the record.
AFREWATCH anchors a continental civil-society coalition demanding a just governance of transition minerals.
