Spotlight · Mining & Minerals

Watching the Minerals That Power the World

The DRC supplies the cobalt, copper and other minerals at the heart of the global energy transition. The people best placed to keep that supply chain honest are the Congolese organisations who live alongside the mines.

Most of the world's cobalt comes from the copper-cobalt belt of the southern DRC, and much of its tin, tantalum and tungsten from the conflict-affected east. The pressure on this ground is only growing as demand for transition minerals climbs.

Across these mining regions, Congolese civil-society organisations document pollution and displacement, track the revenues minerals owe, and bring the women and communities who live with mining into how it is governed. This is the work Nashiriki presents and promotes: locally led mineral accountability, and the case for giving it sovereign, interoperable digital foundations.

Where the minerals come fromThe copper-cobalt belt of the south and the mineral zones of the east

The Organisations

Accountability, carried by those who live with mining.

Two of the Congolese organisations whose mineral-accountability work Nashiriki champions, each leading from a different front.

AFREWATCH

From Lubumbashi, a watchdog documenting pollution, displacement and the true cost of cobalt across the copper-cobalt belt.

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DYFREN

A women-led organisation putting the women who live with mining at the centre of how mineral wealth is governed.

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Why It Matters

Four reasons the ground truth wins.

Closest to the harm

The organisations beside the mines see pollution, displacement and abuse before any distant audit can.

Following the money

Local watchdogs trace what minerals owe communities and the state, and name the gap between the two.

Women in the lead

Mineral governance that includes the women who live with mining is both more honest and more durable.

Evidence for due diligence

Structured, locally owned monitoring is exactly the credible record responsible buyers and regulators need.

A Message to Buyers and Funders

Every refiner, automaker and regulator that depends on Congolese minerals needs credible evidence that the supply chain is clean. That evidence already exists, gathered by the organisations who live with mining, but too often it stays in reports, scattered and hard to verify.

Nashiriki exists to change that: to give locally led mineral accountability the sovereign, interoperable digital foundations that turn field knowledge into trustworthy, connected records, owned by the organisations that produce them. For the programmes working to make mineral supply chains responsible, and the agencies that fund them, nothing has to be built from zero.

Work With Us

Build the evidence the supply chain needs.

Do you fund, source from or work on responsible minerals in the DRC? Talk to us about supporting the Congolese organisations who watch the supply chain from the ground.