Jean-Paul Kapongo Kadiobo, Director General of SAEMAPE, and Bandi Mbubi, Executive Director of the Fair Cobalt Alliance, sign the Memorandum of Understanding at DRC Mining Week 2026 in Lubumbashi.
The Fair Cobalt Alliance was delighted to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with SAEMAPE, the DRC government agency responsible for assisting and supervising artisanal and small-scale mining, at DRC Mining Week 2026 in Lubumbashi. The MoU was sealed by Jean-Paul Kapongo Kadiobo, Director General of SAEMAPE, and our Executive Director, Bandi Mbubi.
The agreement runs for five years and formalises a collaboration that has been growing since FCA began working in the DRC in 2020. It commits both parties to work together on the formalisation and professionalisation of the artisanal cobalt sector in Lualaba and Haut-Katanga.
Under the MoU, SAEMAPE will involve FCA in the training and supervision of artisanal miners organised in cooperatives, facilitate our access to mine sites under its supervision, and work with us on incident management, data collection, and advocacy for viable Zones d’Exploitation Artisanale (ZEAs). For our part, FCA will support SAEMAPE with technical and financial assistance to cooperatives: providing personal protective equipment, improving health and safety conditions, supporting income diversification in mining communities, and helping cooperatives access finance for projects that improve working conditions. Both parties will meet every six months to review progress.
Working with the government on formalisation
The MoU comes at a significant moment for ASM reform in the DRC. The Minister of Mines, Louis Watum Kabamba, has made the formalisation of artisanal mining a central part of his sector reform. In June, he received the elected representatives of mining cooperatives in Kinshasa, alongside the commission preparing the assignment of cooperatives to newly created ZEAs and the committee overseeing the new ‘Protection Groupe’ insurance scheme for artisanal miners. These are exactly the kinds of measures FCA has long advocated for: legal spaces where artisanal miners can work, organised cooperatives, and social protection for the people doing the work.
Our new agreement with SAEMAPE positions us to support this agenda directly. As cooperatives are assigned to the new ZEAs, we aim to work alongside SAEMAPE to help them meet the standards the government is setting and ensure that formalisation delivers real improvements for miners and their communities.
A welcome step on demilitarisation
We also welcome President Félix Tshisekedi’s continued commitment to cleaning up the sector. On 10 July 2026, following the Council of Ministers, the President ordered the immediate withdrawal of soldiers and police illegally deployed on mine sites across the country. The illegal presence of armed men on mining sites undermines traceability, fuels fraud and extortion, and puts miners and communities at risk. Removing it is a precondition for the responsible, transparent sector that the government and its partners are working to build.
What this means for our mission
Artisanal mining supports hundreds of thousands of livelihoods in the DRC’s cobalt provinces. Treated as a problem to be eliminated, it stays informal, unsafe, and open to abuse. Treated as part of the solution, it can provide decent work and stable incomes for mining communities. That is the bet behind this MoU: government and civil society working together, site by site and cooperative by cooperative, to make artisanal cobalt safer, fairer, and free from child labour.