The model cobalt pilot, and why it stopped.
Between 2018 and 2020, mine owner Chemaf, trader Trafigura and the NGO Pact ran the most-cited artisanal cobalt formalisation project near Kolwezi: a fenced, mechanised zone where thousands of accredited miners worked more safely. It was suspended in 2020 and never relaunched.
Trafigura’s project pageFormalising an informal site, at scale.
Mutoshi sat on a Chemaf copper-cobalt concession on the edge of Kolwezi, where the COMIAKOL cooperative had mined informally for over twenty years. The pilot gave that cooperative official, supervised access to a delineated zone and used machinery to strip overburden, replacing the deadly deep, unsupported tunnels of informal digging with shallow open pits no more than ten metres deep.
Each partner had a role: Chemaf supplied the site, machinery, geology and an on-site doctor and bought the ore; Trafigura funded the work, set the standards and offtook the cobalt; Pact ran delivery on the ground; Kumi Consulting audited against Trafigura’s responsible-sourcing expectations; and the state service SAEMAPE provided monitoring and the licence to operate.
It became the reference case for "responsible artisanal cobalt", repeatedly described as pioneering. Its commercial logic was equally clear: a traceable, lower-risk ASM cobalt stream for Trafigura, built into a cobalt-hydroxide marketing agreement that ran to the end of 2020.
Discontinued, and a cautionary tale.
The official reasons were COVID-19 and the 2019 creation of EGC, the state monopoly that removed the legal basis for a private trader to buy artisanal cobalt directly. But several researchers argue the deeper driver was industrialisation: Chemaf always intended to convert Mutoshi into an industrial mine, and artisanal miners were tolerated only until the processing plant was ready.
Follow-up research found that ending the pilot brought more accidents, more child labour and reduced female participation, with miners returning to deep informal tunnels on the same ground. The structural lesson is blunt: formalisation projects sited on industrial concessions are inherently time-limited. Mutoshi is profiled here as an ended pilot, not a live programme.
The industrial mine those miners were displaced for has itself stalled: Chemaf fell into financial distress, its planned sale to Norinco collapsed under Gécamines’ objection in 2025, and as of 2026 the concession is the subject of a US-backed acquisition bid. The ground that was, briefly, the model formalisation site has reverted to deep informal shafts.
Launch to closure.
- 2018
The pilot launches; Chemaf opens supervised access to COMIAKOL, Trafigura funds, Pact implements.
- 2019
Scale-up to roughly 2,700 miners on peak days. The cobalt price crashes, squeezing miner incomes; an independent socio-economic study reports strong gains, especially for women.
- 2020
Chemaf closes the site in March for COVID-19; in November Trafigura signs a five-year offtake with the new state monopoly EGC; on 21 December Trafigura announces the pilot has formally ended.
- 2022
Trafigura and TDB arrange about US$600M of financing for Chemaf to build Étoile and an industrial Mutoshi mine; the artisanal pilot is not relaunched.
- 2024
Chemaf, in financial distress with roughly US$900M of debt, agrees to sell Étoile and Mutoshi to China’s Norinco for about US$1.4bn. Creditors include Trafigura.
- 2025
The DRC and Gécamines withhold approval over the 2015 leases; the Norinco deal collapses in March, and Chemaf moves to halt copper-cathode production.
- 2026
A US consortium, Virtus Minerals with Orion Resource Partners and backing from the US Development Finance Corporation, agrees to buy about 95% of Chemaf, pending DRC approval; the Mutoshi concession’s future is now contested.
A safer site, by design.
A fenced, mechanised zone
Access limited to verified COMIAKOL members; machinery stripped overburden so miners worked shallow open pits, not collapsing tunnels.
Accreditation and age control
Members were registered and verified over 18; child labour was excluded from the controlled site, with random alcohol testing.
PPE, water and a clinic
Protective equipment, clean water and sanitation, and an on-site doctor treating injuries, malaria and disease.
Better roles for women
The pilot moved women out of the lowest-paid washing work into higher-paid digging and team-lead roles.
The pilot in numbers.
Figures from the Trafigura-commissioned 2019 study and Pact’s case study. COMIAKOL had around 5,000 members; on-site daily numbers reached about 2,700. A specific production tonnage was not published. The US$1M-per-1,000-miners figure is the study’s own “rough estimate”, not a statistical evaluation; the 39% women figure is the surveyed project group, against a 45% off-site comparator.
A trader, a mine owner and an NGO.
A bilateral, single-site, single-offtaker pilot that ran 2018–2020; there is no continuing partnership. Funding flowed from Trafigura and was tied to its commercial offtake; Gécamines was the underlying landowner but not an operating partner.
Trafigura
Pact
SAEMAPECOMIAKOL = Coopérative Minière et Artisanale de Kolwezi.