No single rulebook governs it. Artisanal cobalt sits where Congolese law, foreign market-access rules and voluntary standards meet, and the most-quoted laws often don't apply at all.
There is no one cobalt law. What reaches an artisanal pit in Lualaba is a stack of overlapping rules: how the DRC taxes and channels the metal, what buyers abroad must check before it enters their market, and the voluntary standards that fill the gaps in between.
We map the instruments that actually bear on artisanal cobalt, each dated, status-tagged and linked to its source.
Regulation here moves fast: the export regime has changed three times since early 2025. Treat every entry as a dated snapshot, not a settled fact.
How the DRC defines, taxes, channels and now rations its cobalt.
The statutory regime for all mining titles, royalties and the artisanal framework. The 2018 revision raised royalties, added a windfall tax, and created a "strategic minerals" category.
Designated cobalt (with germanium and coltan) a strategic mineral, raising its royalty from 2% to 10%.
Artisanal mining is lawful only for card-holding adults, grouped in an approved cooperative, inside a designated Artisanal Exploitation Zone (ZEA).
A state monopoly (Décrets 19/15–16) over the purchase, processing, sale and export of all artisanally-mined cobalt in the DRC.
A full export suspension on 22 Feb 2025 (extended in June) was replaced from Sept 2025 by an export quota: 96,600 t/year for both 2026 and 2027, with prepaid royalty and quota certificates (AVQ).
What buyers in the EU and US must check before cobalt enters their market, and which famous rules skip it.
The five-step, risk-based due-diligence framework for minerals from conflict-affected and high-risk areas — the de facto global reference.
Supply-chain due-diligence duties on cobalt, lithium, nickel and graphite in batteries placed on the EU market, aligned to the OECD framework.
Mandatory OECD-aligned due diligence for EU importers of tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold (3TG) from conflict-affected areas.
Requires US-listed issuers to disclose use of "conflict minerals" sourced from the DRC and its neighbours.
Obliges large companies to identify and address human-rights and environmental harms across their chain of activities.
Requires in-scope German companies to run human-rights and environmental due diligence across their supply chains.
A framework pairing US access to DRC critical minerals (including cobalt) with security cooperation and supply-chain investment.
The audit schemes and site-level programmes that fill the space the law leaves open.
A third-party audit scheme assessing cobalt refiners against OECD-aligned due diligence, producing a conformant-refiner list.
A responsible-sourcing self-assessment-and-reporting framework for Cobalt Institute members, mapped to OECD due diligence.
Programmes that improve conditions and collect data directly at artisanal cobalt sites, feeding downstream due diligence.
The export quota changes year to year; the EU's due-diligence dates keep shifting. Everything here is dated and linked so you can check the current state at the source. Found something out of date? Tell us.