Who shapes artisanal cobalt.

Access to Decent Work for Youth (AD-Y)

Youth-employment programme launched in 2026 by the Child Rights Action Hub DRC for adolescents aged 16 and 17 in artisanal copper and cobalt mining communities. Its first community workshop programme ran in March 2026 in Kapata and UCK, with nine young people over four workshops, and its acceleration programme runs with La Creation Hub. The Centre for Child Rights and Business is the single source.

Action pour la Défense des droits humains (ADDH)

A Congolese non-profit organisation based in Kolwezi, working to increase transparency in the natural resource sector. In 2023 it began the Mapping Payments project on artisanal cobalt taxes and fees with IMPACT.

Addressing Child Labor in Cobalt Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining in Kolwezi

Past Pact project to reduce child labour in artisanal mining communities near Kolwezi, through apprenticeships for young people aged 15 to 17 and WORTH savings groups, funded by the Responsible Business Alliance. Pact lists it as a past project and gives no dates; a linked blog post is dated July 2022.

AFREWATCH

Congolese extractive-sector watchdog (African Resources Watch), founded in Lubumbashi in 2013 and working across the copper-cobalt belt of Haut-Katanga and Lualaba, per its Nashiriki champion page. It is the DRC-based co-author, with the UK corporate watchdog RAID, of the March 2024 report Beneath the Green on the cost of industrial cobalt mining, researched around Kolwezi. EPRM's member overview names it in the civil society organisations pillar; EPRM's published rule is that civil-society members contribute 120 hours a year in kind rather than a fee.

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African Development Bank

Development bank identified by the DRC National Human Rights Commission as financing PABEA-COBALT through both a grant and a loan. The financing terms are attributed to the commission's 2024 evaluation.

Agence Congolaise de l’Environnement (ACE)

The DRC's environmental agency. ITIE-RDC reports it present at artisanal copper-cobalt sites to collect cooperatives' contribution to the costs of rehabilitating artisanal exploitation zones under the mining regulations, and classes that presence as unauthorised but justified. This rests on that single report.

Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM)

A civil-society member of EPRM and a partner on the EPRM-funded cobalt credit project at Kamilombe, entered in the funder’s own listing as Alliance pour une Mine Responsable Europe. It is the organisation behind the CRAFT Code for artisanal mining.

Alternatives for Actions (A.F.A.)

Congolese non-profit organisation founded in 2013 and working in Lualaba and Haut-Katanga, including Fungurume, Kolwezi, Kisanfu, Sakania and Lubumbashi. It runs village savings and loans groups, as the Fair Cobalt Alliance's local partner for that work in Kapata, and has worked with industrial miners (TFM, ERG Africa) and with organisations including Good Shepherd, World Vision, ACCELLERE and the ILO. A 2024 account by The Centre for Child Rights and Business names it among the local organisations that founded the Child Rights Action Hub DRC. It is known only through the alliance's and The Centre's pages, which spell its name several ways.

Artisanact

Local NGO that implemented the mining component of Cobalt for Development after IMPACT, as a direct implementing partner until 2024. C4D's own Lessons Learned Paper describes it as a local NGO, the basis for placing it in the DRC. Bon Pasteur Kolwezi's 2024–2028 strategic plan also names it among C4D's local partners, with GIZ, Bon Pasteur and IMPACT.

ASM Cobalt Framework

Historical IMPACT initiative towards a framework for artisanal cobalt, listed in IMPACT's 2022–2023 annual report among the projects it spotlighted on the cobalt supply chain. That report has IMPACT facilitating workshops on the framework's updated criteria, with publication and piloting still ahead of it, and identifies the Responsible Minerals Initiative in its donor legend. The cited sources do not establish whether the framework was published or piloted after 2023, and no text of the framework is cited.

Autorité de Régulation et de Contrôle des Marchés des Substances Minérales Stratégiques (ARECOMS)

The DRC's regulator of the markets for strategic mineral substances: a public administrative and technical establishment with legal personality, created by Décret n°19/16 of 5 November 2019, which implements Décret n°19/15 of the same date protecting artisanal activity in strategic minerals. It regulates cobalt export markets: in February 2025 it suspended Congolese cobalt exports for an initial four months, renewed in June 2025, and ITIE-RDC lists support to EGC's rationalisation of artisanal cobalt among its missions. C4D's paper records only limited engagement, saying ARECOMS “was not yet operational during project implementation”. ARECOMS Decisions 004 and 005 set base export quotas of 3,625 tonnes for October 2025, 7,250 tonnes for November and 7,250 tonnes for December, with stated exclusions and allocations tied to historical exports. Reuters reported that unused January–June 2026 allocations remaining on 30 June were forfeited and returned to the strategic quota.

Belgian development cooperation

Belgium's development cooperation, named by IPIS as a funder of Kufatilia without saying which Belgian body; the source identifies neither Enabel nor the development directorate.

Better Mining

Monitoring programme for artisanal mine sites, run from 2018 by RCS Global: initial site assessments, permanent on-the-ground monitoring and monthly corrective action plans, with the data reported to buyers. In April 2020 it monitored three artisanal cobalt sites and aimed at six that year and twelve or more by 2023, with the Responsible Minerals Initiative providing strategic support and funding. In August 2020 Huayou Cobalt, a founding partner, extended its monitoring of the Kasulo and Kamilombe sites for two more years, a site near Likasi was added, and the programme said it would coordinate its efforts with the Fair Cobalt Alliance. A 2021 UNICEF release puts its wider scope at over 40 artisanal sites across cobalt, copper and 3TG minerals in the Great Lakes region. SLR acquired RCS Global in October 2022, and in June 2026 “SLR Better Mining” signed a memorandum with the Child Rights Action Hub DRC to refer child-labour cases for remediation. The programme's own pages give its own account of its current activity (see its profile). The domain bettermining.org now belongs to an unrelated Nigerian company.

Bloom by IMPACT

Monitoring platform named in a single statement: IMPACT's February 2025 Her Security factsheet says the implementation of that project is supported by the Responsible Minerals Initiative and Bloom by IMPACT. IMPACT's two documents establish nothing further about it; its own site says it is a project of Knowledge for Impact, a social enterprise established by IMPACT, which has its head office in Ottawa, and a job advertisement places Knowledge for Impact in Ottawa, Canada, so the record gives Canada as its country, which is the hub curator's call.

Bon Pasteur Kolwezi

Kolwezi-based non-profit working with children and women in the cobalt-mining communities of Lualaba: the local development partner of the Good Shepherd International Foundation and an affiliate of the Good Shepherd Sisters, who arrived in Kolwezi on 25 March 2012. It runs the Bon Pasteur Kolwezi Programme with GSIF. Its 2024–2028 strategic plan says it was the local implementing partner of Cobalt for Development's community component at Kisote from 2019 and dates the conclusion of that project to 2022, while C4D's own paper says the community component ended at the beginning of 2023. It is named as a partner in both phases of IMPACT's Her Security programme: the completed 2022–2023 research phase in Lualaba, alongside the Good Shepherd International Foundation, and the 2024–2028 implementation programme, where IMPACT's project page lists it with EITI-DRC; its plan records a partnership with IMPACT on specific projects and advocacy. Its Nashiriki champion page also establishes where it works and its cobalt child-protection focus. Its legal form is not established, and no mine-specific or supply relationship is.

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Bon Pasteur Kolwezi Programme

The Good Shepherd Sisters' community programme in Kolwezi, run by Bon Pasteur Kolwezi with the Good Shepherd International Foundation in artisanal cobalt mining communities that include Kanina (Domaine Marial), Kabamba, Mukoma, Musonoi, Kapata and Kisote. Its 2024–2028 strategic plan identifies eight communities within programme scope: Kanina, Musonoie (also spelled Musonoi), Kapata, Mukoma, Kabamba, Tshala, Katapula and Kisote; this plan list does not mean every planned activity was delivered in all eight. It covers child protection, education, alternative livelihoods, women's economic empowerment, healthcare through a mobile clinic and community advocacy; the Bon Pasteur Centre in Kanina, inaugurated in September 2019, has 14 classrooms for about 1,000 children. GSIF's 2022 annual report records that the mobile clinic was established that year and operated in four communities, Kanina, Kisote, Mukoma and Tshala. Its start is dated 2012 by GSIF's report and the sisters' arrival in Kolwezi, and 2013 by GSIF's programme page and its first strategic plan (2013–2017); the current plan runs from 2024 to 2028. That plan names its international funders as including Misean Cara, ERG, Mercedes-Benz, GIZ, Missio Austria, Google and Manos Unidas, lists Porticus for funds and training, and expects European Union support from 2024 through a project with IMPACT. ERG says it has supported the programme since 2017; every other funder rests on the plan alone.

Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BGR)

Germany’s Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources. It surveys artisanal copper-cobalt mining in the DRC and developed training material with Cobalt for Development.

Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ)

Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. It commissioned GIZ's project Integrated Economic Development in the Mining Sector (DISM, 2019–2022), one of whose components worked with artisanal cobalt cooperatives on standards, and it funds, with the European Union, BGR's programme on responsible supply chains in the mining sector (phase II, July 2024 to June 2027), which covers artisanal copper-cobalt.