BGR presents LION at DRC Mining Week Copper, cobalt and gold: Important levers for sustainable economic development in the DRC

The DRC Mining Week is the largest mining conference in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) with over 3500 participants from more than 50 countries. Here, the public and private sectors connect to tackle jointly strategic challenges. The conference focused on the increasing demand for metals such as copper and cobalt as well as on the effects of the new mining code, especially on local content. For the first time, Germany was present with its own pavilion in which the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), together with German mining suppliers and the Federal Foreign Office, answered questions from journalists and Congolese mining companies.

Overarching topics at this year's DRC Mining Week were the competitiveness of the Congolese mining sector, local value creation, energy bottlenecks, risks in the cobalt supply chain and regional trade integration. The BGR “Extractives and Development” Sector Programme presented the policy advisory tool LION as part of a panel discussion on the new mining legislation. LION (External link) stands for Local Investment Opportunities in Natural Resource Projects and is an instrument for modelling the demand of industrial mining for supplier products. On this basis, it can be deduced, for example, whether a country or region has sufficient demand for individual supply products in order to present their local production in an economically sensible way.

Within the scope of its bilateral engagement in the DR Congo, BGR also pointed out the market potentials for local value creation in gold mining through jewelry production, as well as market forecasts for the increasing demand for copper, cobalt and lithium resulting from the trends towards electro mobility. Due to the strong dependence of DR Congo's economy on exports of raw materials, especially copper, cobalt and gold are potentially important levers for sustainable economic development, if the enabling environment at the national level is shaped accordingly.

For further information please contact Thomas Grupp (External link).