By: OrePulse

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Mines Minister Louis Watum Kabamba oversaw the resumption of weighbridge and laboratory operations at the Musompo artisanal minerals trading center near Kolwezi, in Lualaba province, on October 26, 2026, the ministry said, a week after protests by artisanal miners disrupted parts of the city.

The center, inaugurated in 2023, had remained largely unused in the years since, according to the ministry. Weighing stations and the on-site laboratory run by the Centre d'Évaluation, d'Expertise et de Certification (CEEC), the state body responsible for assaying and certifying minerals, resumed sampling and ore analysis as part of the restart, officials said.

The ministry said the facility is not yet operating at full capacity, citing ongoing technical issues, and that its nominal throughput of 250 trucks a day would be reached gradually. The minister instructed site managers to carry out daily monitoring of operations, to ease the exit of trucks that meet compliance requirements, and to draw up a plan for the facility's long-term management, the ministry said.

The reopening follows protests by artisanal miners on October 19 and 20 that disrupted movement in parts of Kolwezi, authorities said. The unrest followed inspections at mineral-processing operations and buying posts in the area carried out by an interservice commission that includes military magistrates and Mines Ministry representatives, officials said. Order returned to the city on October 21, according to the ministry.

On that same day, the minister suspended by decree the director general of the Service d'Assistance et d'Encadrement de l'Exploitation Minière Artisanale et à Petite Échelle (SAEMAPE), Jean-Paul Kapongo Kadiobo, along with the agency's provincial director for Lualaba, Georges Nyembo Kitungwa. The decrees cited the agency for failing to prevent unauthorized artisanal mining on concessions held by mining companies, including the area around Kamoto Copper Company's site, according to the ministry.

During the same visit, the minister met with the interservice commission at the provincial office of the Direction Générale de Migration, officials said. The ministry described the commission's mandate as covering two tasks: coordinating the removal of uniformed personnel from mining sites where they are present, and strengthening oversight of designated artisanal mining zones, locally known as ZEA.

Artisanal miners in Kolwezi have called for the designation of 33 such zones, according to the ministry, while a previously announced zone at Luilu has not yet been scheduled, officials said.

The ministry presented the Musompo center's reopening as part of a wider effort to give artisanal miners in the Kolwezi area a legal channel through which to sell their output, even as inspections of processing and buying operations in the region continue, officials said. The success of that effort will depend both on the center's output as it ramps up and on the availability of the additional artisanal mining zones miners have requested, the ministry indicated.