Alphonse stands in knee-deep muddy water, a former businessman in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s southeastern mining region of Katanga.
“If you tell me that I can get other work, I’ll go with you,” says the man, one of about 130,000 small-scale diggers trying to scratch a living from the region’s rich earth.
Alphonse says he was unable to find a job after his business in the regional capital, Lubumbashi, collapsed some eight year ago.
Photo: AFP
So he joined the community of these workers — known as “artisanal miners” — who annually extract the equivalent of 7,000 tonnes of pure copper and the same amount of cobalt. While the DR Congo is one of the least-developed countries in the world, it is a leading producer of both minerals.
Somewhere between Lubumbashi and the major mining hub of Kolwezi, Alphonse and about 50 companions in misfortune — whose names have been changed — are busy on a stony slope near a quarry hidden in the woods.
Guards are on the lookout, some less watchful than others. Once past them, an Agence France-Presse team needs to win the trust of Bobby, a Congolese who says he is the foreman in charge of the work.
Bobby is not pleased to see journalists on the scene.
“You’re not the ones who did Katanga Business, are you?” he asks curtly, referring to a documentary made by Belgian director Thierry Michel about thorny relations between clandestine miners and the foreign firms that have become masters of local wealth.
The regulars know the site as “Chez Monsieur Fernand” (“Mr Fernand’s place”).
Bobby says that the mine really belongs to a top Congolese official and that formal mining is undertaken in partnership with Chinese investors.
Bobby himself “authorizes” the diggers to exploit the slope, but the owners of the mine know nothing about their activity. In exchange for his vigilance, the miners pay him a tithe of what they find, he says, which amounts to 30 percent by their accounts.
The ochre-brown earth is full of holes like Swiss cheese. On the surface, small pathways separate plots of land where diggers work with shovels, crowbars and pickaxes.
Some miners are already more than 3m underground. They have been working here for almost three months. In a few weeks the site will be thoroughly explored and diggers will have to move on.
Men carry the mixture of dirt and stones on their backs to a nearby stream.
“We work in teams of three or four,” Dieudonne says. “We stop when we’re exhausted. We rest for a day and then we come back.”
While mining is purely man’s work, at the stream women and children help to wash and sift the rubble. Alphonse is helped by his wife and their two daughters, aged eight and 15.
Alphonse is about 40, but looks at least 10 years older. Next to him, 30-year-old Henri uses a fine mesh filled with rubble to wash away as much soil as he can.
The next step is Alphonse’s job. When done professionally, this task of fine measurement by weight is performed by elaborate machines, but clandestine miners do everything by hand.
Shaking a wooden tray while he skims it over the surface of the water, Alphonse separates out pieces of black cobalt ore, which drop to the bottom. Then he has to remove the upper residue before drying the ore, which contains 6 or 7 percent of the treasured product. The sun is relatively kind to the diggers at the start of an equatorial winter locally known as the “fresh season.”
Their product will be sold a few kilometers away from the site at a trading house run by “the Chinese,” whom miners accuse of rigging their scales.
“We accept their prices. We don’t have any choice,” says Ernestine, Alphonse’s wife.
The worst off say they earn between 7,000 and 8,000 Congolese francs (US$7.50 and US$8.60) each day.
Alphonse says he can make the equivalent of a few hundred dollars each week for his family.
For Bobby, the whole affair is clearly profitable. He is preparing to take off and set up his own business.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his