[Excerpt translation from French to English provided by Business & Human Rights Resource Centre]

"DRC: what an assessment for the first year of implementation of the new mining code?", 17 November 2019

In the province of Lualaba... which hosts Tenke Fungurume Mining, opinions are divided, because taxes paid by companies do not reach the municipalities where the companies are located. Tenke Fungurume Mining produces more than 168,000 tonnes of copper per year and 18,000 tonnes of cobalt. In one year, it paid more than $8 million in mining royalties to the Bunkeya chiefdom. Infrastructure such as a university, administrative buildings and a radio station have since been built in the chief town of the chiefdom.

"Education is the future, but energy is the strength to be able to modify the habitat, and distribute electricity both in residential homes and in small industries," explains Godefroid Munongo, Bunkeya's great traditional chief. We will build a photovoltaic power plant..." If people are satisfied with the chief town of the chiefdom, this is not the case in the two localities where the company is located, and in particular in Fungurume. For its manager, Chief Mpala, the investments are not up to the amounts announced. "When you go there, where there is the golden goose, Tenke and Fungurume, these are my lands, it doesn't reflect the millions we're talking about. »

For civil society in Lualaba, the problem is not limited to Fungurume. The Southern African Resource Observatory even claims that the money paid does not have impact on the population in some decentralized entities. It calls for an audit of all entities benefiting from the mining royalties.