Congo’s New Export Ban Puts a Price on Cobalt’s Human Cost — Carolina Political Review

On June 29, the Democratic Republic of Congo signed an order banning exports of unprocessed copper and cobalt concentrate, a measure whose contents became public on August 6 when Reuters obtained the text. The order forces mining operators, including China Molybdenum (CMOC) and Switzerland’s Glencore, to build domestic smelting capacity or apply for a case-by-case waiver from the mines. For a country that supplies roughly 70 to 75 percent of the world’s cobalt, a mineral tied for years to reports of child labor in artisanal mining, the ban raises a question that mineral sovereignty alone cannot answer: does capturing more value at home also mean better protections for the children who work in the mines? 

The ban did not appear without warning. The DRC suspended cobalt exports outright in February 2025, replaced that suspension with an export quota system in October, and has now escalated to a concentrate ban that closes the loophole of shipping semi-processed ore abroad. Each step has moved towards the same direction, and could force processing to happen inside Congolese borders rather than in Chinese refineries. Analysts at New America have described this trajectory as the continent’s most ambitious assertion of mineral sovereignty in decades, though whether that framing holds depends on whether Kinshasa can enforce the policy against companies with far greater capital and leverage. 

The industry’s reaction split along lines that track the broader US-China rivalry over critical minerals. CMOC, the world’s largest cobalt producer, opposed the restrictions and warned they could accelerate a shift toward cobalt-free battery chemistries, a position that poses a real threat given China’s dominance in refining roughly 80 percent of the DRC’s cobalt output. Glencore, by contrast, broadly accepted the new limits as a step towards long-term market stability. That divergence suggests Western and Chinese operators are not simply reacting to policy but positioning themselves differently for a supply chain the DRC is trying to renegotiate in its own favor. 

Where this intersects with child labor is less settled. One camp, reflected in reporting from groups like New America, argues that forcing in-country processing gives Kinshasa more revenue and more leverage to eventually fund labor oversight and enforcement, something international programs like the ILO’s GALAB project have struggled to do at scale given how informal artisanal mining remains. A competing view holds that concentrate bans target the industrial, corporate-run side of the supply chain. Meanwhile, the CEEC’s estimate of at least 25,000 children working in Congolese cobalt mines is concentrated in artisanal and small-scale mining, an informal sector the export ban does not directly regulate. Under this reading, the policy is a value-capture measure aimed at smelters and multinationals, not a labor-rights intervention aimed at the pits where most child labor actually occurs.

Washington’s response has so far treated the two issues separately. The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CEEC) has held hearings framing Chinese dominance of DRC cobalt as both a human rights and national security problem, while the State Department’s February critical-minerals ministerial focused on diversifying supply chains through tariffs and a price floor rather than on labor enforcement mechanisms. That separation mirrors the DRC’s own policy: the export ban addresses who profits from cobalt, not who mines it or under what conditions.

Whether Congo’s new control ultimately improves conditions for child miners or simply redirects profits from Chinese refiners to Congolese state coffers is an empirical question that will depend on implementation, not on the sovereignty claim itself. The ban gives Kinshasa new leverage over a market it has long supplied but rarely controlled. It does not, on its own, reach the artisanal mines where the labor abuses driving international attention are most concentrated.