DR Congo bans raw copper and cobalt exports to force refining at home

On June 29, 2026, three ministers in the Democratic Republic of Congo — Mines Minister Louis Kabamba Watum, Foreign Trade Minister Julien Paluku Kahongya and Economy Minister Daniel Mukoko Samba — signed a joint order banning exports of copper and cobalt concentrates — partly processed ore that must still be smelted and refined before it can be used in wiring, batteries and electronics — effective immediately. The move matters because Congo controls 73-84% of world cobalt mine output and is the world's second-largest copper producer after Chile, so a border rule there can move prices for batteries and electrification; copper on the London Metal Exchange, the London benchmark where global prices are set, rose as much as 1.8% to $14,369.50 a tonne after Reuters reported the order. Whether the ban actually bites depends on an undefined escape hatch — one-year "strategic" waivers the mines minister may grant — and on chronic power shortages that have gutted similar bans for 12 years; no waiver criteria or industry responses had been published as of August 6.

What the order does

The order says "the export of copper and cobalt concentrates is prohibited," takes effect immediately, repeals the August 2023 framework that allowed annual renewable exemptions, and replaces it with a broader regime for mineral exports.

It keeps a discretionary waiver: the mines minister may grant one-year export exemptions in "strategic" circumstances, without defining what counts as strategic. A separate tax change follows after a three-month transition: for economically significant mining by-products — trace and ultra-trace minerals recovered during refining, such as germanium — royalties will be charged alongside the main mineral using a 55% valuation coefficient. The stated motivation is "the need to encourage mining operators to market or export commercial mineral products with high added value."

The full text has not appeared on the mines ministry website or in the official gazette as of August 6; the most authoritative public record is Reuters' direct review of the order, which provided verbatim language for the prohibition, signatories, immediate effect, waiver provision, tax transition and repeal.

Why Congo has leverage

The Democratic Republic of Congo, a Central African country of about 100 million people, dominates the two metals at the heart of electrification. It mined about 76% of world cobalt in 2024, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, with other estimates for 2025 putting its share at 73-84%, far ahead of Indonesia at 10-14%. It exported about 3.4 million tonnes of copper in 2025, up nearly 10% from 3.1 million tonnes in 2024, according to provisional Ministry of Mines figures cited at a mining conference and cross-checked in cabinet minutes chaired by President Félix Tshisekedi — provisional, not yet the central bank's final annual table.

That scale translates into fiscal weight. Mining accounts for more than 90% of export revenue — copper alone was about three-quarters of export earnings in 2023 and cobalt more than 10% — and extractives account for about 39% of GDP and 42% of fiscal revenues, according to French Treasury and multilateral data. Copper, prized for conductivity and durability, is the wiring for grids, motors and data centers; demand is projected to rise from 28 million tonnes in 2025 to 42 million by 2040. Cobalt is a cathode material for most lithium-ion batteries, with about 76% of demand from batteries and more than 13kg per electric-vehicle battery, though cobalt-free LFP batteries now cover nearly half the EV market, creating substitution risk if prices stay high.

Because China refines about 78.6% of the world's cobalt, largely from Congo-origin hydroxide, and Zambia's smelters depend on Congolese concentrates for more than 60% of bilateral trade, a concentrate rule in Kinshasa squeezes feedstock to custom smelters abroad and tightens treatment and refining charges even before mine output changes.

Why the immediate bite is narrower than the headline

A "copper export ban" sounds like 3.4 million tonnes at risk. Most of that copper already leaves refined.

Official data for the first quarter of 2026 show Congo exported 696,725 tonnes of copper cathodes — finished metal ready for factories — compared with 53,926 tonnes of copper concentrates containing 18,863 tonnes of copper metal, plus 51,940 tonnes of cobalt hydroxides. Resource Matters estimates almost 80% of copper exported in the last five years was already metal. Glencore, the Swiss miner and trader that operates Mutanda and Kamoto in Congo, only exports hydroxide and cathodes, and is largely unaffected. The parallel cobalt control — a separate 96.6-kilotonne export quota for 2026-2027 run by ARECOMS, the regulator for strategic minerals (87kt routine at 7,250 tonnes a month plus 9.6kt strategic) — already showed how border allocations, not mine output, set accessible supply: 2025 showed a 19kt global surplus in total supply but a 96kt deficit once export caps were applied.

Shanghai Metals Market, the Chinese metals analytics firm, called the June 29 order more a reiteration and tightening of existing approval restrictions than a sudden halt, and judged limited additional impact on short-term global concentrate trade for that reason. The residual concentrate stream still matters for custom smelters, but it is a sliver, not the whole flow.

The test case: Kamoa-Kakula now smelts most of its own ore

The mine most exposed is also the most insulated. Kamoa-Kakula, the giant copper complex 25km southwest of Kolwezi operated as a joint venture between Canada's Ivanhoe Mines, China's Zijin Mining and the Congolese government, was the source of most previously exported concentrates — 388,800 tonnes of contained copper in 2025 and 590,000 tonnes of concentrates under exemptions in 2023.

Since late 2025 it has run Africa's largest copper smelter on site: a 500,000-tonne-per-year direct-to-blister smelter that makes 99.7%-pure copper anodes. In the second quarter of 2026 it operated at about 60% of design capacity, producing 62,072 tonnes of copper in anode (64,328 tonnes including blister and slag toll-treated at the Lualaba Copper Smelter in Kolwezi) and 112,307 tonnes of high-strength sulphuric acid.

That changes the economics. Logistics charges in Q2 averaged $0.24 per pound, about one-third of the $0.70 per pound before the smelter when concentrate containing 35-40% copper was trucked out. Sulphuric acid sales — 119,603 tonnes sold at $465 per tonne in Q2, with July-August contracts set around $840 — generated $0.39 per pound in by-product credits, largely offsetting $0.41 per pound in smelter operating costs. Ivanhoe tightened 2026 guidance to 290,000-310,000 tonnes of copper in anode, blister or slag (from 290,000-330,000) and kept 2027 at 380,000-420,000, with second-half 2026 output set to rise about 28% versus the first half as mining rates increase 30% and up to 10,000 tonnes of inventory is destocked. Full 500,000-tonne smelter capacity is expected in 2028, meaning the often-cited 164,000-tonne-per-year concentrate exposure to 2029 will be progressively smelted domestically.

Excess concentrate not handled on site is toll-treated at Lualaba — the only major domestic facility able to absorb bulk concentrates, with capacity for 400,000 tonnes of concentrate and 120,000 tonnes of blister a year.

How miners and traders can adapt — and what else changes

For the remaining concentrate exporters, three paths exist, none guaranteed: seek a one-year strategic waiver from the mines minister, toll-process at Lualaba, or accelerate building their own smelter. Traders must also track the separate cobalt quota, where shipments are counted against ceilings and delays in the first quarter of 2026 already showed allocation friction.

The new by-product tax, if audited and enforced, raises fiscal capture from often under-declared trace minerals but also raises royalty burdens; its methodology and revenue uplift are unverified and the three-month transition had not yet taken effect in early August. Zambia's own 5% import duty on concentrates, imposed in January 2019, already reshaped flows — Eurasian Resources Group closed its Chambishi smelter in Zambia that year and stockpiled Congolese concentrate in bonded warehouses.

Will the ban stick? The 2019 U-turn looms large

Congo has banned concentrate exports before — in the 2002 Mining Code, specifically in 2013, again in 2019 and 2023 — and each time granted broad waivers citing insufficient domestic smelting capacity and electricity deficits. Between 2013 and 2023 at least eight moratoria or extensions were issued. The 2018 Mining Code set a March 2021 deadline after which extensions required parliamentary approval, but case-by-case waivers continued, for example for Sicomines until 2022.

The precedent that tests credibility came in 2019. A mid-February ban was lifted within a month, in a March 20 letter from then Mines Minister Henri Yav Mulang to the Federation des Entreprises du Congo (FEC), the main business lobby, after the FEC cited the energy deficit. The government shifted to six-month reviews, and producer sources told Fastmarkets at the time that ERG's Frontier mine — which produced 102,058 tonnes of copper in concentrate in 2018 — and Sicomines concentrates "can't be processed in any local facility" and were exempted, with photos showing Congolese concentrates still in Zambia bonded warehouses despite the ban. The Chamber of Mines president said he was not aware of the ban and could not comment, and the mines ministry did not respond to requests.

The same constraints remain. State utility SNEL estimates a 1,000-megawatt deficit for mining, and outside Lualaba there is barely any facility that can take bulk concentrates. As of August 6, no public statements had been found from the Congolese Chamber of Mines, FEC, Zambia's mines ministry, China's smelter association, or major operators including CMOC, Zijin, ERG and Huayou responding to the June 29 order — an information vacuum that leaves whether waivers will be broad or narrow genuinely unknown, not a confirmation of strict enforcement.

What Congo stands to gain — and risk

From Kinshasa's perspective, after 12 years of waivers, exporting low-value concentrates lets foreign smelters capture margin that could fund domestic industry. With mining about 25% of GDP and critical minerals' share rising to 27% in 2025, capturing more value from trace by-products and forcing refining at home is a developmental imperative, not just a trade tactic. The February 2025 cobalt export suspension — imposed after prices collapsed 75% from 2022 to 2024 to about $9.75 per pound, cutting cobalt royalties from $715 million in 2022 to $409 million in 2023 despite higher output — showed the same pricing-power logic before it was replaced by the quota in October 2025.

From miners' and the FEC's perspective, a ban without reliable power and smelters risks stockpiling, smuggling or production cuts, deters investment through regulatory surprise, and penalizes operators who already invested in cathodes and hydroxide while leaving residual concentrate exporters needing predictable waivers or tolling. From buyers' perspective — especially Chinese refiners and Zambian smelters — even a narrow squeeze, combined with the 96.6kt cobalt quota equal to about 35% of global demand, tightens an already strained treatment-charge market.

Market skeptics and insulated operators argue the headline overstates near-term shock for exactly the reasons above: most copper already leaves as metal, and Kamoa-Kakula's smelter halves logistics costs and offsets its own operating costs with acid sales. That view does not mean zero impact — the residual concentrate feedstock to China and Zambia still matters — but it reframes the order as leverage and signal rather than immediate supply cutoff.

Part of a wider squeeze on raw exports

Congo is not alone. More than 50% of energy-related minerals are now subject to export controls, according to the International Energy Agency, expanding from raw ore to processing technology. Indonesia banned nickel ore exports in 2020, attracting Chinese high-pressure acid leach investment and making Indonesia the world's second-largest cobalt producer via mixed hydroxide precipitate; it later tied export permits to smelter progress and then to production quotas. Nigeria, Zambia, Guinea and Zimbabwe have recently restricted unrefined exports of cocoa, copper, gold and lithium concentrates respectively. Indonesia's nickel ban drew a World Trade Organization dispute from the European Union — a precedent, not a prediction, for Congo.

For a reader watching whether battery and copper costs rise, the markers are concrete: whether the mines minister publishes criteria for "strategic" waivers and grants them broadly as in 2013-2023 or enforces strictly; whether power and smelter capacity — Lualaba's 120kt blister and Kamoa-Kakula's ramp to 500kt by 2028 — can absorb the remaining concentrate without stockpiling; and how treatment charges and the cobalt quota allocations move in the next two quarters. The ban gives Congo real border-control leverage over a concentrated supply chain; history suggests that leverage will be negotiated waiver by waiver, not imposed overnight.