Congo’s 10 Percent Ownership Rule Is Due. The Decree Is Not.

DR CONGO · CRITICAL MINERALS

Congolese ownership of at least a tenth of every operating mining company in the Democratic Republic of Congo became an enforceable obligation on 31 July, when the mines ministry’s moratorium expired. The decree explaining how those shares are allocated, valued and paid for has still not been adopted.

What the Congolese ownership rule requires

The rule sits in Article 71 bis of the mining code, introduced by Law No. 18/001 of 9 March 2018, the revision that overhauled Congo’s 2002 mining legislation. It says Congolese nationals must hold at least 10 percent of the share capital of any company with an exploitation permit.

Article 144 bis of the mining regulation then splits that figure. Five percent is reserved for the company’s Congolese employees, and five percent for other Congolese individuals.

Lawyers note that the regulation’s French text says the shares “may” be divided that way, not that they must. That single verb is one reason the ministry and the industry are still arguing over what the law actually orders.

A separate provision, Article 108 quater, goes further for processing plants that hold no mining title. Those entities must reserve at least 50 percent of their capital to Congolese owners.

The moratorium that ran out

The obligation was not enforced for years. On 30 January 2026, Mines Minister Louis Watum Kabamba issued a circular giving non-compliant companies six months to prove conformity, a grace period that ended on 31 July 2026.

Ten days before the deadline, on 21 July, the ministry sat down in Kinshasa with the Chamber of Mines of the Federation of Enterprises of Congo, the main industry body. The two sides agreed to work towards signing a decree based on a draft, and set up an ad hoc committee to finish the technical work.

That draft, reported by Congolese business outlet Bankable, would give companies six months from the decree’s entry into force to comply. It would place the workers’ five percent in an employee cooperative, which would buy the shares on interest-free credit and repay from up to 80 percent of its dividends.

No adoption date has been announced. Until the decree exists, a company that wants to comply has no procedure to follow.

Nothing in the public record says what happens in the meantime. There is no announced grace period, no penalty schedule and no statement that enforcement is suspended.

Why foreign operators should be reading this closely

Congo produces roughly 70 percent of the world’s cobalt and ranks among the largest copper producers. Almost every major producer of either metal, from CMOC and Glencore to Ivanhoe Mines, has capital committed there.

A 10 percent local ownership requirement with no implementing rules is the definition of a regulatory overhang. It is not a cost anyone can price, and it is not a risk anyone can discharge.

The uncertainty also sits on top of an already busy year. Kinshasa has banned exports of copper and cobalt concentrate to force domestic processing, tightening the terms of the trade step by step.

It is also the kind of rule that tends to get settled company by company rather than by decree. That produces uneven outcomes, and it puts a premium on knowing who ends up holding the shares.

Ownership rules are spreading across the continent

Congo is not acting alone. On 24 August 2026, the Ghana Gold Board, known as GoldBod, ordered self-financing aggregators, licensed traders who fund their own gold purchases, to refine all their gold doré, a semi-refined form of gold, inside Ghana before export from 1 September.

Guinea moved earlier. A decree of 8 July 2026 requires all Guinean gold to be refined locally, and once a 90-day transition ends on 6 October, exports of gold not refined in Guinea to at least 95.5 percent purity will be prohibited.

The instruments differ but the impulse is the same. Governments that host the deposits want a larger share of the value that leaves with them.

The argument is not unreasonable, and it is not costless either. Local ownership and processing rules only work where the local capital or the local refining capacity actually exists.

What to watch next

The single thing worth tracking is the decree. Its terms will decide whether the 10 percent is a genuine transfer of value, a dilution to be negotiated or a formality.

The valuation method matters most. Whether the shares are issued free, sold at a set price or funded out of future dividends changes the impact on every existing shareholder.

Money is the obvious obstacle. Jean-Pierre Okenda, a Kinshasa-based civil-society expert on mining governance, points out that a mining company’s minimum capital is set at roughly 40 percent of total project cost, which puts a 10 percent stake in a large copper or cobalt mine far beyond most Congolese buyers and risks concentrating the shares among political elites.

Murielle Mwambay of La Sentinelle, a natural-resource watchdog, argues a public register of the beneficial owners of mining companies is essential. Without it, she says, there is no way to check that the reserved 10 percent is held by real, identifiable Congolese rather than front men or shell companies.

Jacques Mukena, a governance researcher at the Kinshasa-based institute Ebuteli, has documented the wider pattern this file belongs to. Congo does not lack laws or strategic plans, he writes; it is their application that fails.

This is regulatory reporting rather than investment advice, and the rules described are unfinished. Anyone with exposure should read the code, the mining regulation and the decree when it is published.

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