On March 11 2026, the Democratic Republic of Congo opened its first official gold refinery in Kalemie, Tanganyika province, a joint venture between state-owned DRC Gold Trading SA and local company Lunga Mining, with capacity to produce 500 to 600 kilograms of refined gold per month. For a country estimated to lose over $3 billion in smuggled gold every year, it is the beginning of a reckoning that is 65 years overdue.
The refinery is named DRC GOLD Refinery S.A. It covers the full value chain from purchasing artisanal gold through smelting and refining to producing investment-grade ingots. Mines Minister Louis Watum Kabamba, speaking at the launch, cited President Félix Tshisekedi’s vision of economic sovereignty through local resource processing.
The weight of history
To understand why this refinery matters, you have to understand what Congo’s mineral wealth has done to Congo. Almost none of it has ever stayed in Congo.
The pattern began under Leopold II of Belgium, whose brutal extraction of rubber and ivory from the Congo Free State between 1885 and 1908 pioneered the model that would define the country’s relationship with its resources for the next century: maximum extraction, minimum benefit to the Congolese. Belgian colonial companies formalized this architecture after 1908, establishing Union Minière du Haut-Katanga in 1906 to industrialise copper and cobalt extraction, with profits flowing to Brussels and Antwerp.
Independence in 1960 changed the flag but not the structure. When Mobutu Sese Seko nationalised mining assets in the 1970s under his authenticity programme, the result was not Congolese prosperity but accelerating decay. State mining company Gécamines, once one of Africa’s largest copper producers, collapsed under mismanagement and pillage. By the 1990s, Congo’s formal mining sector had essentially disintegrated.
The Second Congo War, which began in 1998 and killed an estimated five million people, introduced a new and catastrophic phase. Rwandan and Ugandan forces systematically looted eastern Congo’s mineral wealth. The UN documented mass confiscation of minerals, agricultural goods, and livestock. Gold from eastern provinces flowed out through Kigali, Kampala, and Bujumbura and into international supply chains, generating revenue that financed armed groups and lined the pockets of commanders on multiple sides. This is not ancient history. It is the operational template that the new refinery is now directly challenging.
After the war, the 2002 Mining Code opened the sector to foreign investment, and large industrial operators arrived. Barrick Gold, through its Randgold acquisition, developed the Kibali mine in northeastern DRC into one of Africa’s largest gold operations. Kibali produced 674,000 ounces in 2025 and is a genuine industrial asset. But Kibali’s refined gold has always left the country for processing elsewhere. The artisanal sector, which employs hundreds of thousands of Congolese diggers and accounts for the majority of gold actually extracted from the eastern provinces, has remained almost entirely outside official economic channels.
Estimates vary, but government figures and UN experts broadly agree: 40 to 50 metric tons of artisanal gold are smuggled out of Congo annually, worth over $3 billion at current prices. Most of it flies to Dubai. Some transits through Kigali. Rwanda’s own gold exports reached 19.4 tonnes in 2024, against domestic production estimated at roughly 2.9 tonnes. That gap is Congolese gold moving through Rwanda’s export infrastructure. The EU sanctioned Rwanda’s Gasabo Gold Refinery in March 2025 specifically for processing illicit Congolese gold.
The years of failed attempts
The refinery that opened in Kalemie on March 11 is not the first attempt to build domestic gold processing capacity. It is the first attempt that has actually worked.
In July 2023, the DRC Mines Ministry revoked the permit of Congo Gold Raffinerie (CGR), a private company that had planned to launch a refinery in Bukavu just days before inauguration. Global Witness had raised serious questions about CGR’s ownership structure, which linked an associate of former president Kabila, a reported gold smuggler, and a senior manager of Erik Prince’s Frontier Services Group. The Ministry concluded the company had not respected its legal obligations. The plant never processed a gram of gold.
Before that, Congo’s first attempt at official artisanal gold trading came through Primera Gold DRC SA, a 2021 joint venture with Abu Dhabi in which the UAE provided military equipment and training in exchange for exclusive mineral access rights. Primera shipped gold from eastern Congo to the UAE for refining. A January 2026 investigation by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime found armed group taxation, child labour, and illegal dredging inside Primera’s supply chain. The venture collapsed in 2024, and the government took full ownership of the entity, renaming it DRC Gold Trading SA.
The First Gold Trading SA is now the foundational infrastructure on which the Kalemie refinery sits. Created in December 2022 and fully state-controlled since 2024, DRC Gold Trading’s mandate is to purchase artisanal gold, certify its traceability, channel exports through legal routes, and, as of February 2026, supply the Central Bank of the Congo with gold for national monetary reserves.
What the refinery actually changes
The Kalemie refinery’s immediate capacity of 500 to 600 kilograms per month, equivalent to roughly 6 to 7 tonnes per year, is a pilot. Against the 40 to 50 tonnes currently smuggled annually, it is modest. But the strategic significance is disproportionate to the tonnage.
For the first time, Congo can convert raw artisanal gold into investment-grade bars inside its own borders. That means the value added by refining, the difference between raw doré and London Bullion Market Association-compliant bars, accrues to a Congolese entity rather than a refinery in Dubai, Entebbe, or Germiston. It means traceability certificates can be issued under Congolese jurisdiction. It means the central bank, which currently holds zero gold in its monetary reserves, has a credible domestic supply pathway to begin accumulating bullion.
Banque Centrale du Congo Governor André Wameso called it "inconceivable" that the country holding some of the world’s most significant gold deposits had no gold in its reserves. The February 2026 agreement making DRC Gold Trading the exclusive artisanal gold supplier to the central bank is the first systematic attempt to repair that. At current gold prices near $3,000 per ounce, 15 tonnes, the 2026 export target, would generate approximately $1.4 billion in revenue.
DRC Gold Trading is already expanding aggressively. The company operated in barely one province in 2022 and bought just 25 kilograms of artisanal gold in its early years. It is now active in eight provinces, has opened a branch in Lubumbashi in Haut-Katanga for the first official artisanal gold export from that province, and is targeting new offices in Mbujimayi and Kinshasa before the end of March 2026. More than 45 foreign buyers have already requested supply, though the central bank has priority access.
The obstacles are real
Candour requires acknowledging what the refinery cannot fix on its own.
The eastern Congo conflict remains the defining variable. Rwanda-backed M23 rebels seized Goma in January 2025 and Bukavu in February, shutting down DRC Gold Trading’s main South Kivu operations. South Kivu had accounted for over 90% of official artisanal exports. The Kalemie refinery is in Tanganyika, to the south and west of the worst conflict zones, which is likely deliberate positioning. But the artisanal gold geography is overwhelmingly concentrated in the east, which means bringing supply through conflict zones remains an operational challenge that no refinery, however well managed, can resolve alone.
Traceability is the other central challenge. The history of Congolese gold supply chains is a history of contamination, armed group revenue, and falsified certificates. DRC Gold Trading’s mandate includes certification, but its track record in the first four years was mixed, and independent investigators have consistently found that formal channels remain permeable. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, entering phased application from 2028, will require large importers to verify supply chains, which creates a commercial incentive for genuine traceability, not just certification on paper.
Institutional capacity is the third constraint. A government that struggled for decades to collect mining royalties, maintain accurate production statistics, or prevent ministerial-level corruption in the sector is now attempting to run a refinery, operate a state trading company, and manage a central bank gold purchase programme simultaneously. Each of these is a significant governance undertaking. Doing all three at once, while a war continues in the east, is genuinely difficult.
The bigger picture
Congo’s gold refinery is one piece of a larger industrial ambition. The government halted raw mineral exports in principle in mid-2025. The Buenassa project is developing the country’s first copper and cobalt refinery, targeting 120,000 tonnes of copper cathodes and 20,000 tonnes of cobalt sulphate per year, directly relevant to global battery supply chains. The $28.9 billion MIFOR iron ore project is in development. The Lobito Corridor, the rail and logistics artery being rebuilt by the US, EU, and African partners, is the intended spine for getting processed goods to port.
The pattern across all of these is the same: Congo moving from raw material exporter to processed material exporter, capturing value at home rather than exporting it to be captured elsewhere. Every tonne of gold refined in Kalemie rather than Dubai, every tonne of cobalt sulphate produced in Katanga rather than shipped as hydroxide to China, is a permanent structural improvement in the terms on which Congo participates in global commodity markets.
The global context also helps. Central banks worldwide added over 1,000 tonnes of gold to reserves in 2023 and 2024. Gold prices are at or near historic highs. The energy transition is creating demand for cobalt, lithium, and manganese in quantities that dwarf current production. Congo holds dominant or significant positions in all of these.
The refinery in Kalemie will not by itself end smuggling, resolve the eastern Congo conflict, or transform Congo into a middle-income country. What it does is establish, for the first time in 65 years of independence, that Congo can process its own gold into investment-grade bars on Congolese soil. After 65 years of watching that value leave, that is not nothing. It is a foundation.
Sources: Zoom Eco / African Leadership Magazine / Mining.com / Reuters via Market Screener / Global Witness / Evidencity / Wikipedia: Mining in the DRC
