For years, minerals from eastern Congo have passed through a supply chain that can lose provenance at every handoff. Ore leaves a mine, moves through local traders and transporters, crosses a border, changes paperwork, gets mixed with production from somewhere else and eventually reaches a processor thousands of miles away. By the time tantalum, tin, tungsten or gold enters a factory supply chain, establishing exactly where it came from can require something closer to forensic accounting than ordinary traceability.
Conflict expands that gray market because armed groups can seize mines, tax roads and control who moves material; government officials lose access to production areas, customs routes become harder to police and traceability programs withdraw. The trade keeps moving through whoever is willing to buy under those conditions, while companies that need clean title, documented origin, sanctions clearance and lenders willing to approve the transaction can be pushed out of it entirely.
That difference matters in eastern Congo because the minerals don't stop coming out of the ground when the state loses control. Production continues, and the companies and traders able to operate through uncertain ownership, weak enforcement and questionable paperwork gain access to material that more heavily regulated competitors may be unable to touch.
Rubaya shows how this works. The mining district in North Kivu supplies roughly 15% of the world's coltan, the ore used to produce tantalum for electronics, aerospace systems and other advanced manufacturing. M23 seized Rubaya in April 2024 and built a parallel administration around the mines, traders, transport routes and taxes.
Reuters reported that minerals were being trucked toward Rwanda, sometimes at night, while United Nations investigators found that Congolese coltan had been mixed with Rwandan production before export. Once ore crosses the border and is combined with material from other sources, determining its origin depends heavily on records created and enforced along the route; those records become considerably less useful when armed groups and smugglers control parts of the system.
Rubaya had already been part of illicit trading networks before M23 took control. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned the Congolese mining company CDMC after finding that it sold minerals sourced and smuggled from areas then controlled by the PARECO-FF armed group to East Rise and Star Dragon, two Hong Kong companies. Treasury has said minerals from eastern Congo are frequently smuggled through Rwanda before reaching major refining and processing countries such as China, and its sanctions have identified companies in Congo and China participating in the international trade in conflict-linked material.
Gold has moved through a similar system. In June 2026, Treasury sanctioned Gasabo Gold and said Rwandan forces and M23 personnel had earlier in the year moved at least 60 kilograms of gold from occupied areas of South Kivu through Rwanda and into the Kigali refinery. Moving production through those channels makes its original source progressively harder to establish as it passes through traders, borders and processors.
Western companies face practical limits on what they can buy under those conditions. A concession with disputed title, an armed group collecting money along the transport route, questionable customs documents or an uncertain chain of custody can fail lender review, create insurance problems and expose a company to sanctions or anti-corruption liability. Reuters reported this year that American and other Western companies pursuing projects in Congo were being slowed by anti-bribery reviews, title verification, community-impact requirements and other compliance obligations.
Chinese firms enter the same market with a much larger existing position. They have spent years building mines, processing relationships, infrastructure and commercial networks across Congo; Reuters estimates that Chinese firms control more than 70% of the country's copper-cobalt and other rare-mineral assets. Treasury's findings concerning conflict-linked trade involve particular companies and transactions, while China's larger mining position includes enormous conventional industrial operations, but the structure of the market still matters: when uncertainty removes potential competitors from a transaction, the companies and networks that remain have fewer rivals for the material.
Traceability programs are meant to preserve provenance as ore moves from mine to export. ITSCI uses mine-level tagging and supply-chain records for tin, tantalum and tungsten, but suspended operations in areas under M23 control. ITSCI has acknowledged that tags can be misused and origin can be misrepresented while disputing broader claims that its system has failed; UN investigators have nevertheless documented Rubaya minerals crossing into Rwanda and being mixed with Rwandan production. Once material from several sources enters the same stream, the paperwork has to establish distinctions that the physical shipment no longer can.
This is one reason Washington has connected the security settlement in eastern Congo to its minerals strategy. The United States brokered the June 2025 agreement between Congo and Rwanda, followed by the Washington Accords signed by Presidents Félix Tshisekedi and Paul Kagame in December. M23 remained outside the state-to-state agreement and has negotiated separately with Kinshasa through the Qatar-backed Doha process; ceasefire monitors made their first field deployment under that mechanism on August 24, although M23 continues to control substantial territory in eastern Congo.
Treasury has said the Washington framework is intended to produce a “fully licit and transparent regional minerals sector,” and the economic agreements surrounding it tie investment to better control of mineral production and trade. Its August 2025 sanctions action was explicit about the American interest involved: conflict minerals were financing armed groups while preventing law-abiding companies from investing and restricting U.S. and allied access to materials needed for national defense.
The U.S.-Congo minerals agreement attacks the commercial problem from the other direction. Congo agreed to provide U.S. investors rights of first offer on designated strategic assets and certain mineral offtake while the governments pursue formalization of artisanal mining, traceability programs and technical assistance. A mine with recognized ownership, reliable records and a secure route to market can attract financing and buyers that would have rejected the same deposit under armed control.
Bisie has already shown how closely security and commercial access can be linked. The major tin mine restarted operations after U.S. diplomatic pressure helped reduce fighting around it, according to Reuters; the threat of renewed clashes remains, but a mine that can keep workers on site and material moving has a much better chance of maintaining contracts, financing and transportation than one repeatedly evacuating because the front line has moved.
Stabilizing eastern Congo won't unwind the Chinese mining positions already established elsewhere in the country. CMOC's Tenke Fungurume and Kisanfu copper-cobalt operations are enormous industrial assets, while Zijin has a major position in Kamoa-Kakula and began exporting lithium concentrate from the disputed Manono project to China this summer. Those holdings were assembled through years of investment and aren't dependent on control of Rubaya.
The more immediate opening lies in assets that remain underdeveloped, contested or commercially difficult to reach. If improved security and traceability bring more of that production into documented supply chains, Western companies don't have to displace an existing Chinese operator to gain access; they can compete for material and projects that previously could not clear their own requirements.
Washington is also trying to build the commercial routes needed to move that material. DFC has provided $553 million for rehabilitation of the Lobito Atlantic Railway, giving copper and cobalt from Congo's southern mining belt a more efficient route through Angola to the Atlantic; DFC describes the project as part of its effort to counter Chinese dominance in critical-mineral supply chains. The Gécamines-Mercuria partnership is creating another channel, and DFC says it has already sold and started shipping approximately 100,000 tons of copper committed to the United States.
The volumes entering the American market are starting to become significant. U.S. imports of Congolese copper reached a record 53,290 metric tons in July, up from fewer than 32,000 tons during all of 2024; Congo accounted for 23.9% of U.S. copper imports that month. The surge came from the established copper industry in southern Congo rather than the conflict-affected mines of the east, but it demonstrates that American buyers can absorb substantial Congolese production when the material can move through commercial channels they are willing to use.
Eastern Congo presents the harder version of the same problem. Mine formalization, functioning traceability, secure transport routes and enforceable ownership give more buyers the ability to finance and purchase production; stronger border enforcement and sanctions also make it harder for armed groups and intermediaries to turn control of a mine or road into revenue.
Smuggling will continue wherever the money justifies the effort, and tags, customs documents and government officials can all be compromised. Those realities don't require the conclusion that formalization is futile; they explain why armed control and broken traceability have commercial value in the first place. A market in which provenance can be obscured favors participants willing or able to operate inside that opacity.
As recognized authorities regain control of mines and transport routes, that advantage begins to narrow. More production can meet the requirements imposed by lenders, insurers and downstream buyers, Kinshasa has a better chance to collect taxes and royalties, and armed groups have fewer opportunities to take revenue from the movement of the mineral.
China's position in Congo will remain formidable because much of it rests on mines, infrastructure and processing relationships built over decades. Eastern Congo presents a different contest, however, because a portion of the advantage there has come from the disorder itself; reducing that disorder allows companies previously excluded by the gray market to compete for what comes out of it.
Rubaya remains worth watching because M23 still controls the district, the Doha process remains unfinished and normal traceability has not returned. The coltan is still coming out of the ground, and somebody is still buying it.