Community Economic Empowerment and Value Chains

Through our work with the private sector, Pact demonstrates game-changing business models that place community at the heart of the economic value chain and link small and large businesses for mutual economic benefit.

A prime example of this is Pact's work to build bridges between local and corporate mining operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM)

Artisanal and small-scale mining is a profoundly important livelihood for millions of people around the world. This is especially clear in Kolwezi, located in the heart of the Ktanga Copperbelt in the DRC. Kolwezi is a center for new international investment, but the region's copper ore has also provided a livelihood to tens of thousands of artisanal miners and their families.

ASM is often clandestine, illegal or socially disruptive in nature, and is largely incompatible with more recent large-scale mining operations. ASM is also dangerous and has been linked to conflict, child-labor, pollution, migration, and poverty among other social ills. Because of these factors, ASM rarely receives the time, support and attention needed to strengthen its local economic potential or to transform its dangerous aspects and practices.

Despite the negative practices and impacts, artisanal and small-scale mining is important because it is extremely important not only to the survival of individual workers and their families, but to local economies as well. ASM is also fundamentally linked to communities' sense of rights to, and control over, their national resources.

Artisanal mining can be practiced in a better way, and it can co-exist with large-scale mining. This is currently being demonstrated in Kolwezi.

Pact works with a wide range of partners in the region to reduce tensions between artisanal and small-scale mining, and large-scale mining Pact worked with Anvil Mining and artisanal miners to establish an agreed upon buying system for copper tailings which were hand-mined in an old river bed. The site was safe, supervised by government ASM officials, and paid all legal taxes.

In partnership with UN agencies, USAID and Anvil Mining, Pact also supported the DRC government as it determined how best to implement the national ASM law in relation to establishing artisanal mining zones.

These efforts maintained artisanal miners' livelihoods and local control over resources, while also ensuring safer conditions in which to mine and providing benefit to corporate miners.