Interview on the Front Lines: Congolese Researcher Murairi Speaks on Dodd-Frank, Conflict Minerals

Oct 14, 2014 | Enough Project
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Bisie is a remote town in the Walikale district in eastern DR Congo. It has lucrative deposits of tin (cassiterite), along with coltan, diamond, uranium, cobalt, and bauxite deposits. Since its discovery in 2004, tin has been extracted through artisanal and small-scale mining. In 2006, the Mining and Processing Congo company (MPC) was granted exploration permits for the Bisie Mine with the expectation that a large-scale mining operation would follow. In August 2011, the Canadian company Alphamin acquired a majority interest in the Bisie Tin Mine and today is the sole owner.

Throughout most of the past decade, the Bisie mineral deposits have been under the physical control of various rebels groups and a renegade brigadeof the Congolese Army. Today, Alphamin awaits government permits to begin modern industrial mining of its Bisie Tin resources; however, conflicts with local artisanal miners have not yet been resolved.