Flow 01 · North Kivu · Masisi
Rubaya coltan
Tantalum and niobium from the Rubaya / Bibatama complex
- Minerals
- Ta / Nb (+Sn)
- Mining area
- Rubaya / Bibatama mining complex
- Miners per site
- 15–2,000
- Mechanisation
- Artisanal to semi-mechanised
- Chemical processing
- None (physical only)
- End node
- Tantalum processors in China and Kazakhstan
Mining method
Artisanal eluvial and alluvial pit digging on weathered pegmatite, the classic Rubaya coltan geology. Miners dig shallow pits, 0–27 m, by hand with picks, shovels and hoes. Some sites report semi-mechanised status, with small water pumps feeding on-site washing plants (sluice boxes and jigs). No blasting or mechanised earth-moving is recorded at any site in this flow.
Scale and equipment
A wide range, from micro-sites of 15–50 workers up to Gakombe's 2,000. Gakombe alone is credited with a meaningful share of the roughly 1,000 tonnes a year of coltan the wider Rubaya area produces, which current reporting puts above 15% of world tantalum supply. Equipment is hand tools, machetes for the pegmatite, gravity sluices and hand-pumped water at the larger semi-mechanised sites. No crushers and no chemical reagents.
Processing
Physical concentration only. Washing, panning and gravity separation raise run-of-mine pegmatite to a columbite-tantalite pre-concentrate of roughly 20–40% Ta₂O₅, consistent with typical Congolese pre-concentrate grades. Export-grade Great Lakes coltan concentrate typically reaches 25–30% Ta₂O₅ after further consolidation.
Transport
Head-load or porterage, then motorbike or light vehicle to a nearby road head, typically under two hours even in the wet season given Rubaya's relatively developed local roads. Material is sold at the mine-mouth trading centres of Rubaya town or smaller satellite depots (Kibabi, Karuba), then moves about 40 km by road to Goma and crosses into Rwanda at the Petite Barrière (pedestrian and motorbike, the higher-volume small-trade post) or the Grande Barrière (vehicle) posts between Goma and Rubavu.
Downstream
Material is consolidated at a Kigali-area node and exported onward to Asia. Historically the destination was a processor in Thailand; public reporting for 2025–2026 points to tantalum processors in Shizuishan (Ningxia) and Jiujiang (Jiangxi) in China, and to the Ulba Metallurgical Plant in Kazakhstan. The end products are refined tantalum metal powder, tantalum oxide and capacitor-grade tantalum. By that stage the material has lost every marker of its Congolese origin unless a supply-chain due-diligence record travelled with it.
Governance context
Masisi was declared a formal red zone in February 2025, with a six-month extraction and sales ban. The M23 / AFC movement has controlled Rubaya since 30 April 2024. Pit collapses in January and March 2026 killed more than 600 people. Some sites have shifted from an earlier green or yellow validation status to red, not validated, in late-2025 revisits, reflecting the collapse of formal traceability under armed-group control.
Sampled sites (workers)
- Gakombe 2,000
- Mutanga 95
- Kavuta 50
- Kahenerezo 50
- Kashaki 45 · tin-primary
- Kalindi 35
- Kiluku 15
