DRC lifts final barrier to cobalt export resumption

Congo clears the way for cobalt exports to resume

The Democratic Republic of Congo, the world's largest cobalt producer, has removed the last administrative obstacle to restarting exports of the battery metal. According to La Tribune, an interministerial circular issued on December 2 formally authorised mining companies to resume shipments, closing a cycle of restrictions that began in early 2025.

The move ends the most restrictive phase of a policy Kinshasa adopted to halt a slide in cobalt prices. In February 2025 the DRC decreed a total ban on cobalt exports, according to Le Figaro. The embargo held until quotas were introduced in October, and the December circular now clears companies to ship under that quota system.

From embargo to market control

Congolese authorities frame the sequence as a deliberate effort to wrest pricing power over cobalt away from China, which dominates the mineral's processing and trade. "Suspending exports was not a sustainable mechanism over the long term. It was a necessary electroshock to rebalance the market in the immediate term," Patrick Luabeya, chairman of the board of the Authority for the Regulation and Control of Strategic Mineral Substances Markets (Arecoms), told Le Figaro. He said the halt reduced the level of stocks held outside the DRC, which had been dragging cobalt prices down. Arecoms was created in 2019.

Le Figaro reports that the DRC intends to go further than quotas by building its own stocks to steer the market, a strategy Luabeya himself described as a "risky bet." The country produces two-thirds of the world's cobalt, giving it leverage few other producers hold.

What it means for battery supply chains

Cobalt is a key input in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, so the DRC's supply decisions feed directly into cell and automaker procurement. The embargo and subsequent quotas were designed to lift prices that Le Figaro notes had been depressed by concerns over global growth and disappointing electric-vehicle demand.

For importers, the resumption restores legal export flows, but under a quota regime rather than the open market that preceded February 2025, meaning volumes remain administratively capped. The DRC is also revising its Mining Code, according to Le Figaro, adding a further layer of policy change for buyers and traders to track.

China in the frame

The broader contest is over who sets cobalt's price. Chinese firms are the dominant force in mining, processing and trading Congolese cobalt, alongside lithium and nickel, a concentration that specialists cited by Le Figaro flag as a supply risk for Western manufacturers. By managing volumes and, prospectively, holding strategic stocks, Kinshasa is trying to shift some of that pricing influence back toward the producing country.

The immediate market signal is a return of Congolese cobalt to export channels after roughly ten months of disruption, but on terms the DRC now controls more tightly than before.