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Paper short abstract

Workers are seldom included in just-transition discourse. Therefore, this study focuses on the gendered impacts of formalisation on artisanal and small-scale mining livelihoods in the Congolese Copperbelt.

Paper long abstract

The Democratic Republic of the Congo contains vast high quality deposits of two key critical minerals-copper and cobalt. Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) plays an important role in these value chains, accounting for about 15 to 30% of national cobalt production. Attention to environmental pollution, poor working conditions, and human rights abuses in the sector have fuelled several formalisation efforts. However, few studies have examined their impacts on ASM livelihoods, and even fewer, the gendered dimensions of these impacts. This study seeks to unpack these through a comparison of livelihood outcomes across formal and informal ASM sites through a combination of ethnographic, qualitative, and participatory methods. These results will then be analysed through the current literature on formalisation, real governance, and gender.