# Rubaya Coltan Mine An artisanal coltan site in Masisi territory, North Kivu, supplying roughly **15% of the world's tantalum** — and by some estimates around half the DRC's national coltan output. It is the single most consequential piece of ground in this cluster, and the clearest emblem of what the 2025–26 policy turn actually amounts to. ## Why coltan, why here Coltan is columbite-tantalite ore; the valuable fraction is **tantalum**, whose dominant use is tantalum capacitors — over 60% of consumption — prized for high capacitance in very small volumes, which is what miniaturised electronics require. Rubaya's deposit runs at **20–40% tantalum**, exceptionally rich, and is worked entirely by hand. The DRC and Rwanda together are now the largest global suppliers of tantalum, and their production is entirely artisanal — an inversion of the position in 2000, when industrial Australian mines supplied up to 45% of the world. ## The takeover, and the taxes [[M23]] took full control on **30 April 2024**. It collects roughly **$800,000 a month** from taxing production and trade. The mechanics documented by the UN: traders pay **$4/kg to M23 at the site, then another $3/kg** on crossing into Rwanda. UN experts documented at least 150 tonnes of coltan fraudulently exported from the area to Rwanda in 2024, rising toward **120 tonnes a month during 2025**. [[Global Witness]]'s June 2026 investigation found five of Rwanda's seven largest coltan exporters buying from the Rubaya area and traced over 2,000 tonnes of smuggled material into global supply chains — reaching Sony, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, LG Display, Ericsson, Toyota and Vodafone downstream. [[ITSCI]] suspended tagging in parts of the Kivus from 28 February 2025, removing traceability from the region precisely when it mattered most. ## The 2026 landslides > [!warning] There were four separate collapses in 2026, not one > The "late January versus March" discrepancy in secondary coverage is not confused reporting. Bellingcat's open-source verification of 12 May 2026, using satellite imagery and geolocated video, documents **four distinct 2026 landslides** in the Rubaya area. > > | Date | Site | Reported toll | > |---|---|---| > | **28 January 2026** | Luwowo pit / Gasasa, southeast of Rubaya | "More than 200" initially; **227 killed and 20 injured** per landslide-science reporting; 226 per the M23-appointed governor's spokesman | > | **3 March 2026** (widely datelined 4 March) | Same pit | **200+, including around 70 children**, per the DRC Ministry of Mines. AFC/M23 disputed it: "only five or six died" | > | **7 March 2026** | Gatabi village, southwest of Rubaya — **a village, not the pit** | 300+ reported; 40+ families | > | **27 March 2026** | Same pit | 9+, in two shaft collapses | > > A separate, much smaller collapse occurred on **19 June 2025** (roughly 12–21 dead officially). Do not conflate it with the 2026 events. > > **Every toll is contested.** Kinshasa's Ministry of Mines and the M23 administration that physically controls the site give divergent figures by two orders of magnitude, and no independent body has done a count. One M23 official told Bellingcat "there was no landslide; there were bombings." Wikipedia carries two competing articles on the same events, which is itself a source of the confusion. The structural cause is not in dispute: hand-dug pits worked at scale, in a rainy highland region, under an armed administration with no interest in suspending production. ## The offer On **5 February 2026**, at a meeting in Washington, the Congolese government formally presented Rubaya for inclusion in the **Strategic Asset Reserve** under the [[US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement]] — the list of mining sites reserved for American companies. M23 was, and is, sitting on it. > [!note] Read that again > Kinshasa offered a foreign government preferential rights to a mine it does not control, in order to give that government a commercial reason to help retake it. Restarting the site is estimated to need $50–150 million. Separately, America First Global — chaired by a Trump associate — has pursued Rubaya rights in consortium with the trader Mercuria, with a plan to process the coltan at a **new smelter in Kigali** for US import. > > That last detail is the whole 2020s inversion in one sentence: the proposed remedy for Rwandan-routed conflict coltan is a Rwandan smelter. ## See also [[M23]] · [[M23 Offensive of 2025]] · [[US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement]] · [[Global Witness]] · [[Conflict Minerals Ecosystem]]