Central Africa has entered a decisive phase in the global competition for critical minerals – one in which market access will increasingly be earned through three drivers: namely traceability, formalisation and beneficiation, rather than resource endowment alone, says data-driven critical minerals strategy and transaction advisory firm StratMined Advisory director and senior mining strategy adviser Héra Mpondo.

StratMined Advisory has a strong business focus on African mining value chains.

She explains that these drivers will be crucial in Central Africa’s critical minerals boom decade, while the formalisation of artisanal mining could be the biggest value upliftment for the Central and East African mining region.

Bringing artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) into formal, traceable supply chains represents one of the “largest untapped value opportunities in the region,” adds Mpondo.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) alone, she says 1.5-million to 2-million artisanal miners support over 10-million dependants, producing up to a third of national cobalt output, much of which is mined outside formal channels, thereby meaning it is both untaxed and untraceable.

“Formalisation is not a compliance exercise; it is an economic strategy,” says Mpondo, adding that electric tagging, cooperative registries and traceable payments can connect the smallest producer to the most demanding battery-grade materials buyer.

“Every tonne that moves from the informal to the formal economy is revenue for the State, bargaining power for communities and derisked supply for offtakers,” she adds, stressing that the same logic applies beyond cobalt.

Cameroon anchors much of StratMined Advisory’s recent work, which Mpondo suggests is Central Africa’s next mining frontier.

She points out that, in Cameroon, StratMined Advisory’s analysis documents yearly losses of about $270-million on artisanal gold alone – value that a traceability mechanism planned by Cameroonian national mining company Société National des Mines (Sonamines) for 2026 to 2027, is designed to recapture.







The country has the chance to build traceability, local content and beneficiation into its mining economy at the design stage, rather than retrofitting them later, which for investors seeking early positions in Central Africa outside the traditional Copperbelt, is a “rare window”, explains Mpondo.



The DRC, which accounts for roughly three-quarters of global cobalt output, has fundamentally reshaped the market since strategic mineral regulatory and control agency the Authority for the Regulation and Control of Strategic Mineral Substance Markets (ARECOMS) replaced its export suspension with a quota regime capping exports at 96 600 t/y for 2026 and 2027, says Mpondo.



“The conversation in the DRC is no longer about how much cobalt leaves the country, but about what each tonne can prove about itself,” she says.