Mining Indaba: Communities, Co-ownership and Inclusion | Rethinking Inclusion in African Mining

Marie-Chantal Kaninda joined Glencore DRC six years ago as Executive Director and Head of Corporate Affairs. Since July 2022, she has chaired the Board of Directors of Kamoto Copper Company (KCC), and since January 2023, she has held the position of President of Glencore DRC.

She has more than 25 years of experience in the mining industry, acquired in large international groups such as Ashanti Goldfields, AngloGold Ashanti, De Beers Group — where she managed administration, communication, external affairs in Central Africa as well as community relations in Africa - and Rio Tinto, as Director of External Relations for Africa.

This discussion leans on Marie-Chantal 's leadership experience at Glencore and the Kamoto Copper Company to discuss whether shared value, profit-sharing, and new partnership models could help reshape trust and collaboration between mining companies and local communities.

Speakers include:

• Assheton Stewart Carter | Executive Chair & Founder, TDi Sustainability
• Marie-Chantal Kaninda | President & Chairman, Glencore DRC & KCC

This episode is part of the TDi Sustainability special series of podcasts produced for the Mining Indaba event that will take place in Cape Town between 9th – 12th February 2026. Find out more about the event>

Transcript

Introducing Marie-Chantal Kaninda and Her Leadership Journey

Today’s Theme: Trust Between Mining Companies and Communities

Assheton Stewart Carter 0:09

Hello and welcome to this special edition of Suits and Boots, the TDI Sustainability Podcast Series in conjunction with the investing in African Mining in Daba. In this series, speakers at the 2026 Mining in Daba Conference discuss some of the key themes that will be covered at the event. I'm Assheton Stewart Carter, Executive Chair at TDI Sustainability. And today I'm joined by Marie-Chantal Kaninda. Now, there are many things to talk about with Marie-Chantal because she has a long tenure, some 25 years in the industry, and has held very consequential positions. For the past six years, she's been at Glencore in the DRC's executive director of Head of Current Affairs. She's chaired the board of directors at Komoto Copper Company known as KCC and is now president of Glencore DRC. Before that, she's held many exec at international groups such as Ashanti Goldfields, Anglo Gold A shanti, the Bears Group, Rio Tinto, where she was the external relations for Africa. And she's also made history by becoming, for two years, the first African woman to chair the World Diamond Council. Married with two daughters, she has a long-standing commitment to girls and women's access to education and training, as well as their inclusion in the mining sector. And she's a mentor to several young women entrepreneurs in the DRC. And women in mining is a topic that we have covered many times in this podcast series. So, not surprising, therefore, Marie-Chantal has been recognised as one of the most influential women by Forbes Africa, a distinction received three years in a row now, the last one in 2023. So, of the many things we could be talking about with Marie- Chantal today, we'll be leaning on her leadership experience at Glencore and KCC to discuss whether shared value, new partnership models with communities could help reshape trust and collaboration between mining companies and their neighbours. So this is about trust between companies and communities. So welcome Marie-Chantal.

Marie-Chantal Kaninda 2:22

Thank you very much, Assheton. Thank you for having me.

Why Trust Remains Hard: What Communities Need From Companies

Assheton Stewart Carter 2:26

Well, it's fantastic to have you here. And perhaps we could start a little bit by setting the scene and talking about mining companies who very often now talk about community engagement, but what we sometimes hear from communities is that they don't always feel heard or trusted. And in some parts of the world, as the as there's an increase in exploration and development of mineral resources, you're finding some communities which are pushing back. So from your experience at the Glencore, indeed your experience more generally in the industry, what do you see as the main reasons that trust is still so difficult to build and maintain? Why shouldn't mining communities trust mining companies?

Culture, Local Context, and Respect for Traditional Leadership

Benefits, Not Just Dialogue: Expectations on Livelihoods and Environment

Grievance Mechanisms: How Communities Raise Issues and Get Responses

Marie-Chantal Kaninda 3:12

Well, thank you for this question, Assheton. First of all, I think that what is important is we do talk about the license to operate. And the license to operate is basically how am I accepted by the community that is surrounding the operations? But for the community to accept the investor, the mining company, I think that there first needs to be a communication. And when we talk about communication is they speak, we listen, we speak, they listen, and we ensure that we listen, we agree on what is the most appropriate for the communities and for us. First of all, what is important as well is to be able to speak the same language. If I'm in Kolwesi and I need to speak with the communities, I first need to make sure that when I speak Swahili, they understand what I'm talking about. If I speak English and they speak Swahili, sometimes it is an issue. That's the first thing. Having as well in as a company in your community uh department, people that do know and understand the communities. And you know, when we talk about the DRC, we tend to talk about a country. But when I operate in the Lualaba uh province as we do at KCC and MUMI, it is a specific area with specific culture. So how do I ensure that I also do understand the culture of the community, the history as well of the communities? And I think that those are the key parts that is important. What does the community want? They want to be part of what you do. I need to ensure that I also hire people from the community, that they are part of the work that is being done. The other thing that the community is expecting is for them to have a better standard of living whilst the company is operating in their areas, which is paying taxes, of course, to uh to the province, paying communal taxes as well, ensuring as well that from an environment stance, as a mining company, you are not um disrupting the communities around your operations. And then there's also the fact that when the communities do have some discomfort with some of the issues, they know to him whom they can come and uh to speak. And maybe the last point I think that is really key and critical is respect to the chiefs of the communities. Uh sometimes we tend as uh companies not always to um to um to come up with those respects which are critical and key in um the African environment. Um is this enough? I will say it's not always maybe enough. And communities always want more, and it's normal. But I think that it's how do we engage and ensure that there is a grievance mechanism process that enables the community to come and talk to us and us as a company to respond to um to their worries or to respond to their uh queries.

The DRC “Cahier de Charge”: Co-Designing Community Investment Plans

Assheton Stewart Carter 6:53

Thanks so much. And I and I think you, if I may, I think there's kind of two categories of things there. The one, the first, which I think is incredibly important, is what I would call kind of community relations. That's making sure that you have people who are interacting with the community who are sympathetic, who understand, and that there are there's a conduit, a two-way conduit for a community and mining company to exchange and better understand each other. I tend to think it's a fundamental human need to be understood and to understand. The second thing you talked a little bit about there and touched on, and perhaps we can explore it a little bit more now, is around the sharing of benefits. Of course, mining um and KCC in particular has delivered extraordinary wealth which could be captured by the country. How do we make sure that some of those benefits are that those that are probate level benefits, perhaps I should say, are um received by the community? Because, as you say, that's part of it. Communications is good, um, empathy is good, but they also want to share of the benefits which are being delivered. What is the way that KCC can go about doing that with the community, or do you do going about that with community? And is it something to do with moving from mere consultation to some sort of partnership with the community uh around those benefits and how they are delivered?

What Partnership Looks Like: Roads, Schools, Water, Power, Livelihood Projects

Marie-Chantal Kaninda 8:32

Yeah, um, and this is a fundamental uh question that has been addressed by the latest mining uh code, in which it is stipulated that um all companies operating in mining areas should have what we call a cahier de charge, which is um an agreement with the communities, with the uh local authorities and with the companies on what will be an investment that the company could do to improve infrastructure, education, and uh name it for the communities. And this starts by a consultation, consultation with the communities on what are the needs of the communities. And this is something that um KCC has been doing and MUMI as well, on those consultations on infrastructure, on education, and on many other things that you know we have been discussing with the communities, and they have come up with a list of points that they feel that are very important. And you have an independent consultant who will ensure that the voice of the communities are heard, and the voice of the provincial um uh government as well. And us as a company, what we do, we agree on um with them, and we don't decide, because I think that that's where the communities need to decide for themselves what is important for them. And it is a five-year program. We become a partner to this uh process, and as a partner, what we do, we um build roads, we um uh create uh various infrastructure, schools, water infrastructure, electricity, and um other specific projects like um chicken uh type of farm projects for the communities. And um we have been doing that with um with the communities, and I think that um we still have another three years to go for this project to be um uh uh finalized. And it has worked very, very well, I must say, because this is a true partnership. What does the community want? How do we support the community uh with that? And um how do we ensure that it becomes very beneficial for the communities that are surrounding our operations? And I think that this is a legal requirement, but it's more than a legal requirement because there is a true benefit for us as a mining company, ensuring that the communities are happy with uh our presence and our support, and for the communities to ensure that they can uh benefit from our presence in their surroundings.

Assheton Stewart Carter 11:48

So that sounds in some ways as though that's good practice, where the government, um provincial and federal, is setting the framework for within which the company can um act, and the practices of the company are to almost kind of create co-ownership of the way that the community benefits so that they feel that they have power over what is happening and responsibility for what is happening. Some I mean, in some ways, I guess you're giving up a little bit of control there by that depth of consultation. But isn't your experience that giving up of that control actually enables you to build a more secure and trusted relationship with communities?

Managing Complexity in Remote Contexts: Practical Principles That Work

Marie-Chantal Kaninda 12:34

Yes, of course, it does bring it, it does build a better relationship. You know, Ashton, here we are talking about uh more than 50 million uh dollars projects. Okay, so I think that it really um it's not a one-soft project, it is like a sustainable or a long-term project for those uh for the communities. And I think that what is specifically important here that was not done in the past, in the past, companies would come and decide what was better for the communities. But here, having the communities themselves deciding on what is better for them, I think that that's first, that's already ownership.

Concrete Examples: Alternative Livelihoods for Women Transitioning From ASM

Assheton Stewart Carter 13:20

Yeah, and I think you're right. I I started in this um area of work about 30 years ago, and I think you're right in saying that the worldview then, back in the late 90s, is very different from the worldview that you've just explained now. So that's very promising to hear. You also mentioned that, of course, the DRC, if you look at from one point of view, it's just one country on a map, but within it, there's many different countries and communities, cultures, and approaches. These are complex projects in complex places. Can you give us an example or um some pointers or principles of interventions or actions or um projects that you have experienced or overseen that have been successful in managing all that complexity?

COVID Example: How Sewing Co-ops Became Income and Local Supply

Summer Camps: Keeping Children Out of ASM and Supporting School Return

Marie-Chantal Kaninda 14:17

Yeah. Um in very few places in the world you have um you have uh minerals in uh in the in the center of a very uh pleasant place uh to be. It's always in remote areas, wherever in the world, where it's not always um uh easy. But I think that that's the challenge that um is nice to be to look at and to be able to uh to achieve. When we look at uh a company like Glencoe operating in the DRC since 2008, I think that when we look at how Colwese has been able to develop compared to what Colwese was 10 years ago, even five or six years ago, I think that we are proud as a company to say that we have been part of it as well. But if you want to give me to give you concrete um examples, I'll um maybe take one or two. Um, you know, we uh we talk about ASM, and um there are people that do ASM because they love it, and others because they don't have the choice. So um we have been also um able to see that um children tend to follow their mothers wherever um they are after school. And when their mothers are doing ASM, children after school will tend to follow their parents um into the ASM, and especially their mothers, into their ASM uh work. And what we decided to do at KCC is um at a point in time, we um uh suggested to some of the females that were working in ASM, the ones that were willing to move to something different, uh we suggested them to um uh to give them alternative livelihood around uh sewing cooperatives, around uh agriculture, uh uh around restoration and things like that. And what this has done is uh we have taken a we did um take a few females out of uh ASM and they were able to create their own uh sewing uh um uh uh company, others, um, as I said, agriculture, other restoration. And um what we realized is their revenues were became a lot more stable. And um we also realized that with the better and uh stable, more stable revenues, the the this female were able to increase uh um the standard of leaving of their families. And then I can come back to the fact that uh during COVID, some of them, the ones that had the sewing um uh cooperatives, were able to um uh to sew uh masks that they were able to sell to all the um artisanal people that were still remaining in the artisanal environment. And it came for this from the same females that used to be in ASM, that had changed their um the work that they decided to do. And this was such a good project because they made a lot of money out of the out of sewing this uh this mask during uh the COVID period. The other thing that we have done also that, and that we are still doing, and it's really a great one, is during summer holidays, instead of um just leaving children joining their parents in ASM, because what we have realized is when a child during their summer holidays do join their parents in ASM, when school uh restarts, some of them are not very keen to get back to school. They rather want to stay in ASM. So what we have done is we have created summer camps during uh the summer holidays. And um at the summer camps, children um study a little bit, play, you know, they they really have a good time. They are feeded uh at least once a day as well. And um what we have realized is those children, when the year starts, they go back to school and we give them as well school kits. So those are things that we do. They seem to be um, you know, very uh minimal, but they have such a good big impact on the communities and on the parents as well. So those are maybe two examples that I just wanted to share to say that, you know, with communities, you can work together with them to ensure that they can improve their livelihoods with some of those important issues. They can seem small but very important.

The Fair Cobalt Alliance: Why Collaboration Improves ASM Outcomes

Assheton Stewart Carter 19:24

I think those are great examples. And to me, my kind of takeaway from that is that your team has striven first to understand what are the needs of communities and then design the project around those needs, so meeting the community where they are, rather than giving them the temptation to have sort of technical knowledge superiority and impose it. Um, and you mentioned LSM, which brings me to another question of the boundaries, I think, of a company's responsibilities and KCC's responsibilities in particular. You know, a lot of these problems that result. In sometimes strained relationships between communities and companies are not caused by the company itself, but are at the root of which are more fundamental problems to do with poverty and the policy in the country, which any one company can't possibly be responsible for. So, you know, the thing that you and I have been working on in the past is something called the Fair Cobalt Alliance, which is an example of sharing responsibility with other companies, so your neighbors in Lualaba, but also companies downstream in your supply chain as well, to try and address some of these more fundamental problems which aren't the local responsibility of your team. Do you think that this is something that we should be promoting in the industry? Greater collaboration between peers or even competitors to address some of these problems which result in the risk being caused to reputation and um and operations.

Marie-Chantal Kaninda 21:02

Yeah, well, thank you very much, Ashton, first of all, for raising this point with uh concerning the Fair Cobalt Alliance. Um it's true that as a company we value that very, very strongly. We are not um experts um on uh ASM and to be able to work with um an organization such as the Fair Cobalt Alliance and supporting such an organization, I think that that was one of the good things that um we um we have been able to uh to do because the Fair Cobalt Alliance is a lot more expert than us in what needs to be done in specific ASM environments. When I see how the FCA has been able to support all these females that have been working, that were doing the washing uh part um on the ASM environment. I think this has been really uh great because uh being able to protect a minority in that environment where it's not always easy, I think that it is uh it is important and good. And protecting those females has uh helped them, you know, deliver in what they like doing. Because at the end of the day, we tend to think that ASM is a bad thing, but there are people that like working in an ASM environment. And what has been great with the FCA is how do we ensure that they work in a responsible way? And it's that responsibility that we are looking for, because of course, as a large-scale mining, we work up, we uh operate in a very responsible way. But I'm sure that um ASM people could also work in a very responsible way. And how do you teach them that? And this is something that the FCA do does a lot better than what how we could do it. So, yes, very good um uh support for uh for for such a um an organization, and um yes, we uh we appreciate very much what they have done and the the way we have been able to support them as well.

Changing Perceptions: Site Visits, Standards, Local Employment, Copper Mark

Assheton Stewart Carter 23:20

Great, and the last um last couple of questions, a penultimate question. Looking at this through the risk lens, um we've heard from you that KCC and I would say the mature mining industry in general is becoming more conscious and more sophisticated in working with communities, but the attention from stakeholders outside of the mining industry, investors, um activist groups, um downstream off-take partners in the OEM industries, um still look at mining and mining in places like the DRC, which are a little bit more difficult, and they just put a big red flag on there and go high risk, high risk. But given what we just heard from you about how you have been so thoughtful about managing relations with the communities, should they be looking at risk management with communities in a different way, or does the mining community need to communicate it in a better way so that the stakeholders better understand how risks um are managed with communities?

The Industry Shift: From Purely Technical to Trust, Transparency, Engagement

Marie-Chantal Kaninda 24:28

Yeah. Listen, I think that, you know, Ashton, what is interesting is um when we talk about uh communication, I started by that. I said it's about listening and talking. And um, it's true that sometimes people have perception without knowing or without really listening. Um, you know, um what has changed a lot in uh with some of our stakeholders that felt initially that uh mining was very bad and very negative has been some of the visits that we have enabled some journalists, uh some civil society to do in our operations, realizing that in fact we are operating exactly the same with the same standards as we would be operating in uh Australia, in Canada, or in Latin America. Um, secondly, is um we operate our mines with very, very high standards. Um, you know, I'm surprised when I hear uh people writing about uh KCC using children. Why would you use a child in the mining operations? You you absolutely don't need um uh that. So um, and and here I'm just referring to that just to say that the misperception is very um important. Uh thirdly, people tend to think that um communities are very unhappy uh to um to have mining operations, which I don't think that it's true. We are very proud to say that in our operations, more than 95% of the employees are locals. Locals, which means from the province, from the communities, and from the country. I'm not saying that everything is perfect, but what is great is we are improving every day and every year just to ensure that this year, 2026, will be even better than what we were in 2025. We are very happy as a company to say uh that we have just undergone the copper mark, and you know that the copper mark uh standards are ESG, very high standards. Um, but in every operation you have different challenges, and our role is to ensure that we overcome those challenges without um you know um prejudicing um the communities living around uh our operations.

Assheton Stewart Carter 27:05

Yeah, that's well received. So Glen Kong is a is a corporate which has the has one set of values which they apply appropriately to different jurisdictions where they work. And I like very much what you say about trust and maybe the changing role of executives in mining companies. When you and I started, it was very much an engineering and a technical industry. Now we now there has to be considerable effort put towards um communications and building trust. And part of that building trust is standards, of course, and communications and actually meeting in person and going to fora where there are other stakeholders and the bringing it back to the Mining Indaba. The Mining Indaba has made considerable effort to invite downstream OEMs to better understand the mining industry. My final question is really about the kind of the Mining Indaba, where there's a theme about reimagining mining in Africa. And you know, I think I've heard many times over the last couple of decades that this is now Africa's moment. Um, but do you see that it really now is Africa's moment? There's such uh interest in minerals and critical minerals in particular, and Africa is host to many of those minerals, and we have sophisticated miners like uh Glencore and executives like yourself who are at the helm. What do you hope? What do you think you would like to see or you will see 10 years from now?

Closing Thanks and See You at Mining Indaba 2026

Marie-Chantal Kaninda 28:41

Well, it is an interesting uh question. It's true that um already when we look at uh where we were five years ago, I think that uh today when you talk about mining, and especially when you talk about critical uh minerals, you cannot talk about critical minerals without talking about uh Africa. You cannot talk about critical minerals without talking about the DRC. And um, as Glencore operating in the DRC producing copper and uh uh cobalt, um, I can say that in 10 years we will continue producing copper and cobalt, always with high standards as a company, in such a way that this um copper and cobalt will be uh accepted from the rest of the world. And that's where I think it is as well important. It is, of course, about Africa, it is about Africa producing these minerals. But I think that the world has a responsibility.

Assheton Stewart Carter 29:39

Well, thank you so much, uh, Marie-Chantal. Those are great um thoughts to finish this podcast on. And I must thank you for sharing your time with us of all the many pressing engagements that you um that you have. To our listeners, please check out the rest of this special series of Mining in DABA podcasts on the TDI Suits and Boots podcast channel. And I look forward to seeing you at the event in February, where you can hear more from Marie- Chantal on this and other topics. I'm Assheton Stewart Carter, and thank you for listening.