The collection of primary data to enable quantitative research is at the heart of IPIS’ expertise and methodology. Because many of our datasets are unique, we strongly believe that an open data policy contributes to the research community in our field. This is why we are committed to publishing (part of) our data for free, so they can be used by researchers, civil society actors, journalists, policymakers, and other stakeholders around the world. This open data page provides access to our shared datasets and the necessary tools to start using them.
Accessing the data
Our open data are available through a dedicated download page, which you can access by clicking the button below. This will take you to a short form with three brief questions that help us understand what kind of users are interested in our data. After filling out the form, you will be able to access the download page.
The open data download page provides access to the following datasets:
- Democratic Republic of Congo: artisanal mines (east and south east)
We are committed to keeping these datasets as up to date as possible. When new data collection campaigns are carried out, the IPIS GIS team works hard to clean the data and post it as quickly as possible online. In some cases, we may choose to delay uploading new data until after the publication of a report (by IPIS or by a partner).
Using the data
The data download page includes a data dictionary for each published dataset. This dictionary describes the structure of each dataset in detail. You can use our data in different ways:
- The simplest way is to download the data in CSV format and import it into Excel. The getting started page provides a short tutorial on how to do this.
- To visualize the data on a map, we recommend loading them into QGIS using the Data Source Manager (or equivalent for ArcGIS).
- For more thorough data analysis, we recommend using R (with the dplyr package) or Python (with the pandas package). Our open data tutorial will help you get started with data analysis in R.
You can also visualize and explore our datasets on the artisanal mining sector in the DR Congo using our interactive map and open data dashboard.
Open Data License
The datasets hosted on our Open Data Download page are provided under the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODB-By) v1.0. The Open Data Commons website describes this license in full text and as a human-readable summary. In short, this license allows you to use our datasets for any and all purposes but requires you to include an explicit attribution to IPIS in any work that makes use of our datasets. This includes, but is not limited to, printed reports, PDF reports, webpages, maps, plots, and videos.
Please use the following attribution: Source: IPIS – International Peace Information Service vzw |
Need help?
The data dictionaries provided on the download page alongside our datasets should clarify any ambiguities you encounter. Below, we list some frequently asked questions about our most important dataset: visits to artisanal mines in the DR Congo.
Do you still have a question to which you cannot find an answer? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us at mapping@ipisresearch.be. We are also eager to see any maps, publications, or other products you created using our datasets, or to explore how IPIS could help your organization with field data collection.
Frequently asked questions – DRC Mine visits
The primary data collection on artisanal mines in the DR Congo relies on our network of several dozen experienced Congolese researchers. These researchers (male and female) are divided into pairs and assigned to a certain project zone, in discussion with our Liaison Officers. Within this zone, they physically visit artisanal mines and the neighboring villages to conduct interviews. The research teams make an effort to interview a range of people: individual workers, mine owners, representatives of cooperatives, local authorities, etc. They then triangulate (synthesize) the information from these different interviews and complete an ODK questionnaire about the mine. They also write an accompanying research report that summarizes the trends observed in their project zone. Researchers at IPIS headquarters then review and clean the ODK data and research reports to ensure correctness and consistency across the entire project. Afterwards, the cleaned data are published to the IPIS database, through which they appear in our open data and webmap.
The ODK questionnaire filled out by our research teams includes questions on several different topics: the number of workers, the presence of women and children, the presence of cooperatives, conflict and violence, the extracted minerals including their price and production, the use of mercury, supply chain details, the presence of armed actors, the presence of state services, the presence of roadblocks at or near the mine, and traceability and due diligence.
The responses to a subset of these questions are included in our webmap and open data. We only publish data for questions for which we are confident that the reported data:
- Are accurate and consistent. For example: We do not publish production amounts, since they are often underreported to avoid taxation and are therefore not sufficiently reliable to be used for research purposes.
- Satisfy the do-no-harm principle. For example: We do not publish data about the behavior of state services at mines due to the risk of reputational damage to IPIS. We also do not publish data about sexual violence at mines to protect the victims’ privacy.
The overall project zone (the provinces and territories to be visited) is typically decided by the project donor. The donor may also request that only mines of a particular type are visited, for example those extracting a certain mineral or those that have been validated by state services.
Once the project zone has been decided, our Liaison Officers discuss with the research teams which sub-zones each team should visit. The research teams then reach out to their local networks to obtain an overall idea of the situation in the assigned area. This lets them shortlist the most important mines (those with the highest number of workers and/or output) within that zone. Based on the number of days available for their field trip, they then select the mines to be visited in collaboration with researchers at IPIS headquarters. This plan may be slightly modified once the team arrives in its project zone, for example, if the researchers discover that a large new mine has opened or that an existing mine has been abandoned.
As discussed above, IPIS does not use statistical sampling to decide which mines to visit but instead relies on the knowledge of local researchers. While we try to be as representative as possible, we cannot statistically quantify the representativeness of the dataset. IPIS believes the following:
- Is the dataset representative of all artisanal mines in the DR Congo? No.
The DR Congo is one of the largest countries in the world and consists of different areas with their own local dynamics. As IPIS does not systematically carry out mine visits in all provinces, our dataset is not representative of the entire country. For example, armed actors play an important role in the east, while the Kasaï province mainly hosts diamond mines, and the south contains large copper and cobalt mines where artisanal and industrial exploitations overlap.
- Is the dataset representative of all mines of a particular mineral? No.
As mentioned above, each region of the DR Congo is subject to its own dynamics. Gold mines in the regions visited by IPIS may therefore be quite different from gold mines in unvisited regions.
- Is the dataset representative of all mines in a particular region? Yes.
We believe that our data provide a representative sample of artisanal mines within specific regions of the DR Congo.
The frequency of dataset updates depends on the number and size of our active projects. When we have a large mapping project, we typically post updates several times per year.
We do not systematically revisit all mines in our database – there simply are too many! Certain projects may involve repeated visits to study the evolution of different mine characteristics. Other projects may try to visit as many mines as possible only once, to obtain a snapshot of as large an area as possible.
The artisanal mining sector is also very fluid. Mines may be temporarily or permanently abandoned for a variety of reasons: insecurity, weather conditions making work impossible, more productive mines opening nearby, etcetera. Mines may also reopen for similar reasons or may move, often following the course of a river. As a result, it is likely that once a research team arrives in their project zone, they encounter a situation that differs from what previous IPIS data present. We try to have teams check the status of all « historical IPIS mines » in their project zone but cannot guarantee full coverage due to the amount of work involved.
No, the coordinates provided alongside our mine visit data always use the most recently obtained coordinates. If you are interested in historical coordinates, please contact us at mapping@ipisresearch.be for a custom request.
Until 2024, our questionnaires only considered persons younger than 16 as « children » (persons aged 16 or 17 were excluded from the relevant questions). Starting from 2025, our questionnaires have considered all persons younger than 18 (persons aged 16 or 17 are included in the relevant questions), to align with Congolese laws on the definition of child labor.
Yes. Our research teams are exposed to different risks when collecting mine site, mainly due to the presence of armed groups and diseases such as malaria and Ebola. Before and during a field trip, our research teams evaluate their personal risks and decide whether physical visits can be safely carried out. If the risks are deemed too high, teams may choose not to visit a mine but instead collect data from a nearby village. In extreme cases, fully remote data collection may also take place, in which researchers combine telephone interviews with limited physical interviews in (safer) large cities. The final decision on whether in-person visits can be safely carried out lies entirely with our Congolese research teams, with IPIS headquarters and the Liaison Officers only playing an advisory role. The mine site dataset includes a column that indicates whether the information was obtained onsite or at a distance (for more details, please refer to the corresponding data dictionary). The DRC webmap also shows this information when viewing the mine visit details.
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