{"id":25527,"date":"2022-09-02T13:48:17","date_gmt":"2022-09-02T11:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipisresearch.be\/\/?post_type=weekly-briefing&p=25527"},"modified":"2025-09-17T22:13:46","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T20:13:46","slug":"troubled-waters-in-the-kasai-pollution-by-the-angolan-diamond-industry-and-culpable-negligence-by-the-congolese-government","status":"publish","type":"weekly-briefing","link":"https:\/\/ipisresearch.be\/nl\/weekly-briefing\/troubled-waters-in-the-kasai-pollution-by-the-angolan-diamond-industry-and-culpable-negligence-by-the-congolese-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Troubled waters in the Kasai. Pollution by the Angolan diamond industry and culpable negligence by the Congolese government"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ce briefing est \u00e9galement disponible en Fran\u00e7ais<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About a year after the news reached the world press<\/a>, hardly anything has been heard about the environmental disaster allegedly caused by the Angolan Catoca diamond mine. As a reminder, in late July 2021, local <\/a>m<\/a>edia<\/a> first reported on the brownish-red discoloration of hundreds of kilometers of the Democratic Republic of Congo\u2019s Tshikapa and Kasai rivers due to pollution from ‘industrial diamond mines’ in neighbouring Angola’s Lunda Norte and Sul provinces. Satellite images<\/a> published a little later traced the origin of this pollution front to a tailings pipe rupture at the Catoca mine in northern Angola. While many facts surrounding the incident to date remain unclear, what has come to light is a glaring lack of leadership on the part of those politically in charge in Congo and Angola to ensure accountability and remedy for the harms caused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Satellite images \u00a9 Sentinel Vision<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Satellite images  \u00a9 Sentinel Vision<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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 \u00a9 GAERN & CENADEP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The disaster, according to official Congolese government reports<\/a>, killed 12 people, sickened thousands of river residents, cut off hundreds of thousands of people from their daily water supply, and caused mass mortality among aquatic life and livestock on the banks. According to a (yet unpublished) recent survey by IPIS’ Congolese NGO partners GAERN and CENADEP, in Kasai province 13 of the 18 health zones were affected by the pollution. These zones include more than 200 villages and almost 1 million inhabitants. The NGO survey also revealed that more than 80 % of the population along the affected rivers consume river water, whereas less than 20 % draw their drinking water from the facilities run by the REGIDESO water company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The disaster, according to official Congolese government reports, killed 12 people and sickened thousands of river residents<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In addition to these immediate harms, the lack of access to clean drinking water deteriorated the general health and hygiene conditions in the affected areas, leading amongst others to a typhoid outbreak<\/a> in October last year. Furthermore, the dramatic reduction of fish stocks negatively impacted food security and economic activity in these river-dependent communities, in a way that is likely to be felt for years to come. One year after the event, the dossier is even murkier than the affected river water, and the Congolese and Angolan authorities shroud themselves in silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Catoca is the fourth largest diamond mine in the world with an annual production worth USD 800 million. The main shareholders of the Sociedade Mineira de Catoca (SMC) are Angolan state-owned Endiama and Alrosa (41%), the Russian diamond miner that produces the world’s largest volume of diamonds. According to the Financial Times, the Angolan attorney-general would have added 18% of the shares to the Angolan state’s portfolio in the last quarter of 2021, bringing its total package to 59%. The shares belonged to Lev Leviev International, a subsidiary of the China Sonangol group. The Chinese shareholders are now said<\/a> to be challenging that decision in Angolan courts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The already scarce communication on the part of corporate stakeholders fell completely silent after September 2021. In that month, SMC announced<\/a> an expedition to take samples in the affected rivers with the goal of ‘proving with lab data that there are no heavy metals in the river systems’. No test results were ever published of that ‘scientific’ expedition. The same goes for announced environmental audits<\/a> that also had to ‘reconfirm that there has been no environmental damage’. Summarizing the results of SMC’s ‘investigation’, it says that sand and clay leaked into the water from a leak in a tailings basin. To the layman, this does not seem to be a problem. However, the determination ‘sand and clay’ says nothing about the chemical composition of such particles, only about their size, and is therefore hardly relevant in this case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also unpublished are the scientific tests of water quality in the affected Congolese rivers ran by the Congolese authorities. However, during an initial phase of tough, political rhetoric, Congolese Environment Minister Eve Bazaiba announced that preliminary results of tests in the Kasai River showed the presence of heavy metals such as iron and nickel. Further, scientists from the Congo Basin Water Resources Research Center at the University of Kinshasa issued public statements about an ‘unprecedented environmental and human disaster’. They also launched a public appeal with a series of recommendations<\/a> in August 2021 (see text box below). However, a few months later, a person in charge at the centre reported<\/a> that due to a lack of funds, it was unable to organise any follow-up on the situation on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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