On a June morning this year in the city of Goma in Congo's North Kivu province, a small crowd of women gather around the well to fill water buckets they carry on their heads, while children run cheerfully, giving each other a giddying chase.
That voice belongs to Angelique Nyirasafari, both a mineral trader and a member of COOPERAMMA, the first mining cooperative to be established in North Kivu, in the territory of Masisi rich in both cassiterite and coltan. Since she entered the mining sector, Nyirasafari has fought to improve the standard of living for other women working alongside her. Her decision to take action stemmed from the first Women in Mining National Conference held in Bukavu, South Kivu's capital, in 2015, a meeting supported by the World Bank and the Congolese government.
“Our association also teaches women that they can live without men,” Nyirasafari says as her phone rings insistently. “And today there are many women who started as ordinary miners and, by saving money, have built their own economic independence.” Women represent between 20 and 50 percent of the total population at mineral extraction sites in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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