page_title: Geology of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
section_title: Natural resource geology
hierarchical_section_title: Geology of the Democratic Republic of the Congo / Natural resource geology
caption_attribution_description: English: Diamond Locality: Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaïre) (Locality at mindat.org) Size: 0.4 x 0.4 x 0.4 cm (largest). A fine 5-piece set of five crystallized diamonds from Zaire. Two crystals are frosted, interpenetrating cubes of different yellow color; the large diamond is a gemmy, yellow, cuboctahedron; and the last two, very gemmy crystals with gorgeous, clove-brown color, appear to be modified octahedrons. The different crystal forms, colors and variable gemminess make for an extremely nice diamond suite. 2.80 carats total weight. Deutsch: Diamant Fundort: Demokratische Republik Kongo (Fundort bei mindat.org) Größe: 0.4 x 0.4 x 0.4 cm
context_page_description: The geology of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is extremely old, on the order of several billion years for many rocks. The country spans the Congo Craton: a stable section of ancient continental crust, deformed and influenced by several different mountain building orogeny events, sedimentation, volcanism and the geologically recent effects of the East Africa Rift System in the east. The country's complicated tectonic past have yielded large deposits of gold, diamonds, coltan and other valuable minerals.
context_section_description: Historically, the economy of the Democratic Republic of Congo hinged on the mining industry, particularly in colonial times and immediately after independence. However, Congolese metal mining virtually collapsed as a result of the Second Congo Civil War. The Lufilian Arc hosts the famous copperbelt region that spans from Katanga into Zambia, with 12% of the world's copper and half of all cobalt reserves. Within the polymetallic metallogenic province, there are stratiform, skarn and vein deposits with copper-cobalt and zinc-lead sulfides, noble metals and chlorine oxides. DRC has 3.1 million tons out of the 4.8 million tons of cobalt reserves in the copperbelt.
  Political unrest and obsolete equipment caused a precipitous drop in gold production. In the early 1990s, many large mines closed. Kipushi Mine, a copper, zinc and germanium mine near Lubumbashi shut down  in 1993, although feasibility studies indicated potential for producing up to 200,000 tons of copper a year prompting the possibility that it might be reopened. Some mines were shut down even earlier, such as a manganese mine in Kisenge closed in the 1970s after the Angolan Civil War shutdown the Benguela railroad used to export ore. Coal production at the Luena Mine in Shaba Province has been curtailed by ethnic conflicts. Coltan, a mix of columbite and tantalite is common in eastern DRC, which yields tantalum when refined. With soaring demand for tantalum capacitors in cellphones, computers and other electronics, prices of the metal increased rapidly. Artisanal mining, often associated with rebels involved in the Kivu conflict has arisen to meet international demand.
  DRC also has large diamond deposits, mainly extracted through artisanal mining of alluvium near Mbuji-Mayi in Kasai Province, although many of these reserves are becoming depleted. One third of the DRC's diamonds are smuggled out of the country every year.
caption: Diamond from the DRC
  Photo by Rob Lavinsky
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