Emmanuel Umpula Nkumba is the Executive Director of the African Natural Resources Watch (AFREWATCH). He is an expert on business and human rights and on the governance of the extractive sector in the DRC and in Africa.
Mr. Umpula is a board member of Rights and Accountability In Development (RAID), Resource Matters, and African Coalition for Corporate Accountability (ACCA). He was previously Executive Director of Action Against Impunity for Human Rights, Coordinator of the Platform of Civil Society Organizations working in the mining sector of Katanga (POM), and Advocacy Coordinator of the Jimmy Carter Foundation (The Carter Center).
He is one of the civil society experts of the DRC who participated and contributed effectively to the revision of the Congolese mining code and regulations. He has supported several local communities in filing complaints against multinational companies using the OECD Guidelines and against the Congolese state before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Examples of cases of complaints in which he participated include the massacres of Kilwe against the Australian-Canadian company Anvil Mining, the demolition of the village Kawama aganst the mining company Malta Forrest International, and Heineken vs. its former workers, etc. He also participated in the 2011 revision of the OECD Guidelines.
Currently, he is interested in the energy sector and the energy transition. As such, he coordinates a project that aims not only to create a south-south synergy on the issue of energy transition and climate change, but also the creation of a new narrative on the subject. Mr. Umpula also works on the formalisation of the artisanal mining sector in the DRC, particularly in the copper and cobalt sector. In this regard, he has published or co-published several reports, notably on child labor in cobalt mines in the DRC in 2016 and the supply of artisanal cobalt in the DRC in 2021.
In the area of human rights and the environment, he is the author or co-author of several reports and articles available on the internet.
