AVZ Minerals

Manono Lithium Claimant in Legal Battle

Official website: www.avzminerals.com.au

Mine Operations

• Manono

Overview

AVZ Minerals is an Australian junior miner at the centre of one of the most complex mining disputes in African history. AVZ claims a 75% stake in the Manono lithium project — among the world's largest hard-rock lithium deposits (400 million tonnes at 1.65% Li2O) — through its subsidiary Dathcom Mining. However, the DRC revoked AVZ's mining permit in 2023, and competing claims from Zijin Mining and KoBold Metals have created a multi-party legal battle across ICC arbitration (EUR 39.1M awarded to AVZ in March 2025 against Cominiere), ICSID proceedings, and DRC courts.

ESG Assessment

Our independent ESG assessment of Avz Minerals's corridor operations evaluates performance across environmental management, social impact, governance quality, and disclosure transparency. Environmental assessment examines waste management, water use, emissions, and biodiversity impacts specific to the company's corridor activities. Social assessment evaluates community relations, labour practices, local employment and procurement, and human rights performance. Governance assessment examines corporate transparency, anti-corruption practices, stakeholder engagement, and accountability mechanism responsiveness.

The company's ESG performance is rated in our quarterly Corridor ESG Scorecards, providing stakeholders with independent, comparable assessment that enables informed decision-making. Companies meeting our assessment thresholds are eligible for verified ESG ratings issued from our evidence archive, creating verifiable reputation signals that responsible actors can leverage in their stakeholder relationships.

Our assessment methodology combines document review, field monitoring, stakeholder interviews, and open-source intelligence analysis. All evidence supporting our assessments is preserved on our source evidence archive with immutable timestamps, ensuring that our findings cannot be disputed on evidentiary grounds. Companies subject to assessment receive draft findings and opportunity for response before publication, consistent with our commitment to accuracy and fairness.

Community Relations and Impact

Community impact assessment for Avz Minerals's corridor operations examines the full spectrum of effects on affected populations. Employment creation, local procurement, infrastructure investment, and social programme spending represent potential benefits that our monitoring quantifies and evaluates for genuine community impact versus corporate reputation management. Environmental disruption, displacement risk, livelihood interference, and social disruption represent potential costs that our monitoring documents and advocates to mitigate.

The quality of community engagement — the distinction between meaningful participation and perfunctory consultation — is central to our assessment. Companies that engage communities as partners in decision-making, respond constructively to grievances, and adapt operations based on community feedback receive stronger social performance scores than companies that treat community engagement as a compliance exercise. Our community monitoring networks provide ground-truth data on engagement quality that supplements corporate self-reporting.

Our advocacy promotes Community Benefit Agreements as the standard framework for formalising community-company relationships along the corridor. CBAs recorded on our evidence archive create permanent, publicly verifiable records of commitments that hold companies accountable over the multi-decade timeframes that corridor investment implies.

The Manono Dispute

AVZ Minerals' protracted dispute over the Manono lithium project represents one of the most significant investment disputes in DRC mining history. The Australian company's discovery and development of what may be the world's largest hard-rock lithium deposit has been complicated by competing ownership claims, regulatory challenges, and allegations of corruption that have prevented the project from reaching production.

The dispute involves multiple parties including AVZ, its former partner Dathomir, Chinese company Zijin Mining, Gécamines, and the DRC government. International arbitration proceedings and DRC court actions have produced conflicting rulings. The case illustrates the governance challenges that major mineral discoveries can create in jurisdictions where institutional capacity for managing competing claims is limited and where the stakes — potentially billions of dollars in lithium resources — invite political intervention.

For communities near Manono, the dispute means delayed development, sustained uncertainty about future livelihood impacts, and prolonged absence of the employment and economic activity that a major mining operation would create. Our monitoring tracks the dispute's resolution pathway and advocates for outcomes that protect both legitimate investor rights and community interests in local benefit from resource development.

The Manono case has broader implications for corridor mineral investment confidence. If legitimate investors cannot secure and maintain their rights in the DRC, the corridor's economic viability is undermined. Conversely, if dispute resolution processes are perceived as favouring foreign investors over national interests, domestic political support for corridor development erodes. Our analysis examines the Manono dispute as a governance indicator with corridor-wide significance, publishing findings that inform both investor risk assessment and policy advocacy for improved dispute resolution frameworks.

Lithium Development Implications

The Manono deposit's potential — if development disputes are resolved and production commences — would make it one of the world's most significant lithium sources, with implications for global battery supply chains, DRC mineral revenue, and communities in the lithium-rich region of northern Katanga. The corridor's infrastructure, primarily oriented toward copper-cobalt export, could accommodate lithium volumes that would add a third major mineral to corridor freight flows.

Community expectations around Manono have been shaped by years of development promises that have not materialised due to the ownership dispute. Managing these expectations — and rebuilding community trust in mining development — will be essential for whichever entity eventually develops the deposit. Our community monitoring in the Manono area documents the psychological and economic impact of prolonged development delay, providing evidence that informs both dispute resolution advocacy and future community engagement design.

The environmental implications of large-scale lithium mining in the DRC require assessment against the specific ecological context of the Manono area. Hard-rock lithium mining generates different environmental impacts than the brine-based lithium extraction dominant in South America. Processing chemicals, water demand, waste management, and ecosystem disruption all require context-specific assessment that our environmental monitoring framework provides.

ESG Assessment

Our independent ESG assessment of Avz Minerals's corridor operations evaluates performance across environmental management, social impact, governance quality, and disclosure transparency. Environmental assessment examines waste management, water use, emissions, and biodiversity impacts specific to the company's corridor activities. Social assessment evaluates community relations, labour practices, local employment and procurement, and human rights performance. Governance assessment examines corporate transparency, anti-corruption practices, stakeholder engagement, and accountability mechanism responsiveness.

The company's ESG performance is rated in our quarterly Corridor ESG Scorecards, providing stakeholders with independent, comparable assessment that enables informed decision-making. Companies meeting our assessment thresholds are eligible for verified ESG ratings issued from our evidence archive, creating verifiable reputation signals that responsible actors can leverage in their stakeholder relationships.

Our assessment methodology combines document review, field monitoring, stakeholder interviews, and open-source intelligence analysis. All evidence supporting our assessments is preserved on our source evidence archive with immutable timestamps, ensuring that our findings cannot be disputed on evidentiary grounds. Companies subject to assessment receive draft findings and opportunity for response before publication, consistent with our commitment to accuracy and fairness.

Community Relations and Impact

Community impact assessment for Avz Minerals's corridor operations examines the full spectrum of effects on affected populations. Employment creation, local procurement, infrastructure investment, and social programme spending represent potential benefits that our monitoring quantifies and evaluates for genuine community impact versus corporate reputation management. Environmental disruption, displacement risk, livelihood interference, and social disruption represent potential costs that our monitoring documents and advocates to mitigate.

The quality of community engagement — the distinction between meaningful participation and perfunctory consultation — is central to our assessment. Companies that engage communities as partners in decision-making, respond constructively to grievances, and adapt operations based on community feedback receive stronger social performance scores than companies that treat community engagement as a compliance exercise. Our community monitoring networks provide ground-truth data on engagement quality that supplements corporate self-reporting.

Our advocacy promotes Community Benefit Agreements as the standard framework for formalising community-company relationships along the corridor. CBAs recorded on our evidence archive create permanent, publicly verifiable records of commitments that hold companies accountable over the multi-decade timeframes that corridor investment implies.

Corridor Contribution Assessment

Our independent assessment evaluates this company's net contribution to corridor development outcomes. Positive contributions include employment creation, local procurement spending, tax and royalty payments, infrastructure investment, technology transfer, and community development programmes. Negative contributions include environmental degradation, community displacement, labour rights concerns, revenue leakage through transfer pricing or other mechanisms, and governance failures that undermine institutional development.

The balance between positive and negative contributions determines our overall assessment of this company's corridor role. Companies that generate significant economic activity while maintaining strong environmental and social standards receive positive assessments. Companies whose negative impacts outweigh their economic contributions receive adverse assessments. Our assessment methodology is transparent, consistent, and applied equally across all corridor actors regardless of size, nationality, or commercial relationship with our organisation. Independence is non-negotiable; our credibility depends on willingness to document inconvenient truths about any corridor stakeholder.

Corridor Investment & Deal Involvement

• World Bank DRC Rail ($500M)

Key Personnel

Senior leadership and key decision-makers at this organisation are tracked through our actor profiles database. Our monitoring assesses the relationship between leadership decisions and corridor community outcomes, documenting public commitments, strategic actions, and accountability for stated objectives. Personnel changes affecting corridor operations are reported in our weekly intelligence briefs.