HOIMA — A pilot scheme to track cobalt from mine site to port of export using a permissioned digital ledger has begun operations along the Albertine corridor, regulators confirmed this week. The scheme, jointly designed by the Directorate of Geological Survey and Mines and a Geneva-based standards body, will run for an initial twelve months and cover three production sites and two licensed aggregators.
Each consignment entering the system is tagged at the mine gate, weighed and assayed under independent supervision, and assigned a unique identifier that travels with the material through every subsequent handover. Buyers downstream — including, the regulator says, two European battery manufacturers that have already signalled their participation — can verify the chain of custody before payment is released.
The timing is not accidental. The European Union’s Battery Regulation, fully in force from August, requires importers of cobalt, lithium, nickel and natural graphite to demonstrate due diligence on the origin of the material in line with OECD guidance. Uganda’s cobalt output is modest by global standards — under two thousand tonnes a year, most of it a by-product of copper processing — but its position next door to one of the world’s largest producers makes the question of provenance an unusually sensitive one.
“If we want a premium price, we have to be able to prove what we are selling,” said the Director of the Mines Inspectorate, Geoffrey Kamese. “A ledger does not, on its own, prevent fraud. But it raises the cost of fraud, and it gives a buyer something defensible to put in front of their own regulator.”
Civil society groups have given the pilot a guarded welcome. The Africa Centre for Energy and Mineral Policy, in a statement on Wednesday, said the scheme was “a meaningful step” but warned that technical solutions could not substitute for inspection capacity on the ground. “A tag is only as honest as the person who attaches it,” the statement read.
The Directorate says it will publish quarterly audit reports on the pilot, including the number of consignments processed, any discrepancies identified, and the resolution of those discrepancies. A decision on whether to extend the scheme to gold — a far larger and far more politically charged commodity — will be taken at the end of the trial period.
