Richard Robinson, Former Managing Director, Alphamin Bisie Mining

Alphamin operates the worlds highest grade tin mining resource in North Kivu Province, DRC. Richard has an extensive career in extractives including as the Managing Director of Alphamin in the DRC, as the Extractives Industry Technical Advisor to USAID in DRC and as the Social Manager for Freeport - McMoRan in DRC. The former Managing Director of Alphamin, Richard most recently led the operations of a successful mining company in one of the most challenging environments of the world.

Dr. Richard Robinson (Ed.D.) is a security, political and social risk and stakeholder engagement adviser and consultant, working with GardaWorld since 2020 as a Senior Adviser. He recently stepped down from Alphamin as Managing Director where he worked since 2016 and was responsible for all in-country construction and development operations for the Bisie Tin Project of ABM in Walikale Territory of North Kivu Province. The Bisie Tin Project overcame extraordinary security, illegal informal mining, infrastructure, community, corruption and financing risk to build the first industrial tin mine in the DRC in a former war zone which since May 2019 began exporting tin concentrate and will be ramping up to over 10,000 tons of contained tin per year, doubling the DRC’s production and representing about 5% of world supply.

Richard has seventeen years of senior level experience with a particular focus on managing political and social risk as an executive and adviser in DRC mining projects, with USAID, and with Pact, a development NGO for the last 16 years. In 2018 Richard was asked to provide leadership to an emerging forum of international mining companies known as the Mining Promotion Initiative to constructively engage with the Government of the DRC in improving the implementation of the DRC’s 2018 revised Mining Code. From 2011 to 2016 Richard was the focal point at USAID for U.S. Government efforts to reform conflict minerals and to create practical conflict-free validation and certification systems. Richard designed and was a founder of the Public Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade involving the U.S. Department of State and USAID, the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region, end-users and international and national NGO’s to promote responsible mineral supply chains. From 2008 to 2011 Richard was Social Program Manager for Freeport-McMoRan’s $3 billion copper and cobalt mine, Tenke Fungurume Mining, in the former Katanga Province, where he managed social development, community relations and resettlement. From 2003 to 2008, Richard was the country representative for Pact, a USAID implementing partner, which he led in corporate social responsibility partnerships with responsible mining investors, USAID and the World Bank. Prior to that, Richard managed private and public sector MBA and graduate training and consulting programmes in South Africa as a Fulbright post-doctoral fellow (University of Fort Hare) and the USA (University of San Francisco). Richard holds a Doctorate of Education (University of San Francisco) on successful entrepreneurship in central and southern Africa.

Richard was born in the DRC and is a permanent resident of the DRC, and now lives in Knysna, South Africa and has a background in electronics, shoe manufacturing and employment of persons with disabilities.