Rare Rwanda

Rare Rwanda Mineral Sourcing · Trading · Distributing Kigali

A proud, trusted bridge between Rwanda’s mines and the global markets that depend on them.

Rare Rwanda sources, verifies, and moves critical minerals, including tantalum, tin, tungsten and refined gold, from the heart of the Great Lakes region to buyers across Asia, Europe, and beyond.

Explore Our Minerals Contact Us

Lake Kivu at dawn, with volcanic peaks rising behind terraced Rwandan hillsides.

Minerals

  • A cluster of dark, metallic tantalum-bearing crystals catching the light.

    Tantalum Ta

    Rwanda is the world’s 3rd-largest producer of tantalum — 15% of global supply. Mined as coltan, refined for the electronics inside every phone and laptop on Earth.

  • A specimen of cassiterite, the silver-grey ore from which tin is refined.

    Tin Sn

    Cassiterite from Rwanda’s hills — solder for every circuit board, worldwide. Rwanda ranks among the world’s top tin producers.

  • A rough specimen of wolframite, the principal ore of tungsten.

    Tungsten W

    Africa’s largest tungsten mine is here. Harder than steel, essential to industry — from Rwanda’s wolframite to global supply chains.

  • The textured surface of refined gold.

    Gold Au

    Africa’s newest refining hub. Rwanda’s Kigali refinery processes up to 6 tonnes a month — turning regional gold into export-ready product, right here on the continent.

From Pit to Port

Rare Rwanda Limited was founded to bring transparency, rigour, and long-term relationships to the Kigali–China minerals corridor. Rwanda sits at the centre of one of the world’s most important sources of the 3Ts (tantalum, tin, tungsten) and other critical minerals — all resources essential to electronics, aerospace, and the global energy transition.

We built Rare Rwanda on a simple premise: responsible sourcing and rigorous compliance are not obstacles to trade, they are what make sustainable, long-term trade possible. Every shipment we handle is backed by full due diligence, traceability documentation, and adherence to international standards — from ITSCI (The International Tin Supply Chain Initiative) chain-of-custody protocols to radioactivity compliance testing for export markets. We keep our clients informed every step of the way, from the assay to pre-stuffing treatment of separation, cleaning, homogenisation, weighing, sampling and independent inspection by The Rwandan Mining Board, to local Rwandan tax payment to shipping and insurance.

We are tenacious, patient and committed to a thorough process — from the pit to the port.
Miners with an ore cart in an underground haulage tunnel.
Sealed and tagged steel drums of mineral concentrate prepared for export.
A container terminal at sunrise, with ship-to-shore cranes loading cargo.

Our Services

Mineral samples undergoing inspection, weighing and documentation before international shipment.
  1. 01

    Sourcing & Trading

    Direct sourcing of tantalum, tin, tungsten, from vetted Rwandan mines, and refined gold from The Great Lakes region, with rigorous supplier due diligence.

  2. 02

    Compliance & Due Diligence

    Full regulatory compliance across OECD, Dodd-Frank, EU Conflict Minerals Regulation, and ITSCI frameworks, including radioactivity testing and assay certificate verification for destination-market requirements (for instance, China’s GB 20664-2006 standard).

  3. 03

    Contracts

    Structuring and negotiation of off-take and supply agreements for international buyers, covering pricing mechanisms, delivery terms, escrow arrangements, and volume commitments. Every contract is drafted to reflect the compliance and traceability standards required at destination, giving both sides clear, enforceable terms from the outset.

  4. 04

    Logistics & Export Management

    End-to-end coordination of freight, customs, and escrow arrangements from Kigali to international ports of entry, by air and sea.

  5. 05

    Market Access

    Connecting our customers to single source, Rwanda-based mines, cutting out unnecessary intermediaries while preserving full transparency.

Our Minerals

Mineral specimens representing tantalum, tin, tungsten, gold, cobalt and copper.

Rwanda

  • Ta Tantalum — coltan (columbite-tantalite) sourced from Rwanda’s principal mining regions Details available on request
  • Sn Tin Details available on request
  • W Tungsten Details available on request

Tanzania

  • Au Gold Details available on request
  • Co Cobalt Details available on request
  • Cu Copper Details available on request

Responsible Sourcing

Rare Rwanda is committed to conflict-free, traceable mineral trade. We work within established due-diligence frameworks — including ITSCI and international KYC/AML standards — and hold ourselves to insurance and compliance benchmarks that meet the expectations of the world’s most demanding buyers.

Discuss Compliance Requirements

Illustration of the minerals value chain: mining and haulage, weighing and assay, smelting, trading, refining, shipping and export offices.

Our Team

Five colleagues in protective equipment at the entrance to the Rubirizi 1 tunnel.

At Rare Rwanda, our strength lies in the depth of our relationships and the complementary capabilities of the human capital behind them.

Our team combines on-the-ground relationships in Rwanda with two decades of cross-border deal-making experience between China and the rest of the world, giving our partners — mine operators, exporters, refiners, and international buyers — a single, dependable counterparty they can trust.

Emily de Wolfe Pettit translates complex, multi-jurisdictional requirements into clear, dependable partnerships for buyers, so that every counterparty knows what is expected and can rely on it being delivered.

Michelle Feng brings a top-tier finance and compliance background, ensuring that each transaction is structured, documented and verified to the highest standard.

Together, we pair trusted relationships with rigorous discipline, giving our partners the confidence to trade across borders knowing the details are in capable hands.

Emily de Wolfe Pettit, photographed outdoors in a dark jacket.

Emily de Wolfe Pettit

Rwandan and International Client Relations

Emily de Wolfe Pettit brings two decades of cross-border strategy experience between China and the rest of the world to Rare Rwanda’s international client relationships. As Founder and CEO of Peking Art Associates Limited (PAAL), a Hong Kong-based advisory firm with offices in Beijing, London, and Shanghai, Emily has built and led complex, high-value projects spanning corporate, diplomatic, and institutional clients across multiple continents.

An independent cross-border strategist with first-hand experience guiding international clients into and through the China market, Emily’s work has ranged from national-level diplomatic engagements for embassies in Beijing to major corporate mandates for clients including Rosewood Hotels and Chevron. She has been invited to speak at events including Fidelity’s Shanghai AGM and has advised institutions from the University of Oxford to the Irish State.

At Rare Rwanda, Emily applies this same rigour to international mineral-trade relationships, translating complex, multi-jurisdictional requirements into clear, dependable partnerships for buyers entering the Kigali–China corridor for the first time.

Fluent in English and German, Emily holds a Master’s degree in European Literature from the University of Oxford (Merton College), where she held a full Arts and Humanities Research Board Scholarship, and has a First-Class degree from University College London.

Michelle Feng, photographed in an office interior in a dark suit.

Michelle Feng

Asian Client Relations

Michelle Feng leads Rare Rwanda’s relationships with clients across Asia, drawing on over a decade of experience directing complex cross-border transactions between China and global markets. As Head of Projects at Peking Art Associates, Michelle has managed stakeholder engagement, regulatory due diligence, and supply-chain and logistics coordination for high-value goods moving across multiple jurisdictions.

Michelle combines a top-tier finance background — a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from Fudan University, graduated Summa Cum Laude, with further study at Columbia University and the University of Hong Kong — with hands-on experience in logistics, compliance, vendor management, contracts, Customs coordination, and feasibility analysis for multinational operations. She began her career as a Business Analyst at Bain & Company in Shanghai, conducting market-entry and due-diligence work across sectors.

Fluent in Mandarin and English, with established networks spanning China, Europe, and Africa, Michelle ensures Rare Rwanda’s Asian buyers receive the same standard of diligence, transparency, and responsiveness on every transaction, from initial sourcing through to final delivery.

Why Rwandan Minerals?

Rwandan mining professionals inspecting sealed mineral drums at a processing site in Rwanda’s mountainous landscape.

Rwanda adheres to the OECD due diligence guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals, as such minerals from Rwanda are 100% conflict-free and traceable from mines to international markets.

Rwanda is also one of the most advanced countries in the implementation of the Regional Certification Mechanism. This implies the tracking of the chain of custody of 3T (Tin, Tungsten, Tantalum) minerals.

The Rwanda Mines, Petroleum and Gas Board (RMB) has put in place in its structure the offices in charge of Mineral traceability and certification based on OECD guidelines as well as inspection. These are fully operational.

RMB organises and conducts mine site inspections and produces reports thereof that are validated jointly with iTSCi to increase the credibility of the mineral traceability process. The country has two organisations, namely the ITSCI and RCS Global which offer mineral traceability services.

Our History

A black-and-white archival portrait of a young couple, the man in Allied service uniform.

Our co-founder, Ms Emily de Wolfe Pettit, inherited a passion for the land — both what lies beneath it and nourishing the community upon it — from her respective grandfathers in Australia.

Emily’s paternal grandfather, Peter, was a decorated WWII navigator for the Allies and civil engineer who appraised mines throughout his career.

The two mines Peter worked on throughout his engineering career were Ok (pronounced ‘ock’) Tedi, a copper and gold mine in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, and Bougainville Copper a copper and gold mine on Bougainville Island.

Peter started at Ok Tedi Mine in the late 1960’s when it was owned and was being explored by Kennecott Copper, a huge USA copper miner, before BHP Billiton took over its ownership in the early 1980’s. Peter started working on Bougainville Copper mine from the very beginning of the project in 1969, prior to its operations starting in 1972, and made many trips there over the following eight years. When Peter died in Port Moresby in 1977, he was on assignment to The World Bank as an expert on Papua New Guinea, advising on development in mining.

Ted Simms in the bush, seated beside a felled log and a broad axe.

Emily’s maternal grandfather, William Edward (Ted) Simms, was a true pioneer of Australia, building major roads, timber mills — and communities. Ted’s parents were born in Western Australia and his father, Walter Albert, raised his son in Greenbushes, Western Australia, which was founded as a mining town in 1888. Greenbushes’ two major industries today are mining, producing tantalite concentrates, lithium minerals, tin metal, kaolin; and timber milling. Agriculture, viticulture, tourism and art galleries are also part of Greenbushes’ industry. As of 2022, Greenbushes is the largest lithium mine in the world, and a huge source of tantalum.

In the 1910’s when Ted was a young boy, it was a very different story, and the fortunes of miners were mixed since the price of tin had plummeted in 1893, causing the Greenbushes’ industry to collapse. By 1913, approximately one quarter of Greenbushes’ inhabitants were working in the timber industry, including Ted’s father Walter Albert.

A loaded timber truck crossing a bridge of felled logs, with a group of people riding on the running boards and tray.
Ted offering local Aborigines a lift, Queensland, Australia, 1930’s

Cairns and legacy

In the 1920’s, father and son relocated to Cairns, and by the 1930’s young William Edward had started logging, manually, deep in the jungles of Far North Queensland with his great friend, Jacky Brennan. The two would camp out for long periods of time with only each other (and their herd of bullocks who took the logs out of the jungle) for company. It was over these decades that Ted became acquainted with local Aboriginal tribes indigenous to the area. Today Simms Timber Mills and Veneers is a thriving third generation business, cultivating and logging plantation pine to large governmental contracts, such as the Canadian government.

In 2020 when Ted passed away at the age of 106, he bequeathed life-saving medical equipment that is today being used to serve the indigenous communities in Cape York and the Torres Strait.

Ted instilled in all of his grandchildren, including Emily, a respect for the ways of life of the traditional custodians of the land, and the virtuous circle that can be created for the lives of those who live upon it from those who work to harness its resources.

Corporate Social Responsibility

As co-founders of Rare Rwanda, we work daily at the intersection of Rwanda and China — building trade relationships that depend on genuine cultural understanding, not just commercial exchange.

Rare Rwanda’s language learning-centre initiative brings that philosophy to life for the next generation: teaching the wonder of Chinese calligraphy through ink brush painting so that Rwandan children and adults alike can experience language and culture as something playful, expressive, and memorable, not merely academic.

Drawing on our extensive backgrounds in art advisory, children’s education, and cross-cultural programming, and our on-the-ground presence in both Beijing and Kigali, we’re able to bring real teaching resources, materials, and practitioners to the corridor we already call home.

Illustration of the Rwanda–China language learning centre: a pavilion between rolling hills, flanked by the Chinese and Rwandan flags, with Chinese greetings in the sky.

Contact

Get in touch to discuss sourcing, compliance requirements, or a specific shipment:

Where we are

Kigali · Hong Kong · Beijing · London

Offices

  • Rwanda Office Norssken House,1 KN 78 Street, KiyovuKigaliRwanda
  • Hong Kong Office Units A-C, 25/F., Seabright Plaza,No. 9-23 Shell Street,North Point,Hong Kong SAR
  • China Office Jianguomenwai Diplomatic Compound 6-2-142,1 Xiushui Jie,Beijing 100600P. R. China
  • London Office Dalmeny Court, Number 22,8 Duke Street, St James’s,London SW1Y 6BLUnited Kingdom

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