The EU and US-backed Lobito Corridor railway for critical mineral transport risks driving evictions in a mining region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and leaving vulnerable people open to abuse
The Bel Air neighbourhood of Kolwezi city, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), is cut through by an old railway. The line enters the neighbourhood along a ridge barely wider than the rails, before disappearing from sight between closely packed houses and stalls.
For years, the railway was abandoned. It is scattered with debris, used mostly by motorbikes and pedestrians. Children sit on the sleepers. Families cross the rails without checking for trains.
But from 2024, occasional transports have started edging slowly along the tracks, including bright blue wagons branded Lobito Atlantic Railway (LAR). It’s the first sign of how this ramshackle neighbourhood is set to be transformed.
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The tracks form part of the Lobito Corridor, a planned multi-billion-dollar trade corridor that centres around rehabilitating nearly 2,000 kilometres of colonial-era railway. The line is primarily intended to transport minerals from the rich copper and cobalt mines of southern DRC, and potentially northern Zambia, to the Angolan port of Lobito.
The EU and the US have pledged billions in financing to projects linked to the Lobito Corridor, seeing it as a means to increase Western access to the DRC’s minerals.
What is the Lobito Corridor?
LAR – a consortium of international companies that includes commodity trader Trafigura and Portuguese engineering group Mota-Engil – holds a 30-year concession to upgrade and modernise the railway line in Angola. While the Lobito Corridor’s business partners in the DRC are not yet confirmed, LAR is currently undertaking emergency works on the line.
The Lobito Corridor’s proponents claim that it is much more than an extractive project. It could also drive investments in energy infrastructure, enable mineral processing facilities that will allow the DRC to gain more value from its natural resources, and provide new transport and agricultural development opportunities.
But the modernised railway could cut a swathe through vulnerable communities like Bel Air. These populaces have so far seen few of the riches from the mining boom in the southern DRC, where cobalt production has increased by 600% in the last three decades.
Bel Air lacks drinking water and many of its inhabitants survive by digging for minerals by hand, including from the tailings of foreign-owned industrial mines.
Now, a new Global Witness investigation shows that residents of Bel Air and other low-income neighbourhoods of Kolwezi will likely be the first victims of evictions caused by the railway rehabilitation.
The Lobito Corridor will run from Dilolo, a town on the Angolan border, through the town of Kolwezi in the mineral-rich Lualaba province in the DRC, and on to Zambia’s Copperbelt.We created a map of the railway line and marked the areas on either side of the tracks that are likely to be cleared during the line’s rehabilitation. Using satellite imagery, we identified buildings that are in the marked area, and ranked them based on our level of certainty that they were used as houses or for income-generating purposes.Our analysis identified between 700 and 1,200 buildings at risk, depending on the size of the area that might be cleared. Using population density data for the region, we estimated that this could affect approximately 3,500 to 6,500 people who live in, or rely on, the area surrounding the railway.
As well as analysing satellite imagery, we conducted fieldwork in Kolwezi to hear the voices of dozens of people, including those on the project’s frontline, whose hopes for new opportunities from the Lobito Corridor were tempered by exhaustion at the city’s escalating displacement crisis.
Global Witness also commissioned analysis of legal frameworks related to forced evictions and expropriation, finding numerous ambiguities that could leave Kolwezi’s most vulnerable open to abuse.
A European due diligence law could become a powerful instrument for communities along the Lobito Corridor to defend their rights, including the prohibition of forced evictions. Yet the recently-adopted European directive, known as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), now finds itself caught in a fierce backlash driven by a deregulation campaign across the EU and heavy lobbying from major corporations and countries like the US.
The DRC has been plundered for its resources since colonial times to the profit of international investors and local elites – and at the cost of the country’s most vulnerable. Ensuring just treatment of those displaced by the Lobito Corridor will be a key test for Western investors who claim the project represents a more inclusive model of resource extraction.
Eviction fatigue
The house next to Marie’s* was demolished in July to clear the way for a new road bridge. A pile of grey rubble now abuts the fence surrounding Marie’s front yard – a patch of reddish dust where the elderly widow sits flanked by her daughters. Marie does not know where her former neighbours have gone.
“There was a pharmacy there. There were his children. There was himself and his wife and grandchildren,” Marie said. “But today, they are all homeless.”
Marie managed to keep her own home when her children grouped together to oppose the government agents who had come to evict them. But her neighbours’ plight foreshadows what could soon happen to her.
According to Global Witness’s analysis, Marie’s plot could be at risk of eviction from the Lobito Corridor railway, whose tracks are visible a short distance from her front fence.
Although the Lobito Corridor is primarily designed to facilitate mineral exports, it is not covered by the DRC’s Mining Code, which requires mining companies to provide displaced people with a higher standard of living elsewhere.
Instead, according to Papy Ilunga, an expert involved in the EU’s pre-feasibility study for the Lobito Corridor, the Law of Expropriation for Public Utility will apply. This law requires only that those displaced be paid compensation.
Even this requirement is sometimes ignored, including around the corner from Marie, where several residents claimed to have been left without payment when the state used the expropriation law to clear the way for a new road.
Evictions are a problem even when there’s compensation, because finding an affordable home in Kolwezi is not easy. The city’s population is booming with people seeking jobs in the mining sector. Simultaneously, industrial mines expand ever outwards, swallowing whole neighbourhoods in vast red pits, driving frequent evictions and spiraling land prices.
If I’m evicted, surely my house will be destroyed. Where will that leave me? In an unfamiliar place, where basic services are not available. What will become of me?
Marie, Kolwezi resident
For this reason, international human rights law provides clear safeguards in the case of evictions and expropriation, such as genuine consultation and reasonable notice.
A 2023 study by Amnesty International found that displaced people who were compensated rather than resettled were often forced to move to peripheral areas that lacked running water, schools and other amenities, causing their living standards to plummet.
“If I’m evicted, surely my house will be destroyed. Where will that leave me?” Marie asks. “In an unfamiliar place, where basic services are not available. What will become of me?”
While the DRC’s 2002 Mining Code (amended in 2018) offers more protections than the 1977 Expropriation Law, recent history shows that the Code is often improperly enforced. This has left Kolwezi’s population beset by constant evictions.
Jean, who owns several properties in Kolwezi, including one near the rails, tells us that he has already lost three houses to mine expansion, and is battling the loss of a fourth.
“It is wrong to talk about displacement. We must talk of illegal, forced sales,” he insists. “The money is insufficient and no law is respected.” During recent evictions at a mine in central Kolwezi, he says officials “came to demolish the houses while people were still living there.”
Jean is more fortunate than many. He is a landlord who had rented these properties to tenants rather than living in them himself. But implicit in his story is the experience of many of Kolwezi’s vulnerable families – the tenants who receive no compensation and must move with nothing.
The buffer zone
This desperation for housing has pushed Kolwezi’s most vulnerable residents towards marginal pieces of land – including a buffer zone on either side of the railway line where construction is forbidden, at least on paper.
But this construction ban has not been regularly enforced since the colonial-era railway fell out of use in the 1980s. Over that time, the strip has filled with shacks and small shops, which local people depend on for their livelihoods. While some people living or working there are aware of the restricted zone, others claim to have no knowledge that the land is off limits.
One such man is Pierre, who works as a moto taxi driver in Kolwezi, striving to earn enough to send his seven children to school. He lives in a squat brick house by the rails, which he is extending by hand to accommodate his family.
We speak to him in his yard, as a toddler tinkers with Pierre’s motorbike and older children play around us.
If you enforce this [buffer zone] rule, you are destroying people’s lives
Pierre, Kolwezi resident
Pierre insists that the house is old, and no official has ever told him not to build too close to the rails. He does not know where he would take his children if he were evicted.
“If you enforce this [buffer zone] rule, you are destroying people’s lives,” he says.
Ilunga, the expert involved in the EU’s pre-feasibility study, explains to us that the buffer zone is necessary to leave space for supporting infrastructure and “to keep the population safe.”
Dangers include train derailments, a risk heightened by the current dilapidated state of the tracks. Local people have sent us two videos of derailments, including one of an LAR train, the distinctive blue wagons lying in the dust as crowds gather.
However, the size of the buffer zone is disputed. In an interview with Global Witness, LAR says that the company only requires a 10m buffer zone either side of the rails for the works it is currently undertaking. For the full rehabilitation, Ilunga cites Congolese legislation stating that the zone is 20m.
Authorities that we interviewed in Kolwezi – including the Ministry for Land Affairs, the national rail company and community leaders – insist that a 25m zone will be applied.
Our satellite analysis found that this last 5m difference would almost double the number of people facing eviction.
Legal confusion and controversy
The legal status of people like Marie and Pierre who may be displaced by the Lobito Corridor is contested. In an interview with Global Witness, Jean-Pierre Kalenga, Kolwezi’s Minister for Land Affairs who administers the displacement process, dismisses people with houses in the restricted zone as “illegals.”
He insists they are living on state land without authorisation and will be evicted with no compensation, even if their house is only partially within the zone. The Ministry is yet to respond to requests by Global Witness for precise data on displacement in Kolwezi.
“It’s the mines that provide the country’s wealth,” Kalenga says during our interview. He argues that facilitating this sector is necessary to bring economic benefits to the DRC, despite the cost to some individuals. “We don’t manage with our hearts; we manage with our heads,” he quips.
He also questions the intentions of those building in the buffer zone, claiming that some “opportunists” do so deliberately to claim compensation for future eviction.
You can’t say they are “illegal.” No one has prevented them from building. They’ve been left to live there for 10, 20, 30 years
Donat Kambola, president of IBGDH
While this may be true in some cases, Donat Kambola, president of the local non-profit Initiative pour la Bonne Gouvernance et les Droits Humains (IBGDH), tells us that this characterisation does not fit most people living in the zone.
“You can’t say they are ‘illegal,”‘ he says. “No one has prevented them from building. They’ve been left to live there for 10, 20, 30 years.”
Emmanuel, a community leader in Bel Air, tells us that those living along the rails bought plot titles many years ago from neighbourhood leaders known as chefs de quartier, who appear to have sold the titles without government authority or oversight.
He explains that the question of the buffer zone came up only recently when, after years of abandonment, mining companies started sending experimental mineral transports down the old railway line.
“When [the chiefs] sold this section, there wasn’t this 25m measure [known publicly],” he said. “Today there are people [living] three metres, five metres, seven metres from the rails.”
A complex history
Congolese state agencies have also created legal ambiguities along the corridor. In several areas of Kolwezi, people with houses overlapping the buffer zone tell us that they bought the titles from agents of the DRC’s national railway company, Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer du Congo (SNCC).
In theory, the SNCC maintains the DRC’s railways and collect tariffs and transport fees from foreign operators. However, it is notoriously inefficient and burdened with debt, which has left it periodically unable to pay its workers’ salaries or pensions.
This poses numerous challenges to the Lobito Corridor developers who must work with the agency, including issues related to land ownership.
Throughout Kolwezi, large areas of land along the rails once belonged to the SNCC. In the early 2010s, the company decided to compensate its unpaid workers by giving them plots from these tracts. Many of the workers who received these plots then sold the land on to private individuals.
The validity of the titles is controversial, with some officials, including Minister Kalenga, arguing that the SNCC had no right to transfer the plots.
In an interview with Global Witness, local SNCC officials insist that the former SNCC land titles are valid. They maintain that they all lie outside the 25m buffer zone. However, this was disputed by several people we spoke to who bought former SNCC plots.
For this Lobito project, there are pros and cons, but we see the downside because we are exposed
Justin, Kolwezi resident
One such person is Dieudonné, who is building a small business on a plot he bought from an SNCC agent. Despite keeping a folder of papers documenting his title, Dieudonné has had to go to court to assert his right to the land, and part of the plot has already been expropriated to build electricity pylons.
Dieudonné is aware of the buffer zone and has tried to keep his construction more than 25m from the rails. But the ambiguities of his legal situation have left him and his workers fearful about what the Lobito Corridor could mean for them.
“We have created jobs here. There are people who need to earn a living,” says Justin, who works with Dieudonné as an assistant. “For this Lobito project, there are pros and cons, but we see the downside because we are exposed.”
He explains that, although it is unclear whether their buildings are at risk, they feel intimidated by the constant evictions in Kolwezi, which are usually conducted by soldiers with little opportunity for residents to object.
“The pros [of the Lobito Corridor] may be at the state level, and it will benefit a group of certain people,” he says, referring to political elites and foreign investors.
“For us, we build something with what we have, then they come and take the things we depend on.”
According to Leonard Zama, director of local NGO Initiative pour la Protection des Droits de l’Homme et la Réinsertion Sociale (IPDHOR), who supported Global Witness with this research, greater transparency will be key to addressing these worries about the Lobito Corridor.
“Awareness workshops must be organised so that the project is embraced by local communities,” he says. Currently, he continues, the project appears “more political than developmental, as the affected communities are not being informed.”
International investment, state enforcement
This confusing legal and social panorama makes Kolwezi a challenging environment for international investors.
An EU official working on the project tells Global Witness that resettlement will be looked at in detail during feasibility studies likely carried out in 2026, and during implementation.
“E&S [environmental and social] aspects will be looked at very seriously and it is very good that we have the EIB [European Investment Bank] on our side in this project, given their high E&S standards.”
If we apply the [Congolese national] law, they will be left with nothing. But if we apply international standards, these people will be entitled to benefit
Papy Ilunga, environmental expert
Ilunga, the environmental expert involved in the pre-feasibility study, recognises that strong international oversight will be key to protecting the wellbeing of those displaced.
“If we apply the [Congolese national] law, they will be left with nothing,” he says. “But if we apply international standards … these people will be entitled to benefit.”
Legal frameworks on displacement in the DRC
While this tension between national and international law heightens the risks for people in the buffer zone, a new EU law could provide another avenue to defend their rights by holding the companies involved directly responsible – or at least convincing them to improve their practices regarding evictions.
In 2024, the EU adopted a new human rights directive known as the CSDDD, which companies will have to comply with from 2028. The directive gives civil society new legal tools that compel companies with significant business activity in the EU to mitigate human rights and environmental risks linked to their operations, business partners and value chains.
What is the CSDDD?
The EU official who spoke to Global Witness suggests several possibilities for how the rehabilitation could be carried out, with one option being a full concession to the private company that would design, rehabilitate, operate and maintain the railway line.
“The detailed studies will look further into this,” he says. “Another option could be the government taking charge of the physical rehabilitation themselves and have private operators running trains on the line. There will be more clarity on this during the course of 2026.”
However, given their concession to the Lobito Corridor railway in Angola, and their role in the works currently underway on the track in the DRC, LAR could be a strong contender. Both Trafigura and Mota-Engil, the major partners in the LAR consortium, meet the thresholds agreed in 2024 for compliance with the CSDDD.
According to our legal analysis, the CSDDD as agreed in 2024 protects against forced evictions even for people without full property rights. This means that no matter the legal status of the plots along the rails, any in-scope company undertaking the rehabilitation would also have legal obligations to ensure that evictions from the buffer zone are conducted in line with international human rights law.
But in February 2025, the European Commission introduced a revision process for the CSDDD known as the “Omnibus” amendment. This risks raising the thresholds for companies in scope of the law and removing key tenets, such as civil liability in EU courts. The law is expected to be renegotiated by the end of 2025.
Compounding the crisis
Beside any direct evictions, the Lobito Corridor is concerning for those on its frontline because it could worsen Kolwezi’s existing displacement crisis.
By lowering transport costs for mining companies, the project could make it viable to mine new reserves and expand existing mines, increasing pressures on land.
The CSDDD could provide a crucial avenue for accountability around mines linked to the Corridor, depending on the contracts between these mines and EU-linked companies, including those at the heart of the Lobito Corridor project.
Trafigura, beside being a key partner in the LAR, is a commodity trader with supply agreements and major investments in Congolese mines, such as the Mutoshi mine currently owned by Chemaf Resources.
Mutoshi was identified in Amnesty International’s 2023 report as the site of violent evictions with inadequate compensation in 2015 and 2016, a few years before Trafigura started financing the project.
Once the CSDDD takes effect, providing that Trafigura remains in scope, mines in which it holds comparable investments could be considered part of its upstream business partners, requiring the company to respond to concerns related to their human rights practices.
Another mine that has faced controversy over displacement linked to recent expansion plans is the Kamoa-Kakula copper mine southwest of Kolwezi.
Kamoa-Kakula is a confirmed anchor partner in the Lobito Corridor, having signed a commitment with LAR to transport its minerals on the upgraded rail infrastructure. It also has a formal agreement to supply Trafigura with copper from a new smelter on the Kamoa-Kakula site.
According to the legal analysis commissioned by Global Witness, Kamoa-Kakula’s prior commitment to transport its minerals on the Lobito railway could also classify it as an upstream business partner of the LAR, meaning that both Trafigura and Mota-Engil would have obligations under CSDDD to conduct due diligence on its activities.
When we visited Kolwezi in August 2025, Kamoa-Kakula had just cancelled its plan to relocate 10 villages, as the compensation required under the DRC Mining Code far exceeded its initial estimates.
But before this cancellation, according to researchers at civil society organisation Afrewatch, the process was conducted without the consultation mechanisms required by the Mining Code, in violation of the company’s own displacement policy.
The villagers had also been blocked from cultivating their fields in the affected area for over a year while negotiations were ongoing, leaving many struggling to feed their families.
Hopes and fears
Despite the risks, the international backers of the Lobito Corridor are adamant that this project will boost local economies and bring genuine benefit to the people of the DRC.
Even those on the railway’s frontline see potential benefits alongside the risks. In particular, many of the people we interviewed wondered whether the railway would be used for passenger transport and agricultural goods, as well as minerals.
This could improve food security in Kolwezi, create hubs of small-scale commerce along the line, and promote the development of much-needed public infrastructure.
In Bel Air, where the railway cuts so directly through residents’ lives, locals yearn for even the most modest public investment.
Chantal lives in Bel Air with her children and elderly mother. The wall of her front yard is just metres from the tracks. Unlike many of her neighbours, they have heard of the buffer zone and carefully built their little house at the far end of the plot, where they hope they will be safe.
A bank of earth planted with flowers marks the line she believes to be the edge of the zone, in line with a pylon she was told to use as a reference, just visible over the rooftops.
Chantal has never heard of the Lobito Corridor but is philosophical about increasing transports along the line. When asked what recommendations she would give to the project developers, she said she would like a road into her neighbourhood, which is now only accessible by 4×4 vehicles over a rutted dirt embankment. She hopes this would improve security in this crime-afflicted area, allowing police to enter fast enough to respond to emergencies.
Amid so many hopes and fears, opinions of Congolese civil society on the Lobito Corridor are mixed. While public information on the project remains limited, many are skeptical about the priorities behind the rhetoric.
“The Lobito Corridor could improve food security and facilitate the movement of people and goods. But under current plans, we are far from that.” Jean-Pierre Okenda, director of the Congolese NGO Sentinelle, tells Global Witness. “The Corridor must be an integrated project with investment in infrastructure like electricity and agriculture for the real benefit of the local population.”
*Names have been changed in this article to protect individuals’ anonymity
Global Witness produced this report in collaboration with Initiative pour la Protection des Droits de l’Homme et la Réinsertion Sociale (IPDHOR), Sentinelle and Centre for Environment Justice and Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Zambia
Download the full report
Policy recommendations
CSDDD Policy recommendations
1. Scope of companies covered
- Retain the current scope of the CSDDD by upholding thresholds of 1,000 employees and €450 million global turnover for EU companies, and €450 million EU turnover for non-EU companies.
- Expand coverage to additional companies as part of a future review of the Directive.
- Avoid a fully harmonised approach that would restrict EU Member States from adopting more ambitious due diligence requirements.
2. Value chain coverage
- Ensure due diligence obligations follow a risk-based approach, grounded in the principles of severity and likelihood of adverse impacts.
- Apply this approach to the entire value chain, recognising that many significant risks do not arise with direct suppliers but further down the value chain.
- Avoid imposing any cap or limit on the retention of information sourced from SMEs, ensuring that robust due diligence processes remain feasible.
3. Access to justice and civil liability
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- Introduce a harmonised EU civil liability framework, incorporating an overriding mandatory principle enabling application of the law of the Member State where proceedings take place.
- If a harmonised EU-wide civil liability regime is not included in the final Directive, individual Member States should establish such a regime including an overriding mandatory principle provision within their national legislation to strengthen the Directive’s enforcement.
- Member States shall reintroduce an adequate minimum limitation period for victims to file claims.
- Member States shall enable representative legal actions by NGOs and trade unions, strengthening access to remedy for affected stakeholders.
4. Stakeholder engagement
- Adopt an inclusive and comprehensive definition of stakeholders and rightsholders to ensure meaningful engagement in all due diligence steps.
- Establish strong safeguards to protect the anonymity, security, and physical safety of stakeholders and rightsholders, particularly in contexts where participation could expose them to reprisals.
- Allow civil society organisations to participate in stakeholder engagement, especially in situations where directly affected rightsholders cannot safely or effectively participate.
5. Guidelines by European Commission on risks of involuntary displacement
- Instruct the European Commission to issue concise guidance on due diligence in situations involving risks of involuntary displacement, prioritising avoidance of displacement, requiring FPIC for Indigenous Peoples, and aligning with core international standards on fair compensation, livelihood restoration, protection of vulnerable groups, and accessible grievance mechanisms.
6. Climate transition plans
- Ensure that companies within the scope continue to be obliged to adopt and implement climate transition plans that are aligned with the EU’s climate neutrality goal for 2050, the Paris Agreement, and the 1.5°C pathway.
- Require implementation to commence without delay, avoiding provisions that enable deferral or postponement.
Broader policy recommendations
For the EU and other foreign investors:
1. Mandatory meaningful consultation with affected communities
Oblige project partners to implement timely and meaningful consultations in local languages, time to negotiate, and documented outcomes. Provide independent legal aid to residents during consultations to level bargaining power.
2. Independent grievance mechanism and monitoring
Finance of the project must require an accessible, well-publicised, independently administered grievance mechanism with the power to halt works and binding remedies. It should require independent third-party monitoring with public reporting and direct access to financiers. Lender and investor reputational risk mitigation should be linked to timely remedies.
3. Cumulative and induced-development impact assessments
Require an independent Cumulative Impact Assessment that looks beyond the railway footprint, as well as a public geospatial mapping of the railway buffer zone with household-level footprints, registration of occupants, and independent verification of claims. There should be an associated mitigation plan and resettlement plan with zoning, moratoria, and community protection measures.
4. Community benefits and local value-addition quotas
Require concrete benefit-sharing: targets for local jobs (skilled and unskilled), procurement quotas, local supplier development, and a community development fund financed by a fixed percentage of project revenues. Condition tax incentives or sovereign guarantees on enforceable local value-addition commitments (e.g., downstream processing facilities in the DRC).
5. Use grant finance and technical assistance to de-risk social outcomes
Allocate a portion of Global Gateway / EIB financing to non-reimbursable social measures (water, sanitation, schools, health, legal aid, land titling), not just capital works. Make technical assistance conditional on collaborative planning with communities and local civil society.
6. Transparency, publication and parliamentary oversight
Require public disclosure of environmental/social studies, feasibility studies, concession terms, compensation budgets and implementation timelines (redactions only for narrowly defined commercial confidentiality).
For the DRC:
1. Moratorium on evictions in the buffer until safeguards are in place
Ensure no evictions or demolition in the railway buffer zone takes place until: (a) independent mapping and registration are complete, (b) an agreed remedial action plan is in place, and (c) an independent monitoring mechanism is active. This prevents irreversible harm and demolition while people are still living there.
2. Apply the DRC Mining Code’s resettlement standard to Corridor-related displacement
Require that displacement of community members related to corridor infrastructure be treated like mining-related displacement: provide equivalent housing or land, full livelihood restoration, and services. Any displacement process should be carried out in line with international standards, notably the IFC performance standard 5 on Land Acquisition and Involuntary Resettlement.
3. Clarify and regularise land titles, resolve SNCC legacy transfers
Commission an audit of SNCC land transfers (including 2012 compensation plots) and establish a fast-track legal mechanism to regularise legitimate occupants’ titles or grant long-term use rights where transfers were irregular. Publish results and create a predictable registry used for compensation eligibility.
4. Mandate community consultation and participatory planning for all large infrastructure projects
Ensure consultation practices in national expropriation and infrastructure law takes place for projects with social impacts. Require consultations documented in minutes, independent legal representation for affected communities, or representation by an expert NGO, and a cooling-off period prior to any physical works.
5. Strengthen local grievance, legal recourse and policing reforms
Ensure local grievance offices are funded, independent and able to refer cases to courts. Provide adequate training for magistrates to rule fairly on disputes.
6. Transparency, data publication and civil-society partnership
Publish all displacement figures, environmental and impact studies, compensation budgets, and project timelines. Fund and cooperate with local CSOs to run awareness workshops, and include civil society on monitoring boards. This reduces fear and counters narratives of secrecy or opportunism.