Biography: Mining

Emery Mukendi Wafwana is the founding and managing partner of Emery Mukendi Wafwana & Associés (DRC) Emery Mukendi Wafwana & Associates, PC (USA), and Cabemery & Partners Ltd (pty) (RSA). His expertise includes commercial agreements (joint ventures, M&A, royalties, options), due diligence with mining rights, environmental and financial risks, evaluation of partnership and funding agreements, and counselling in procedures related to the granting of mining and quarries rights.

Emery is a certified Mining and Quarries Agent (2003), a senior lecturer at William Both University lecturing in Mining Law (2006), and a legal consultant licensed at the New York Supreme Court since 2010. He is considered an authority on mining law in the DRC and has widely published on mining and energy law, including a book on management principles of the mining sector. Emery led the team in charge of drafting the new mining code, the decree related to the establishment of the Mining Registry, and defended the Draft Mining Code before the DRC Parliament. Additionally, he evaluated most of the major mining partnership contracts and other funding agreements including joint venture agreements, concluded between DRC State-owned Mining Company (Gecamines) and third parties on certain mining deposits in Katanga.

Emery has advised on many high profile M&A and exploitation projects in the energy and natural resource sectors, including Freeport Mc-Moran in its US$1 billion exploitation of copper project in the DRC, (the country's largest foreign investment to date), Tellings Golden-Miller in its US$400 million exploitation of cobalt and copper in the Southeast region of the DRC. Emery advised First Quantum Minerals Ltd from the project finance phase to the acquisition of London-based Adastra Minerals' for US$245 million in cash and stock, and the exploitation phase. He also advised foreign companies in the energy sector from the exploration phase to the post-exploitation phase, helping some of these companies prepare their IPOs.

Emery Mukendi Wafwana & Assocés is a full range international law firm with expertise in business law, natural resources, legal evaluation of projects, sale and purchase of equity, M&A, civil law and practice, criminal law, OHADA law, due diligence, litigation and alternative dispute resolution among others. Emery and his partners are pioneers in French-speaking Africa in that they expended their practice beyond Africa. Since their internationalisation, they've been named the 2010 'law firm of the year' for the DRC in 15 categories including mining, energy and oil and gas, by the British magazine Corporate International, and 2011 'law firm of the year' by the same magazine. To date, they are the only international French-speaking law firm from Africa with a physical presence both in the US and in Africa with five offices worldwide, and one of the very few able and well equipped to assist international clients in English, in French-speaking countries of Africa. The firm therefore developed close relationships with local firms of the OHADA region, most of which are French-speaking, to assist them in dealing with English-speaking partners and provide top-notch legal assistance to investors eager to invest in various sectors in French-speaking African countries.

Emery has an LLB in Economic and Social Law from the University of Kinshasa and has practised law since 1995.