LUBUMBASHI: When 2016 rang in, Divin Lwamba, a street vendor with nine mouths to feed, says he was making up to 300 dollars a day selling samosas in Lubumbashi’s main market. With meat and vegetable samosas flying off his cart almost faster than they were made, Lwamba says he could make enough cash in a single day to stock up on food for a month. But that was before the knock-on effect of the plunge in world copper and cobalt prices hit Lubumbashi, capital of the mineral-rich province once known as Katanga where DR Congo’s lucrative mines are located. “Since the price of copper tumbled, what I now earn each day only just covers our daily food expenses,” says Lwamba, one of the tens of thousands hit by the crisis in the copperbelt of the Democratic Republic of Congo. “Today, unless I dig into my savings I can’t live like I used to,” he says, adding that since February he has struggled to make a third of what he used to earn. Ranked in 2014 as the world’s fifth biggest producer of copper and top in cobalt, the DR Congo saw strong economic growth powered by its mining industry from 2010 to 2014. But last year growth slowed sharply due to the global slump in commodity prices triggered by an economic slowdown in China. The government in Kinshasa now expects growth this year to slow to 6.6 percent. In a ripple effect, the problems currently faced by the mining companies in the vast nation’s southeast region are also harming economic activity in Lubumbashi, the country’s second city. The Chamber of Mines there estimates that copper production dropped by 11.6 percent in the first quarter of this year compared with 2015, while cobalt mining fell by 16.3 percent. Several mining firms have halted work, in some cases permanently. And there is no sign of a rebound. While other commodities are experiencing their best start since 2008, Bloomberg reports that copper ranks as the worst of the major metals in its commodity index. Copper prices have swung over the past year from 195 to 267 dollars per pound. The Chamber of Mines estimates that mining companies have cut 3,000 jobs, while subcontractors have laid off more than 10,000 workers. But such statistics give only limited insight into the full extent of the crisis in a country where most of the population lives in severe poverty. Analysts say one job lost in mining or linked to subcontractors affects a minimum of 10 other people. Dieudonne Kisimba Selemani, administrator of Congo Steel Mills, meanwhile said he believed that each job in the formal mining sector provides for the needs of 20 people, because of the strong tradition of family support in DR Congo. His company, which provides reinforced steel for mining facilities, has been forced to lay off a third of its employees in the past few months and now has a workforce of no more than 200. Many former clients have shut up shop and “no rush took place” when Congo Steel Mills tried to drum up more business by slashing 15 percent off prices, Kisimba said. Nowadays the industrial district of Lubumbashi is strikingly quiet, while across the street from the steel firm, the land formerly occupied by Congo Wise Mining is vacant. “The Chinese (who ran the firm) left in February. Everybody was sacked,” a watchman said. The watchman showed AFP an open-cast quarry a few hundred metres distant, where the dismissed workers joined others scrabbling to collect loads of gravel for sale to construction firms. At the market, Lwamba’s colleagues also say business has slowed sharply. Therese Nkolo says she has divided her prices by three since February but “rarely” sells anything and is struggling to feed her two children and pay her fares. “At the end of the day, I now accept any price offered on condition that nothing goes unsold,” admits Berthe Kalanga from behind two tubs of fresh fish.