THE VERDICT | Who Kept Their Word. Who Did Not. | Volume 23

Assurance on One Side, Allegations on the Other: What Verification Looks Like in Kenya and the DRC

Every week, The Verdict asks one question of two companies: what can be checked? This week the contrast is stark. In Kenya, a company has put its sustainability numbers in front of an independent assurer, year after year. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, 27 residents have gone to court because, they say, they could not get the environmental information they were entitled to see.

Commended: Safaricom PLC (Kenya)

Called out: COMMUS, the Zijin Mining-controlled copper-cobalt operator in Kolwezi (DRC)

The Commendation: Safaricom PLC, Kenya

On Tuesday 27 October 2026, Safaricom launched its 15th Sustainable Business Report at the Michael Joseph Centre in Nairobi, covering April 2025 to March 2026. Fifteen consecutive years of reporting is not a headline in itself. Plenty of companies publish glossy sustainability documents every year. What earns Safaricom this week’s commendation is what sits underneath the document.

1. Independent assurance, with the scope on the page. Selected sustainability indicators, including greenhouse gas emissions data, were independently assured by KPMG Kenya under ISAE 3000 (Revised) at a limited assurance level. The scope, boundary and assurance criteria for each assured indicator are set out in an appendix of the report (Appendix D). A reader can see what was checked and what was not. That is the difference between a number and a verified number.

2. A named, recognised disclosure framework. The report brings together Safaricom’s core IFRS S1 and IFRS S2 disclosures on governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets. Safaricom describes itself as progressively aligning with the standards ahead of mandatory adoption in Kenya.

3. External benchmarking. Safaricom held a place on CDP’s A List for a second consecutive year, according to reporting on the pre-launch media briefing.

4. A willingness to change the measuring stick. The 15th report introduces double materiality, weighing how sustainability issues affect Safaricom as well as how Safaricom affects others. It also replaces the True Value method with the Value Balancing Alliance method for measuring impact. Under the new approach, Safaricom reports that it created KSh 1.24 trillion in value for Kenya in the year, 10 percent more than the year before. Of that, KSh 654 billion came directly from the company’s own business, and the wider network of agents, dealers and partners supported more than 1.4 million jobs, including 70,000 new jobs created during the year.

Why the timing matters

Kenyan public interest entities, including NSE-listed companies, must publish IFRS S1 and S2 disclosures for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2027. Because Safaricom’s financial year runs from April to March, its first mandatory report will be for FY28 (April 2027 to March 2028), which is exactly how the company describes it. The company is preparing early, not scrambling late.

There is a second clock. The global sustainability assurance standard, ISSA 5000, takes effect for periods beginning on or after 15 December 2026, and Kenya’s accountancy body has adopted it. Companies that have already built the habit of assurance will find the transition easier than those that have only just discovered the word.

What we are not saying

This commendation is specific, and it has limits. We flag them because credible accountability applies the same lens to those we praise.

• Limited assurance is not reasonable assurance. Limited assurance is closer to a review than an audit. It gives stakeholders a lower level of confidence than reasonable assurance, and it covers selected indicators rather than the whole report.
• Alignment is progressive, not complete. Safaricom itself says it is progressively aligning with IFRS S1 and S2. We are commending the trajectory and the discipline, not declaring full compliance.
• The headline value figure is Safaricom’s own. We found no evidence that the KSh 1.24 trillion figure, or the new Value Balancing Alliance calculation behind it, was independently assured. Because the method has changed, comparison with earlier years’ figures needs care. The full report is where the calculation should be tested.
• Reported emissions are rising. In the prior year (FY25), Safaricom’s reported total emissions increased to 61,791 tCO2e. Assurance tells us the figure is reliable. It does not tell us the direction is right.

For readers asking what these caveats add up to: Safaricom is not perfect. It is verifiable, and in this field that is rarer and more valuable than perfect.

The Call-Out: COMMUS, Kolwezi, DRC

On 3 November 2026, 27 residents of Kolwezi, including eight children, brought a case before the Commercial Court of Kolwezi against COMMUS (Compagnie Minière de Musonoie Global). They allege air, water and soil contamination linked to the company’s copper and cobalt mining operations. They are seeking about $6.3 million in compensation and environmental restoration.

COMMUS is 67% owned by China’s Zijin Mining Group. Gécamines, the Congolese state mining company, holds 28%, and the Congolese government holds 5%. Kolwezi sits at the heart of the supply chain for the cobalt that goes into batteries worldwide, which is why a local court case carries international weight.

What the residents allege

The claimants, supported by the UK-based watchdog RAID and the Congolese organisation AFREWATCH, accuse the company of polluting and diverting a local stream. They say they were given no access to its environmental impact study, and that Congolese mining law requires such documents to be publicly available. They also say independent scientific evidence now supports their concerns.

They are not suing the company alone. The claimants ask the court to hold COMMUS, the Congolese state, and its environmental agency (ACE) jointly responsible for the harm.

The law they are invoking

The case relies on the 2018 Mining Code. Under its provisions, a mining-right holder is liable for pollution damage without proof of fault, unless it can show the damage resulted from causes unrelated to its operations. In practical terms, the burden may fall on the company to prove it did not cause the harm, rather than on 27 residents to prove it did. Observers describe the case as a first major test of whether the strengthened code delivers real accountability.

What the company says

Fairness requires the company’s position. COMMUS has said its operations comply with Congolese environmental regulations and that pollution around Kolwezi has several causes, including natural geology, historical mining and other industrial activity. It points to its ISO 14001 (environmental management) and ISO 45001 (occupational health and safety) certifications, and to compliance with its wastewater permit for the Musonoi River. Zijin Mining has said it takes its responsibilities toward local communities and the environment seriously.

Where the case stands

The 3 November hearing was procedural. The court has not examined the pollution allegations on their merits and has made no ruling on liability. No date for the next hearing had been published at the time of writing. Everything described above as harm remains an allegation.

The institutional failure we are calling out

This call-out is not a verdict on guilt. That is for the court. It is a verdict on a pattern, and the pattern has three parts.

First, certificates are not consent. ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 certify that a management system exists. They do not tell a mother of eight whether the stream behind her house is safe. When a company answers community complaints primarily with certifications and permits, it is answering a question nobody asked. The question residents are asking is: show us the evidence about our water, air and soil.

Second, disclosure that has to be litigated is not disclosure. If, as the claimants say, an impact study that the law makes public could not be obtained by the people living beside the mine, then the first accountability failure happened before any lawsuit was filed. Communities should not have to sue to read a document written about their own land.

Third, there is a precedent of judgments that did not become justice. According to a Congolese lawyer cited in reporting on the case, residents in an earlier DRC mining pollution dispute were found to have been harmed by the companies in an initial ruling, yet never received compensation. A ruling on paper is not remediation on the ground. Whatever the Kolwezi court decides, the measure of success will be whether anything changes at the water’s edge.

The Verdict

Put the two companies side by side and the lesson is plain. Safaricom’s strongest claim is not that it is good. It is that it can be checked: a named assurer, a defined scope, a published framework, a method it is willing to change in public. COMMUS’s problem, on the evidence so far, is the opposite. The questions about its operations are being answered in a courtroom because they could not be answered through disclosure.

Verification is not a communications exercise. It is the condition that makes every other claim believable. Companies that want trust in fragile environments should treat independent checking as the starting point of their sustainability work, not the garnish.

Our questions for COMMUS and Zijin Mining:

1. Will you publish the environmental impact study and the independent monitoring data for the Musonoi River and surrounding neighbourhoods?
2. What independent, third-party testing of water, air and soil near the Kolwezi communities has been done, by whom, and with what results?
3. What is your plan for remediation and compensation if the court finds liability?

Our questions for Safaricom:

1. When will assurance extend from selected indicators to the full IFRS S1/S2 disclosures, and will it move toward reasonable assurance?
2. Will the Value Balancing Alliance calculation behind the KSh 1.24 trillion figure be independently reviewed and the methodology published in full?
3. What is the plan to bend the emissions curve, not just report it accurately?

Commended: Safaricom PLC, for sustained, assured, framework-based reporting.

Called out: COMMUS and Zijin Mining, for a gap between certified systems and communities’ access to the evidence, pending the court’s findings.