Q&A with John Lombela, Founder of Axalio"The DRC does not have a resource problem. It has a proof problem."

Q: After 17 years in technology and investment banking, what personal conviction drove you to leave traditional finance and build a platform for the DRC's mining sector?

A: My experience in investment banking taught me that capital is not decided on potential, but on proof. A credit committee will systematically finance a mediocre asset with a complete file before considering an excellent asset with an incomplete file. Looking at my own country, I saw the opposite. We possess extraordinary geology, but below a few industrial assets, there is almost nothing a credit committee can assess. The system is dysfunctional, and the primary failure is one of information.

Axalio is not a technology story, nor a marketplace in the traditional sense. We started in 2019 with the concept of a digital bank, but we quickly traced back to identify the real obstacle: the fundamental impossibility of proving where a specific lot came from, through whose hands it passed, and under which license it was produced. We maintain a signed and unalterable registry because an auditor needs an immutable history. The decisive shift is moving from "What do you have?" to "What can you prove you have?"

Q: You have criticized Africa's dependence on foreign aid. How has this philosophy shaped your leadership and Axalio's culture?

A: I would be more precise today. My objection is not aimed at development finance, which does serious and necessary work. It targets a particular posture: arriving with a diagnosis and no solution means asking to be helped. Arriving with a governed asset and a verifiable file means asking to be a counterparty. These are fundamentally different conversations.

At Axalio, this philosophy has become a strict operational rule. We never arrive at a meeting seeking financing; we arrive with completed work. Our rule when approaching an institution is to bring, at our own expense, a diagnosis that belongs to them, before any commercial discussion. With international investors, we compete on proof and data rather than narrative and charisma. Sovereignty is not a slogan for us, it is a founding principle. The data we aggregate and structure remains the property of the state and operators. We act as a digital infrastructure layer, but we never operate physical trade, logistics, or mineral custody.

Q: What differentiates Axalio from other commodity platforms?

A:  We do not perform sequestration, custody, or logistics functions. We are the independent and verifiable registry layer that sits above them. Most platforms in this sector are designed to produce a clean image of a supply chain. We build to produce a defensible file, and the critical difference only appears when something goes wrong.

To demonstrate this, we built a complete specimen after due diligence on a demonstration corridor: a full diligence report, lot passport, and evidence registry of 118 distinct items. We deliberately built it imperfect, leaving three findings open for investigation and including a synthesis clearly indicating the corridor would not meet OECD-aligned procurement standards. We needed to demonstrate the system could handle a negative conclusion. The most difficult challenge was accepting the discipline that one cannot be both arbiter and player. Our commitment is to process integrity, even when it costs us a contract.

Q:  By 2036, how do you envision the mining finance landscape in the DRC?

A: By 2036, the determining question will no longer be whether minerals can be tokenized, but whether someone can verify what sits beneath the digital token. Tokenization does not democratize anything by itself. A digital right to an asset that no one can physically or legally verify is simply a faster way to move unverifiable risk.

The sequence is fixed: first governance, then proof, then credit, and only then any financial instrument built on top. The capital markets text adopted by the Senate in July is an important step. If it is promulgated and if Congolese producers can be documented to the level a listing requires, capital will reach them through ordinary instruments. My bet is precise: the proof layer will move in five years, but financial instruments will take ten years to mature. The trust infrastructure must come first.

Q: What is your vision for integrating artisanal miners with dignity and fair value?

A: Congolese artisanal producers have been registered and mapped for nearly twenty years. But what has rarely occurred is the "return" on that transaction. The producer delivers their information and receives very little in a form they can use. Any new digital system that reproduces this one-way data extraction deserves the profound mistrust it will inevitably receive.

For me, dignity is fundamentally a matter of property rights over information. A producer's activity statement must belong to them. When held this way, it ceases to be a surveillance tool and becomes the only asset most of them have ever been able to present to a bank. A producer with a verifiable record can be paid on quality rather than the distress of the day. Inclusion without ownership is just better record-keeping for someone else's benefit.

Q: How is Axalio positioning its platform to tokenize critical minerals?

A: Let me be precise. According to 2026 USGS figures, the DRC produced approximately 74 percent of the world's cobalt and a little over half of global tantalum. Overstating our endowment invites the scepticism we are working so hard to eliminate.

We do not tokenize these minerals today. That is downstream activity that will come later. Our primary work is upstream: operator enrolment, licence verification, field verification, and establishing chain of custody. The main regulatory obstacle is not a missing rule. The 2023 Digital Code already recognizes digital acts as having the same legal value as paper. The gap is downstream: the certification authority it provides for is not yet operational. Every file must therefore be verified twice, a major inefficiency.

Q: Which corridors are you targeting first and what is your decision-making framework?

A: We are concentrating our first efforts on the DRC, more specifically on artisanal and small-scale gold and cobalt. Our work is designed to sit alongside the state framework. My decision-making framework comprises three tests. An opportunity must pass all three. First, is there a counterparty with a real compliance obligation and a specific deadline? Second, does the work produce a reusable asset or die with the operation? Third, can we do it without exploiting anything ourselves? What I have learned to refuse is the big attractive opportunity without a "trigger event." Those consume an entire year and conclude nothing.

Q: What has been the most difficult relationship to build in this ecosystem?

A: Surprisingly, the most difficult relationship has been with buyer-side compliance functions. A responsible procurement team at a refiner is not hostile to African supply, but they are responsible for a decision they cannot personally verify from thousands of kilometres away. The sector has given them many reasons to be cautious.

Winning their trust is not about persuasion or charm. It is about handing over a file that their internal compliance team can defend without having to take our word for it. Trust in this sector is built in stages; it is not sold. We do not open by asking for a mandate; we open by performing, at our own expense, circumscribed technical work on a question the counterparty is already asking.

Q: How does your experience as an international speaker shape your leadership?

A: My message has evolved considerably. Today, I say that Africa should stop competing for attention inside others' technology cycles and start holding the layer that determines the price of its resources. Whoever holds the verified record of what a lot is, where it comes from, and through whose hands it passed decides the discount applied to it. This proof layer is currently abroad, in buyer compliance departments in North America, Europe, and Asia. Taking control of this layer is a more sustainable form of ownership than any article on blockchain.

As for leadership, public speaking has taught me restraint. A room will applaud a bold assertion. An auditor will ask for the document. I have learned to value the quiet confidence of a regulator who has verified our work over the loud applause of a conference hall.

Q: How do you reconcile startup growth with your commitment to mentor 100 entrepreneurs?

A: I must be honest: I am not currently on track to reach that number. I prefer an honest assessment over a fabricated figure. What I have kept is the refusal to separate my professional responsibilities from this goal. Most of what I can usefully transmit to a founder is a direct by-product of the daily work I do.

What I look for in a founder is precise and narrow: founders who have already built something tangible without waiting for permission, who describe their client's problem better than their own product, and who, when faced with harsh criticism, return to work rather than to argument.

Q: How does the platform fit into the governance reform agenda in the DRC?

A: The Ministry of Mines has set for 2026 a clear agenda based on three pillars: transparency, combating fraud, and structuring artisanal mining zones. At Axalio, we see our role as infrastructure that must serve this agenda, not as an alternative. We are at the beginning of our formal engagement and I will not present it as more. Sequence matters more than software. We want institutions to test us first on a narrow question and judge us on the robustness of the result.

Q: How do you instil a culture of trust in environments where opacity has historically been the norm?

A: Integrity is not instilled by instruction. You can only make it structurally easier than its opposite. Three things do this work for us. First, we write what we do not know. Second, we do not touch money or metal. Third, an erroneous finding is corrected in writing and the correction is circulated. We do not hide our mistakes.

Q: What is your measure of success for fair participation of small-scale producers?

A: Not the number of miners registered. That indicator is easy to inflate. Two things will tell us if it has worked. First, does the cost of capital for a verified producer move? Second, does the producer hold their own record and can they present it to a second buyer? If our data only works within our system, we have built a dependency, not an asset.

Q: What is the most important lesson you have learned about building a technology company in Africa?

A: The most important lesson is that the hardest thing in Africa is almost never the idea, talent, or opportunity. It is the distance between what is true and what can be proved. I have seen strong operators lose financing to weaker ones simply because they could produce a file. It is through this gap that value leaves this continent.

This has made me a narrower leader than before. I refuse more, I assert less, and I have learned that the most credible thing a founder can do is disclose weakness before the counterparty finds it. The leader I still want to become is one who builds something that outlasts their own presence. An enterprise that depends on its founder has not yet built anything sustainable.