Olive People at the 2026 Katanga Business Meeting: Rethinking Local Skills Development
The just-released official report from the 2026 Katanga Business Meeting highlights the contributions made by Olive People to discussions on local content, talent development, and strategic partnerships in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
During the 7th edition of the Katanga Business Meeting (KBM), held in Kolwezi in May 2026, Olive People contributed to the agenda through two sessions led by its founder, Patrick Gaincko: a masterclass focused on local skills development and the moderation of a "Business & Invest" session.
Both contributions are featured in the official report recently released by the organizers.
Moving Beyond Recruitment to Build the Skills of Tomorrow: a Masterclass
Titled "How Companies Engage and Transform Talent into Opportunities," the masterclass addressed a major challenge for the mining industry: how to simultaneously meet growing local content requirements while overcoming difficulties in accessing operationally ready talent.
Drawing on insights from a corporate engagement program conducted in the DRC between 2024 and 2026, Patrick Gaincko presented several mechanisms for aligning corporate needs with the capabilities available in the labor market.
Three key levers were examined:
Structuring internships to serve as effective pathways for qualification and pre-recruitment.
Strengthening ties between companies and training institutions by building sustainable, trust-based partnerships.
Providing young people with greater exposure to operational realities to better prepare them for professional integration.
At the heart of this approach lies a core conviction: the development of local content cannot rely solely on recruitment. It requires coordinated action among companies, training institutions, economic stakeholders, and public authorities. The goal is to build ecosystems capable of sustainably producing the skills that industries require.
Piliers d’un pipeline de talents locaux performant. Graph: Patrick Gaincko.
Facilitating dialogue between businesses and investors: a Panel Discussion
Patrick Gaincko also moderated the "Business & Invest" session, which focused on fostering connections between businesses and investors and building strategic partnerships.
This second contribution highlights another facette of Olive People’s positioning: facilitating collaboration among economic and institutional stakeholders to translate development opportunities into concrete initiatives.
Insights documented in the official report
The KBM 2026 report dedicates four pages to the Olive People masterclass (pages 50–53), providing a summary of the session and its key takeaways. The "Business & Invest" session is covered on pages 46–47.
These contributions are part of Olive People’s work at the intersection of human capital, organizational development, private sector engagement, and economic transformation.
Olive People extends its thanks to the organizers of the Katanga Business Meeting and to Enabel for their trust and for contributing to the high quality of these discussions.
Download the KBM 2026 Official Report here
