Arthur Katalayi

Arthur Kalala Katalayi (; born May 10, 1982) is a French businessman, podcaster, consultant and entrepreneur based in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A former senior advisor to the chairman of the board of directors at state-owned copper and cobalt mining company Gecamines, he is a senior partner at boutique management consulting firm A2k Advisory and host for the mining-focused podcast The Right Advice.

Early life and education

Katalayi was born at the city of Lyon, France. He was raised in Paris. Katalayi first visited the Democratic Republic of Congo aged 6; in Kinshasa, and Lubumbashi, in the Katanga Province. At the age of 16, he left France for the United Kingdom where he spent a year in London, before attending the City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College from 1999 until 2001.

Katalayi moved to the United States to enroll at Salem International University, earning a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science in 2005. At Salem University, he played college soccer as a student-athlete on an athletic scholarship. He earned his Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership from Rider University.

Career

After graduating, Katalayi worked briefly as a market analyst for New York STOCK Exchange in New York City, and as a finance analyst for Bloomberg LP in Princeton, New Jersey. He then moved back to Europe and was hired by Capgemini Engineering to work in the company's Paris office as a management consultant. In 2014, Katalayi joined state-owned mining firm Gecamines as a senior advisor to its chairman Albert Yuma. He was also the latter's economic advisor at the Federation of Businesses of the Congo, Congo's largest employer federation. At the time it was understood that Gecamines was assessing different modes of financing with the possibility to monetize some of its copper and cobalt assets via an initial public offering – Gecamines stakes in its joint-ventures thought to be valued in excess of $2 billion; which includes a $1 billion valuation in Glencore-controlled Kamoto Copper Company according to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch report.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, via Gecamines, holds 80% of the world's cobalt reserves, the price of which has soared more than 70% on the London Metal Exchange and is the hottest commodity within the global financial market as of 2017. Given the insatiable demand for cobalt, a key ingredient used in lithium-ion batteries powering everything from Apple Inc.,'s iPhone to Tesla, Inc. cars, the interest in the mineral that helps fuel the Chinese and Californian economies is only likely to increase and yield more future opportunities for Gecamines; especially considering that cobalt is essential for the battery technology needed for the shift to renewable energy. In a Financial Times interview, Gecamines chairman expressed his dissatisfaction with existing joint-ventures, having failed to generate excepted dividends, and that future partnerships with investors will differ from current ones.

Katalayi was a senior advisor and global ambassador for Giving Back to Africa for over 10 years.

Personal life

Katalayi met his wife Nathalie, a pediatric nurse, in Brussels in 2001; they married in Liege in 2007. She is a school nurse at The American School of Kinshasa in Kinshasa. They have a daughter and a son.

Awards and recognition

• 2012, SAfm's Mover and Shaker - South African Broadcasting Corporation; Johannesburg.
• 2017, Global Top 100 Most Influential People of African Descent in the world - under 40; New York.