Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

by Siddharth Kara

Ikolo said that during the rainy months, tunnels in Kasulo collapsed more often and can also flood very quickly. If diggers are underground when a storm breaks, they are likely to drown. The entire operation seemed like a death sentence, be it from suffocation, drowning, or collapse. I asked Ikolo if it was worth the risk. He went silent for a moment before offering a response. “There is no other work here. Cobalt is the only possibility. We go down the tunnel. If we make it back with enough cobalt, our worries are finished for one day.”

The people whose ancestors were once forced to measure their lives in kilos of rubber were now forced to measure their lives in kilos of cobalt.

The global economy depended on it. Mutombo’s daily descent created value denoted in the billions of dollars for everyone up the chain, yet only he and those like him assumed all the risk.

she cried out, on behalf of every mother in this heart of darkness, “Our children are dying like dogs.”

hope in the Congo is like a hot coal—take hold, and it will scald you to the bone.

Sixty-three men and boys were buried alive in a tunnel collapse at Kamilombe on September 21, 2019. Only four of the sixty-three bodies were recovered. The others would remain forever interred in their final poses of horror. No one has ever accepted responsibility for these deaths. The accident has never even been acknowledged.

This was the final truth of cobalt mining in the Congo: the life of a child buried alive while digging for cobalt counted for nothing. All the dead here counted for nothing. The loot is all.

The biggest problem faced by the Congo’s artisanal miners is that stakeholders up the chain refuse to accept responsibility for them, even though they all profit in one way or another from their work.

We would not send the children of Cupertino to scrounge for cobalt in toxic pits, so why is it permissible to send the children of the Congo?

We would not treat our hometowns like toxic dumping grounds, so why do we allow it in the Congo?