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

by Siddharth Kara

Although Lubumbashi is the administrative capital of the DRC’s mining sector, there is very little mining that takes place in the city outside of Ruashi and Étoile, which combined to produce about 8,500 tons of cobalt in 2021.7 Both mines passed from UMHK to Gécamines on the first day of 1967 after Mobutu nationalized the country’s mining sector. Production under Gécamines was inconsistent and eventually abandoned after the company’s financial collapse in the early 1990s. The rights to Ruashi were acquired in 2012 by the state-owned Chinese mining giant Jinchuan Group. The rights to Étoile were acquired in 2003 by Chemicals of Africa (CHEMAF), a copper-cobalt mining company owned by Dubai-based Shalina Resources. CHEMAF is also one of the major players in the DRC’s artisanal mining sector.