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

by Siddharth Kara

The harsh realities of cobalt mining in the Congo are an inconvenience to every stakeholder in the chain. No company wants to concede that the rechargeable batteries used to power smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles contain cobalt mined by peasants and children in hazardous conditions.

Artisanal miners use rudimentary tools and work in hazardous conditions to extract dozens of minerals and precious stones in more than eighty countries across the global south.

The batteries in almost every smartphone, tablet, laptop, and electric vehicle made today cannot recharge without Kolwezi.

At no point in their history have the Congolese people benefited in any meaningful way from the monetization of their country’s resources. Rather, they have often served as a slave labor force for the extraction of those resources at minimum cost and maximum suffering.

Apple, Samsung, Google, Microsoft, Dell, LTC, Huawei, Tesla, Ford, General Motors, BMW, and Daimler-Chrysler are just some of the companies that buy some, most, or all their cobalt from the DRC,

None of these companies claims to tolerate the hostile conditions under which cobalt is mined in the Congo, but neither they nor anyone else are undertaking sufficient efforts to ameliorate these conditions.

As of 2022, there is no such thing as a clean supply chain of cobalt from the Congo. All cobalt sourced from the DRC is tainted by various degrees of abuse, including slavery, child labor, forced labor, debt bondage, human trafficking, hazardous and toxic working conditions, pathetic wages, injury and death, and incalculable environmental harm.

The EV market, however, is where cobalt demand has really exploded. The first rechargeable electric vehicle was invented in 1880s, but it was not until the early 1900s that electric vehicles were being produced on a commercial scale. By 1910, around 30 percent of vehicles in the United States were propelled by electric engines. Had the trend continued, we would all be living on a cleaner, cooler planet.

In 2010, there were only 17,000 electric vehicles on the road in the entire world. By 2021, that number had skyrocketed to 16 million.

For the foreseeable future, there will be no avoiding cobalt from the Congo, which means there will be no avoiding the devastation that cobalt mining causes the people and environment of the mining provinces of the DRC.

Even those children worked every morning before they came to school. They were always tired and hungry. How can they learn in this condition?”

I looked at the two boys playing in the dirt, wrapped in a blanket of poison. I tried to imagine how their parents must feel, watching their children being contaminated each day and feeling powerless to protect them.

She could not believe that nearly everyone in the U.S. had electricity or that a smartphone with cobalt in the battery cost up to $1,000.

my intention was to document the conditions of artisanal cobalt mining.

She said that prostitution and digging for cobalt were the same—“Muango yangu njoo soko.” My body is my marketplace.

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.