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The DRC produced approximately 74% of the world's cobalt in 2021. Some 20,000 people work at Shabara artisanal mine in the DRC, in shifts of 5,000 at a time. They use pickaxes, shovels, stretches of rebar to hack and scrounge at the earth in trenches and pits and tunnels to gather cobalt and feed it up the formal supply chain." "People are working in subhuman, grinding, degrading conditions. "You have to imagine walking around some of these mining areas and dialing back our clock centuries," Kara says. In his new book, Cobalt Red, Kara writes that much of the DRC's cobalt is being extracted by so-called "artisanal" miners - freelance workers who do extremely dangerous labor for the equivalent of just a few dollars a day. He says that although the DRC has more cobalt reserves than the rest of the planet combined, there's no such thing as a "clean" supply chain of cobalt from the country. Chan School of Public Health and at the Kennedy School, has been researching modern-day slavery, human trafficking and child labor for two decades. Smartphones, computers and electric vehicles may be emblems of the modern world, but, says Siddharth Kara, their rechargeable batteries are frequently powered by cobalt mined by workers laboring in slave-like conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hence, cobalt plays an important role in extending battery life and is used in almost every rechargeable battery used in a mobile phone or any other battery-powered device.Īlthough Congo’s law strictly says that child labour is illegal, due to the high cobalt demand and lack of law implementation, the country is unable to prevent children from working in such dangerous places.Ĭountries including Russia, Australia, the Philippines, Canada, and many more also contribute to the cobalt supply however, in comparison to the supply coming from Congo, other countries are far behind in numbers.An artisanal miner carries a sack of ore at the Shabara artisanal mine near Kolwezi, DRC, on Oct. In 2018, Ziki left the job and got himself enrolled in school however, his friends continued to work as child labour.Ĭobalt is an essential component for lithium-ion batteries it ensures that cathodes are not overheated, which can damage the life of the battery. At the end of the day, he would receive 1 to 2 dollars, which he would give to his family. Being kept away from schools and primary education, Ziki only knew about the mining as he would spend hours working in a harmful environment. Ziki, an eleven-year-old child laborer, worked in one of the cobalt mines. These short mines use child labour as their workforce, as they are not inspected by the responsible bodies.

These regions are considered the hub for cobalt extraction, whereas other short-scale mining accounts for fifteen to thirty percent of local needs. These mines mostly exist in the Haut Katanga and Lualaba provinces. The article revealed that almost seventy percent of cobalt is taken out of the DRC. Department of Labor recently shared an article on the role of Congo in cobalt mining.

Based on the Corruption Perception Index 2022, Congo got itself to the 166th position out of 180. It is estimated that almost one million Congolese citizens are living as modern slaves, with over forty thousand children, some of them as young as six years old, being used as child labor and being sent into mines for cobalt mining. Geological Department, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the main reasons why smartphones are running globally.ĭata from the survey shows that over 120,000 metric tonnes of cobalt were mined in the Congo. According to the survey conducted by the U.S.