DEMOCRACY NOW
The Democratic Republic of the Congo produces nearly three-quarters of the world’s cobalt, an essential component in rechargeable batteries powering laptops, smartphones and electric vehicles. But those who dig up the valuable mineral often work in horrific and dangerous conditions, says Siddharth Kara, an international expert on modern-day slavery and author of Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. In an in-depth interview, he says the major technology companies that rely on this cobalt from DRC to make their products are turning a blind eye to the human toll and falsely claiming their supply chains are free from abuse, including widespread child labor. “The public health catastrophe on top of the human rights violence on top of the environmental destruction is unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the modern context,” says Kara. “The fact that it is linked to companies worth trillions and that our lives depend on this enormous violence has to be dealt with.”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
We end today’s show looking how the world’s increasing reliance on cobalt for mobile phones, electric cars has had a devastating impact on the Congo. Cobalt is a key component in lithium-ion rechargeable batteries. Nearly three-quarters of the world’s supply is mined in the Congo under horrific conditions.
Siddharth Kara documents the human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo in his new book, Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. In it, he writes, quote, “There are many episodes in the history of the Congo that are bloodier than what is happening in the mining sector today, but none of these episodes ever involved so much suffering for so much profit linked so indispensably to the lives of billions of people around the world.”
Kara continues, “Spend a short time watching the filth-caked children of the Katanga region scrounge at the earth for cobalt, and you would be unable to determine whether they were working for the benefit of Leopold or a tech company.”
That’s Siddharth Kara writing in Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. His previous book, Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, won the 2010 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, awarded for the best book written in English on slavery or abolition.
Siddharth Kara, welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us from London. This book is absolutely devastating, but, of course, it’s describing that reality on the ground in Congo. Tell us the story of how you came to focus on this, and how cobalt links the devastation of the Congo to the West.
SIDDHARTH KARA: Well, thank you so much for inviting me to speak with you about this crucial and very urgent matter.
I had been doing research on various forms of slavery and child labor around the world for many, many years, starting in the year 2000. And around 2016, I heard from some colleagues in the field about very appalling conditions in the mining of cobalt in the DR Congo. And I had no idea what cobalt was. I thought it was a color. I didn’t know that it was in rechargeable batteries. So it took me a little time to organize my first trip, establish ground relationships. I got into the Congo the first time in 2018.
And what I saw was just so horrific, so extreme and severe. And the fact that it was at the bottom of supply chains, that reach out like a kraken across the global economy and touch the lives of everyone — everyone listening to us right now cannot function for 24 hours without cobalt. And as you noted in your remarks, roughly three-fourths of the world’s supply comes from Congo. And it’s mined in conditions — you read the bit, the sentence that links to Leopold. It’s mined in conditions that are like the colonial times, where the people of Africa are reduced to brute labor, their lives are not valued, their labor is not valued, their humanity is not valued. And that’s the reality that exists at the bottom of cobalt supply chains.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Siddharth, I mean, the book is just magnificent, and, as Amy said, it’s completely devastating. So, if you could explain to us, you know, for people, myself included, when I read the book, the difference between artisanal mining, and the conditions that exist on artisanal mines, areas where artisanal miners search for cobalt, and industrial mining? And then describe some of the conditions. Who are these miners? How many children are involved? And how big are these mines? You’ve said some of them are as large as European cities, including London.
SIDDHARTH KARA: Yeah. So, let’s spend a moment and just understand what’s happening on the ground in that part of the Congo. And this is the southeastern part, from the towns between Lubumbashi and Kolwezi. And when you get down to that part of the Congo, there are massive industrial mining operations, on the one hand. And now, outside of the Congo, consumer-facing tech and EV companies will have you believe that all of their cobalt supply in their batteries for their gadgets and cars comes only from these industrial mines. “Industrial” means what it sounds like: heavy machinery, excavators digging and gouging at the earth. What’s happened there is not sustainable at all in terms of industrial activity — millions of trees clear-cut, massive destruction and contamination of the environment.
Now, alongside that, and the reality is, inside of these industrial operations, there are hundreds of thousands of people, including tens of thousands of children, who dig by hand. Now, the quaint term given to them is “artisanal mining.” And that makes you think that they’re walking around baking bread or doing work in pleasing conditions, but nothing could be further from the truth. Artisanal mining means these tens of thousands of children, hundreds of thousands of people, scrounging at the ground with pickaxes, shovels, stretches of rebar or their bare hands to pull cobalt out of the ground and feed it up the chain. Many of these people are digging inside industrial mines. And outside of the Congo, tech and EV companies will have you believe that that does not happen, but the truth on the ground is very different.
They also dig all around the countryside, because cobalt is everywhere. There are more reserves of cobalt in that part of the Congo than the rest of the planet combined. So the local population has been displaced by enormous mining operations. You made note that some of these are as big as cities. Well, these mining concessions — “concessions” means the territory a foreign mining company is allowed to exploit — the biggest one in that part of the Congo is the size of London, where I’m sitting right now. So, imagine a London-sized swath of countryside that’s been completely gouged, destroyed, clear-cut and contaminated in this scramble to get cobalt out of the ground and up the chain. And imagine the hundreds of thousands of people who used to live in that territory, forcibly displaced, now without home, without a way to live, and all they can do is scramble back into that ground, try to dig some cobalt out of the earth, and feed it up the chain for a dollar or two a day.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to a clip from a 2017 Sky News special report on child miners in the DRC cobalt mines.
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