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

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Samsung has a zero-tolerance policy against child labor as prohibited by international standards and relevant national laws and regulations in all stages of its global operations.

The severity of harm being caused by cobalt mining is sadly not a new experience for the people of the Congo. Centuries of European slave trading beginning in the early 1500s caused irreparable injury to the native population, culminating in colonization by King Leopold II, who set the table for the exploitation that continues to this day. The descriptions of Leopold’s regime remain disturbingly applicable to the modern Congo. The author travels to mines and through villages in the Congo, talking to the people mining. He tries to talk to some of the companies paying for the cobalt (and some of the middlemen), but there are only a few who will talk to him. Why have some States prospered while other have failed?—not because of failure in a specific set of policies,—hope instead is entailed within a key cardinal development bargain,—whereby State elites shift from protecting their own economic social positions and, instead administratively gamble implementing a process procedure controlled managed explicit dedicated to a growth-based state future creating more winners resulting in a State stable secure prospering inclusive for the majority of peoples.

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The author, Siddharth Kara researches modern day slavery. This is his latest book exploring the subject. He goes to the Democratic Republic of the Congo over many years to interview people involved in the supply chain of cobalt. He talks to those at the bottom that are exploited for the labor to extract the ore to those at the top who get the cobalt to the global market. Please tell the people in your country, a child of the Congo dies every day so that they can plug in their phones. Of all the tragedies that have afflicted the Congo, perhaps the greatest of all is the fact that the suffering taking place in the mining provinces today is entirely preventable. But why fix a problem if no one thinks it exists? Most people do not know what is happening in the cobalt mines of the Congo, because the realities are hidden behind numerous layers of multinational supply chains that serve to erode accountability. By the time one traces the chain from the child slogging in the cobalt mine to the rechargeable gadgets and cars sold to consumers around the world, the links have been misdirected beyond recognition, like a con man running a shell game. An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo’s cobalt mining operation—and the moral implications that affect us all.” None of this is benign. Blinkered in his pursuit of the greater good, it is clear that Kara failed to sufficiently think through – or to see as something that matters – the implications of producing this sort of book. His core assumption is that generating attention will have positive effects, but the sensationalism of his narrative could just as easily have negative consequences.

Kara misses an opportunity to compare the similarities of deplorable conditions of mining in general to that of cobalt mining. This missed opportunity could have strengthened his painful and repetitive descriptions of the exploitative labor practices as he travels from one mine to another. The reader may become numb to the life-threatening conditions or be called to action to aid the miners. Kara does mention mines that are trying to make a difference to move from indifference to the physical demands and life-threatening conditions, including the deaths of workers, both young and old, to more humane practices of cobalt mining. The changes mentioned in the book by those who oversee cobalt mining are minimal and will not alleviate the view of one worker that they “work in their graves.” To obtain the testimonies included in this book, I devoted as much time as possible listening to the stories of those living and working in the mining provinces. Some spoke for themselves; others spoke for the dead. I followed institutional review board (IRB) protocols for human subject research during all my interviews with artisanal miners and other informants. These protocols are designed to protect sources from negative consequences for participating in research and include securing informed consent prior to conducting an interview, not recording any personal identifying information, and ensuring that any written or typed notes always remained in my possession. These procedures are especially important in the Congo, where the dangers of speaking to outsiders cannot be overstated. Most artisanal miners and their family members did not want to speak with me for fear of violent reprisals. Might we learn the lessons from this recent history, and in time for the estimated 500% increase in the production of minerals like cobalt – the vast majority of which is extracted from the Congo – that are needed for clean energy transitions? The comparative reception of Kara’s Cobalt Red and Vogel’s Conflict Minerals Inc. cautions against any great enthusiasm. The latter – a meticulous investigation based on long-term fieldwork from a committed Western scholar working on the Congo with Congolese partners for more than a decade – has received little of the mainstream fanfare of the former. No New York Times review or Joe Rogan episode. I struggled with the density of information. We’re given an immense amount of detail on what cobalt is, how it’s manufactured for use, and what it’s used for. We learn about the mining process from start to finish in several mines, and we learn about the companies’ roles in the processing. I understand why a lot of this was necessary, but it was a bit much for me personally. I found myself tuning out, my mind drifting away as I read. The interior is mostly a magnificent and healthy country of unspeakable richness. I have a small specimen of good coal; other minerals such as gold, copper, iron and silver are abundant, and I am confident that with a wise and liberal (not lavish) expenditure of capital, one of the greatest systems of inland navigation in the world might be utilized, and from 30 months to 36 months begin to repay any enterprising capitalist that might take the matter in hand.2Cobalt Red is not a ground-breaking exposé, as it has been billed. It is the latest in a long series of White saviour adventure books that the DRC could sorely do without. A colonial gaze Meticulously researched and brilliantly written by Siddharth Kara, Cobalt Red documents the frenzied scramble for cobalt and the exploitation of the poorest people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” Kara’s ability to “exhume” the conditions of the cobalt miners on an international geopolitical platform will elicit interest and proffered change. Regardless of its moral equivalence with historical slavery, today’s extreme labor exploitation is rooted in our modern economy.” Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today, the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. Roughly 75 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often by peasants and children in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. In this stark and crucial book, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo—because we are all implicated.” Source