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

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The truth, however, is this—but for their demand for cobalt and the immense profits they accrue through the sale of smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles, the entire blood-for-cobalt economy would not exist. It is the deepest river in the world, and through its system of tributaries, it drains a region the size of India.

Whats going on in the Congo is abhorrent conditions, child labor, under reporting of deaths from mining facilities and companies lying about where their cobalt comes from. The Copper Belt is a metallogenic wonder that contains vast mineral riches, including 10 percent of the world’s copper and about half the world’s cobalt reserves.

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. The influx of mineral wealth from the New World, especially gold, financed much of the Renaissance, leading to the Industrial Revolution, which gave birth to the modern mining industry.

In all my time in the Congo, I never saw or heard of any activities linked to either of these coalitions, let alone anything that resembled corporate commitments to international human rights standards, third-party audits, or zero-tolerance policies on forced and child labor. The major cities of the DRC include the frenetic capital, Kinshasa, located near the southwestern edge of the country along the banks of the Congo River.years, child mortality ranks eleventh worst in the world, access to clean drinking water is only 26 percent, and electrification is only 9 percent. When the current US presidential administration announced that the entire federal fleet of vehicles will soon be replaced by EV, I wondered why Native American leaders were furious.