The companies that source cobalt from DRC are surely aware of the appalling conditions under which the mineral is mined in some sites in the country. In mine after mine, I witnessed heartrending suffering at the bottom of global cobalt supply chains. Numerous local creuseurs told me that children like Arthur are forced to pay bribes to the local government functionaries who are supposed to ensure there are no children working at sites like Kasulo. It works out to roughly $1.80 a day in income for Arthur, but he is unlikely to get to keep all of it. The cobalt under Kolwezi is purer than at Elodie’s site, so the traders at the nearby buying house pay a higher rate for each kilogramme. The entire neighbourhood has in fact been walled off, in an effort to keep people from documenting the perilous conditions. Every minute is suffused with dread, because many tunnels have collapsed in Kasulo, burying alive everyone inside.Īt the surface, I follow the men from Arthur’s tunnel with several sacks of cobalt to one of the dozens of Chinese buying houses nearby. Now they descend into darkness each day, spending up to 24 hours at a time in narrow tunnels unable to stand, hacking away for cobalt. The 16-year-old boy joined a group of young men who spent two months digging a tunnel 26m straight down before they hit a heterogenite vein. While market prices of cobalt have spiked 300% in the past two years, none of that increase makes its way down to creuseurs like Arthur. Every one of the 23 buying houses I documented in detail were operated by the Chinese, and I must have seen a hundred more with Chinese traders inside.Ĭhinese processors then mix cobalt from industrial and artisanal sources during a preliminary refining stage to produce crude cobalt hydroxide, which they drive to ports at Dar es Salaam and Durban for export to China.Īfter additional refining in China, the cobalt is sold to major component manufacturers and consumer electronic companies across the world.Ĭobalt mining site near Kasulo. The Chinese also appear to run most of the “buying houses” that purchase cobalt from children like Elodie. The remainder is produced by industrial mines that are typically operated by foreign companies following the collapse of the state-owned mining concern, Gécamines.Īcross the south-eastern provinces, I observed that Chinese companies run many of the industrial mines in the region. According to the government agency charged with oversight of the informal or “artisanal” mining sector, at least 20% of this supply is mined by locals like Elodie, called creuseurs. More than 60% of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the “copper belt” of the south-eastern provinces of DRC. Hopeless though it may be, it is her and her child’s only means of survival. It will take her an entire day to do so, after which Chinese traders will pay her about $0.65 (50p). She spends the entire day bent over, digging with a small shovel to gather enough cobalt-containing heterogenite stone to rinse at nearby Lake Malo to fill one sack. Elodie is on her own here, orphaned by cobalt mines that took both her parents. Toxicity assaults at every turn earth and water are contaminated with industrial runoff, and the air is brown with noxious haze. He inhales potentially lethal mineral dust every time he takes a breath. Her two-month-old son is wrapped tightly in a frayed cloth around her back. An orphan girl rinses stones to sell to Chinese traders.
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