• The joy of charging your phone or driving your ‘economical’ hybrid car might not register with you as egotistical, until you find out what it means for a family in DRC.
  • (DRC) is the biggest producer of Cobalt, a metal primarily used in the manufacturing of rechargeable batteries for mobile phones and electric vehicles.
  • Companies like Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Tesla and Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, have been named in a lawsuit as beneficiaries and perpetuators of child labour and child-labour-related deaths in the Congo cobalt rush.

The joy of charging your phone or driving your ‘economical’ hybrid car might not register with you as egotistical, until you find out what it means for a family in DRC.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the biggest producer of Cobalt, a metal primarily used in the manufacturing of rechargeable batteries for mobile phones and electric vehicles. In 2023 alone, The DRC produced an estimated 170,000 metric tons of Cobalt.

The majority of Cobalt produced ends up in China, where it is used to manufacture Lithium-ion batteries. As of 2023, China owned 15 of 19 industrial copper mining concessions in DRC. Most of the Cobalt comes from artisanal mines that are rife with overhanging danger, master-slave tendencies, and a load of other human rights violations.

Companies like Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Tesla and Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, have been named in a lawsuit as beneficiaries and perpetuators of child labour and child-labour-related deaths in the Congo cobalt rush.

The companies’ supply chains were linked to mining firms that used children to dig for cobalt rocks in underground tunnels with primitive tools in the dark. Dozens of children have been killed after tunnels they were mining in caved in on them, others have been maimed, and many more have been left with life-threatening injuries.

The rush for minerals in the DRC has led to forced evictions as industries try to expand cobalt mining projects. Hundreds of thousands of families have been forced to leave their ancestral lands as their villages have been bulldozed over to make way for mining concessions.

This disruption of one of the most unstable countries in the world is expected to intensify, as the demand for Cobalt is expected to hit 222,000 metric tons by 2025. The DRC government now calls for the United Nation’s intervention, in what has now become a global issue due to the push for electric vehicle (EV) adoption.