Africa · 2017–today

The cobalt in your battery

A black-and-white photograph of a huge electric shovel loading rock into a large dump truck at an open-pit copper and cobalt mine. — Gecamines, an electric shovel loading copper and cobalt ore at the Musonoi mine, between 1980 and 1993, from Zaire: a country study, Library of Congress, 1993, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Cobalt is a metal in the batteries of phones, laptops and electric cars, and most of the world's supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some of it is dug by hand in artisanal mines. In 2017 Amnesty International documented children as young as seven working in them, and the Congolese government pledged to end child labour in mining by 2025.

The firms that dominate the trade include Glencore, a Swiss-based miner, and CMOC, a Chinese company. Glencore denies buying artisanal cobalt. Further along the chain are the traders and finance houses that buy the metal, and the battery makers and carmakers whose biggest markets are in the North.

Congo has begun to push back. In 2025 it suspended cobalt exports and then set export quotas, to keep more of the metal's value at home. Whether that helps the families who dig it is still to be seen.

How it worked

Make people work for nothing

Who gained

Mining firms such as Glencore and CMOC; the battery and electric-vehicle makers downstream; the traders and finance houses that buy cobalt.

What it left

Children and families working in artisanal mines. Congo's quotas are an attempt to reverse this, but their effect on the diggers is not yet known.

Sources