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

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If they didn’t contract the virus and share it with their family causing death, they still stopped their education to provide for US. 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 titanic companies that sell products containing Congolese cobalt are worth trillions, yet the people who dig their cobalt out of the ground eke out a base existence characterized by extreme poverty and immense suffering. Cobalt Red is a very informative read, it really does a great job of breaking down the entirety of the Congolese mining infrastructure from top to bottom. I have also limited any personal descriptions or information that could be used to identify these individuals, as such information would place them and their families in jeopardy. Furthermore, the inevitable outcome of stripping humans of their dignity, security, wages, and freedom can only be a system that results in the complete dehumanization of the people exploited at the bottom of the chain.

I am writing this review on my laptop with a rechargeable battery, looking at my tablet with a rechargeable battery. I am not talking about a personal use standpoint where we can send selfies or shitpost on social media. The sick and dead infected by the disease were never counted, adding an unknown number to the industry’s bleak tally. He was one of only 10 academics globally to receive the prestigious BA Global Professorship in 2020. The harsh realities of cobalt mining in the Congo are an inconvenience to every stakeholder in the chain.

They're both gruesome, one involves bullets and the other involves gashes from falls, tunnel collapses and many more scenarios of horrific accidents.To uncover the realities of cobalt mining in the Congo, I journeyed into the heart of the country’s two mining provinces—Haut-Katanga and Lualaba. The Bronze Age was born, and the advent of metalworking sparked rapid advancements in human civilization. One might reasonably expect Kolwezi to be a boom town in which fortunes are made by intrepid prospectors. All cobalt sourced from the DRC is tainted by various degrees of abuse, including slavery, child labor, forced labor, debt bondage, human trafficking, hazardous and toxic working conditions, pathetic wages, injury and death, and incalculable environmental harm.

Everyone who uses a smartphone, an electric vehicle, or anything else powered by rechargeable batteries needs to read what Siddharth Kara has uncovered. Around the lifeless body, the ocher gravel has been stained in dark shades of red, like burnt umber or rusted metal. He subsequently described the Congo Free State as the “vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience” and a land in which “ruthless, systematic cruelty towards the blacks is the basis of administration.The Katanga region in the southeastern corner of the Congo holds more reserves of cobalt than the rest of the planet combined.