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

• Author: Siddharth Kara
• Genre: Nonfiction/Politics
• Publication Date: January 21, 2023
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio

The revelatory New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller, shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year Award.

An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo’s cobalt mining operation―and the moral implications that affect us all.

Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt.

Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today, the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. Roughly 75 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often by peasants and children in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. In this stark and crucial book, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo―because we are all implicated.

When I committed to reading my way around the world, I have been discovering a lot of nonfiction as a great way to learn more about our world and the various countries and peoples who inhabit it. To me, the biggest sign of how well a book is written, whether it is fiction or not, is how much it pushes me to think about something I never even realized. This is that kind of book. It forced me to reckon with our modern lives and the costs associated with it—the costs not paid by us, but by the poor and exploited, half a world away.

How many of us have actually thought about what goes into making the rechargeable devices we use every day? The most thought I had given to these devices and their batteries is how much of a charge I have, and if I need to put my phone/laptop/tablet/vape on the charger. But this book really changed my thoughts about the cobalt mining industry and how our consumerism powers this industry. My mom’s family was Depression-era, and she grew up poor. My father grew up while starving and hiding from a genocide. So I was raised with their values—we don’t get rid of anything unless it can’t be fixed, repurposed, or up-cycled. I didn’t grow up to be the kind of person who gets the newest devices as soon as they come out, but I rarely replace mine until they stop working. No shade to people who can and do purchase new devices. But after reading this book I haven’t been able to touch a rechargeable device without thinking of what goes into making it.

As a continent, Africa has untold riches that have drawn European powers to establish colonies. The Democratic Republic of Congo was brutally colonized by Belgium to exploit rubber, ivory, and then mineral resources. African nations were decolonized from Belgium, France, Germany, and Italy between the 1950s and the 1990s. However, decolonization led to power vacuums and unstable governments, as well as outside influence from world powers. In the DRC, large deposits of cobalt have been found, and are exploited by outside powers. A country where many people live in rudimentary huts, have no indoor plumbing, and have little choice but to go work in the dangerous mines, since it is the only place they can. 

The poverty of the people living in areas where these huge mines are force them to place their lives at risk for literally a dollar a day. In these families, all members may have to chip in and help. There are minimal safety measures, if there are any, and miners either sift deposits while standing in toxic water, or have to go underground into mines and pray there isn’t a tunnel collapse. 

In this book, Kara doesn’t simply provide facts. That wouldn’t carry the same weight as the way he told the story—he does provide facts, but he also threads them through with personal experiences by the people most affected by the mines: the people who work there. Men who have been working in the mines when there is a collapse are simply left there to die if they aren’t close enough to the surface to be dug out. Even if they are rescued, they are often left with crippling injuries like shattered legs and amputations. The mines in DRC are almost all owned by Chinese companies, and labor laws in Africa are notoriously lax.There isn’t any compensation provided to injured miners, and they often have to cover the entire cost of their medical care on their own. In a family surviving on a dollar a day, this often leads to injured miners being unable to afford any treatment.

Even worse, child labor laws are blatantly ignored. Children are supposed to be prohibited from mining, but children often stop attending school early and start mining cobalt so they can contribute to the family income. This leads to generations of children with no options for their future, if they even have a future. Many children die in the mines, or are left permanently handicapped. Programs for low-income individuals aren’t available in places like the DRC the way they are in other countries, and while parents don’t want their children to start working in the mines, they don’t always have a choice. In a family where the father is injured, someone else takes his place so that the family has income, often a child. Additionally, these people live in extreme poverty. Hearing stories of children heading into the mines because their families can’t afford the school fees for them to learn—the exorbitant amount of $6 per month. This is commonly where the future ends for these children. Even if they survive the mines, the work takes a significant toll on people’s health. 

Kara tells the stories of women, men, and children who work in the mines and have experienced severe consequences to their health and safety. It not only affects the integrity of their limbs, but can have harmful effects on multiple organs and systems in the body, such as the lungs, kidneys, heart, and thyroid, and standing in toxic water while sifting for cobalt can lead to skin issues and other problems. Especially since cobalt often occurs with uranium, which can have even worse problems for a miner with no protective equipment. Mined uranium is often smuggled out of the country on the black market, making our world even more dangerous.

Before reading this book, I never thought about how a battery is made, where the components come from, and the impact it has on the people in those areas. Now that I know, I can’t forget that literal children are dying for less than a dollar a day, to contribute to components that we use daily and don’t think about. Rechargeable batteries and electric cars require cobalt as a component, yet we take them for granted. How many times daily do we touch things that have rechargeable batteries? So many, while these large mining companies not only exploit Congolese workers, but also the Congolese economy. The cobalt is used to power devices that cost thousands of dollars, while leaving the Congolese people and environment in ruins. Many of the quotes from this story were moving, but when the author visits the largest mine in the DRC, he said that it hurt to breathe the air, and toxins were everywhere. All of this exists because of basic economics—supply and demand. As cobalt is increasingly required to power rechargeable lithium ion batteries, the damage being done to the DRC and other countries in the Copper Belt of Africa increases so that mines can continue to supply the ever-growing demand.

When I finished reading, I was shocked to know that this was going on, as well as how little of the profits are fed back into the DRC’s economy. If this was occurring in America, we would be able to make a call to OSHA and the DEC and have things sorted out with heavy fines for the mining companies and compensation to the victims. Stopping use of all rechargeable batteries isn’t feasible in today’s society of cell phones and computer-based everything, but finding a solution isn’t easy. Our world is going to keep changing and require a different tactic to obtain these minerals, one that is sustainable and profitable for the DRC and its people, but it isn’t going to be solved overnight. Reading this book left me with a deep sense of sorrow for the pain I have unknowingly contributed to, as well as for our earth. How long can we keep up destructive mining practices? How can we justify the murder and maiming of children just so we can check social media ten times a day? I was left with a conflicted sense about using items with rechargeable batteries, knowing that our world requires these, but also knowing that obtaining them is killing the world and the poorest, must vulnerable Congolese. 

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