Democratic Republic of the Congo | In the hell of the cobalt mines

The Democratic Republic of Congo is at the head of the largest deposit of cobalt, a crucial mineral for the global energy transition. The arrival of China, which is taking over the country’s mines against a background of an explosion in demand, has hardly improved the daily lives of the local population. Child labour, exploitation and impunity reign more than ever in the extraction of “blue gold”.

(Kolwezi, Democratic Republic of Congo) A mineral mined in the blood

Six small hands appear at the top of a concrete wall, then three children, aged 6 to 10, tip heavy sacks of ore below. The small ragged band soon rushes to an adjacent stream and sifts the rubble. Small nuggets of copper and cobalt appear in muddy water. A smile crosses the youthful faces, hitherto so serious: after having sold their handfuls of stones to one of the traders located at the edge of the road, they will not return home empty-handed.

“When I find something, I bring some cassava home,” says Bonheur Tumbamosoya, 6, one of the three team members. The surrounding walls of the gigantic open pit mines of Kolwezi, the main economic lung of the Democratic Republic of Congo, are obviously of little use. Like Bonheur and his friends, nearly 40,000 children enter the region’s mines every day to try to glean ore.

Dug in the middle of an ocean of misery, the mines in the south-east of the Congo concentrate three quarters of the world’s demand for cobalt, a highly strategic metal used in electric batteries and now crucial for the global energy transition.

In a context of exploding demand, a modern-day gold rush is at work in this remote part of the African continent.

China has taken control of almost all the mines in the region. To the point of being today in a position of quasi-global monopoly.

Reigning over a mining industry representing a third of the Congolese economy, Chinese companies have, according to several members of Congolese civil society, caused a collapse of social conditions. “This industry has always experienced human rights and environmental abuses, but it got worse with the arrival of the Chinese,” judge Fabien Mayani, a human rights defender active in Kolwezi. As night falls on the city, Eric, a 28-year-old mechanic employed by a Chinese mine, returns home after a hard day’s work: “The Chinese mistreat us and insult us. They don’t care about labor law. Some of us sometimes work a month straight without a single day off. »

Monga Chadrak, a 27-year-old farmer, lost his 9-year-old son Chérif in the same mine. “Chérif used to fetch a little ore,” whispers his father from the stripped interior of his frail house of earth and sheet metal. One evening in 2019, he didn’t come home. I searched for him for two days, only to find him in the morgue with a bullet in his chest. Her boyfriend had a bullet in the head. Monga Chadrak says they were shot by one of the policemen guarding the mine.

The provincial governor at the time, Richard Muyej, did not open an investigation and would have contented himself with transferring the policeman suspected of the murder of the two children. Later accused by the Congolese Ministry of Finance of having embezzled nearly 360 million US dollars, the politician was dismissed at the end of 2021.

However, the climate of impunity has not ceased; according to several residents of Kolwezi, the police, responsible for protecting the precious ore, continue to shoot on sight at villagers trying to enter industrial mines to survive.

In another district, Jean-Paul Mbuyu, “digger” since 2015, testifies to the extent of the phenomenon. “A month ago, a man was shot in the back as he came up from the bottom of the mine. A week ago, a teenager was killed while climbing the perimeter wall. Shortly before, an adult and two children were shot in similar conditions, says the 30-year-old. We protest, we burn cars every time it happens, but it doesn’t change anything. »

“rigged” results

Due to their strong mechanization, the industrial mines of southern Congo represent only 20% of jobs in the mining sector for 80% of its production. This is how the vast majority of cobalt convicts cannot help but turn to the artisanal mines, where nearly 250,000 Congolese toil with their bare hands in particularly dangerous conditions.

At the bottom of one of them, outside Kolwezi, Michel, still a teenager and plastic sandals on his feet, carries a huge bag of ore on his back towards the mine depot. Once his rocks have been crushed and their ore content analyzed, he will only be allowed to sell the product of his labor to the few Chinese traders who are hovering outside. “The pay is really meager here,” says Michel, looking discouraged.

His colleague Kalonda Kibanze, 39, has worked in the artisanal mine for several years. “The management agrees with the Chinese to rig the scales and the analysis results, he accuses. Everyone knows it, but we are captives, we are forbidden to dig the ground out of these mines. In the distance, trucks overloaded with ore race at breakneck speed towards the Indian Ocean, where the “blood cobalt” will be exported to China and then the rest of the world. Global demand is expected to double again by the end of the decade.

The difficult withdrawal from cobalt

Comfortably installed in the garden of his huge property in the center of Kolwezi, the new Minister of Mines of the province of Lualaba, Jacques Kaumba, does not like people talking to him about the children who swarm in the industry for which he is responsible. .

The facts do not prove him wrong: Europe and North America, which are starting the electric mobility revolution, have an exponential need for lithium-ion batteries, three-quarters of which are produced by China.

From BMW to Tesla via Apple and Samsung, manufacturers around the world are now trying to better control their cobalt supply chain. Several international initiatives have thus emerged in recent years to strengthen controls in the field, particularly on child labour. With mixed results.

“Beyond the moral imperative not to fuel the appalling mining conditions in some Congolese artisanal mines, there is also the geopolitical imperative,” recalls geologist Robin Goad of Fortune Minerals.

Sitting on a seam of cobalt so dense that it is often described as a “geological anomaly”, the Congo accounts for half of the world’s reserves of the precious metal, which technology today is not able to replace with another. without losing energy efficiency. While recycling is part of the solution, the number of batteries in circulation is only a fraction of the amount needed to replace the internal combustion engine. Congo’s mines still have a bright future ahead of them.