Cobalt

COBALT

Cobalt, a metallic element (atomic no. 27), is essential for batteries used in electric cars, computers and cell phones. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has nearly half of global reserves of cobalt and supplies 70% of the world’s production of cobalt. Industrial cobalt mines, which use giant excavators and trucks, account for most cobalt production in DRC and are mainly Chinese-owned. But there is also an artisanal mining economy where workers toil for low wages in primitive conditions using their bare hands or simple tools. Accidents are frequent in this sector, and there are cobalt-related neurological conditions, as cobalt is toxic.

The DRC (pop. 96 million) is rich in minerals, but its people are poor. “Today more than three-fourths of Congo’s population live below the poverty line, while few have access to clean drinking water and even fewer to electricity.”

The digital economy has brought advances, but it has serious drawbacks, among them the way raw materials necessary to it are produced.

(Sources: The New York Time Book Review article on COBALT RED, 1/29/23);

Council on Foreign Relations, 10/29/20; Wikipedia, COBALT)