'modern-day slavery' in the Congo powers the rechargeable battery economy (2023)

Cobalt, essential to most lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, links smartphones, computers and electric vehicles to dangerous mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which produced about 74% of the world’s supply in 2021. Siddharth Kara, a researcher on slavery and trafficking, says artisanal miners - freelance workers who dig by hand for only a few dollars a day - work in pits and unsupported tunnels where collapses can kill or maim. Workers, including women carrying babies and children, also breathe toxic dust and face polluted water and damaged landscapes. Kara argues that industrial and artisanal mining cannot be treated as separate supply chains: miners working around industrial concessions feed ore into the same formal system.

He describes the conditions as modern-day slavery, not because workers are legally owned, but because poverty, displacement and the loss of other livelihoods leave people with little choice but to risk their lives for subsistence wages. Some children are trafficked or recruited by militias, whose activities can be funded by mining income; corruption helps the abuses persist. Kara also recounts families losing children and relatives in tunnel collapses, harms that rarely reach international attention. He does not argue that society should abandon cobalt, which is also important to the shift toward cleaner energy. Instead, he calls for reforming the supply chain so that the benefits of battery production do not depend on extreme exploitation and environmental destruction in one of the world’s poorest regions.