15,000 People in a Cobalt Pit: Your Phone Battery Has Blood on It
The lithium-ion batteries in smartphones and electric vehicles depend on Congolese cobalt; from Leopold II's rubber terror to the assassination of Lumumba to a few dollars a day today, the same history of plunder is still running.
The video won't play here. Listen to the audio instead:
The argument · tap a timestamp to hear it
The green bill for electric cars is paid by Congolese miners
Siddharth Kara first walked into a cobalt mine in Katanga, Congo, in 2018. In front of him was an enormous pit made of pure cobalt ore, with close to 15,000 workers crammed into it, barely able to move; the dull knock of hammers and rebar against rock, toxic dust and shouting all ran together. Most of the workers were teenage boys, with no safety equipment, earning a few dollars a day — and the cobalt ends up in the batteries of smartphones, laptops and electric vehicles. He describes the scene as the kind of forced labor that built the pyramids 2,000 years ago, and names the contradiction at the center of it: the shift to electric vehicles that the developed world is pushing in the name of ‘going green’ is destroying the environment in the heart of Africa.
— Siddharth KaraTrade with no goods going in can only be slavery
In the late 1890s, E.D. Morel, a young clerk at a British shipping company, was checking manifests from the Congo on the docks at Antwerp. Ships came back from Africa loaded with ivory and wild rubber, but the ships heading out carried only soldiers, guns and ammunition — no trade goods at all. He realized this was not trade; it was evidence of a slave labor system 4,000 miles away: weapons and soldiers sent out to force extraction, resources shipped back at no cost. The company tried to buy him off, then to transfer him; in the end he resigned and became the investigative journalist who exposed the atrocities in the Congo.
The civilizing mission's lie was destroyed by a missionary's camera
Leopold II packaged himself as a humanitarian and welcomed Catholic and Protestant missionaries into the Congo Free State. One of them, the Black American missionary William Henry Shepard, used an early box camera to photograph the civilization of the Bakuba people: broad streets, fine weaving and woodcarving. He also witnessed the forced labor — women held hostage, men driven into the rainforest to collect rubber. His photographs and his writing became the evidence for the later Congo Reform Association, and let the outside world see the truth behind the ‘civilizing mission’ for the first time.
— Ramona AustinEvery bullet had to be accounted for with a severed hand
Leopold's private army raided villages and seized women as hostages, forcing the men to deliver a fixed rubber quota every month. Each time a soldier drew ammunition he had to prove his bullets had killed someone, and the proof was a hand cut off a body and carried back; if he missed, or spent a bullet hunting, he cut the hand off a living person to settle the account. Shepard and other missionaries photographed severed limbs in quantity. The result: the population of the Congo Free State fell from roughly 20 million to roughly 10 million, a drop of about 50%. That is not rhetoric — it is a recorded death toll.
— Adam HochschildSay the resources belong to Congo and you become a communist
On June 30, 1960, Patrice Lumumba, the Congo's first prime minister, spoke publicly at the independence ceremony, named colonialism directly, and delivered the line the whole piece turns on: the land of the Congo should benefit the children of the Congo first. He was not a conventional member of the elite — expelled from Catholic and mission schools, self-taught, at one point a beer salesman, and it was that salesman's network of customers that later became the organizational base of the party he built. That claim to resource sovereignty got him labeled a ‘communist’ by Western intelligence services almost immediately.
— Georges Nzongola-NtalajaA prime minister who won't cooperate is replaced by one who will
Eleven days into Lumumba's term, Belgium helped Katanga province secede, cutting off the economic engine of the Congo's richest mining province. When appeals to the United Nations went nowhere, he turned to the Soviet Union; the United States first tried to assassinate him with poisoned toothpaste, and after that failed handed the job to Belgium: he was taken to Katanga, tortured and executed, his body dismembered and dissolved in acid, with a single tooth kept by one of the assassins as a souvenir. Sidharth's summary is blunt and cold: you either cooperate, or you get chopped up and replaced by someone willing to.
— Siddharth KaraThe second automotive revolution bets on a resource still in Congo
Cobalt raises energy density in lithium-ion batteries and holds thermal stability, which is what lets a device ‘hold its charge and not catch fire’. The smartphone boom drove cobalt demand up geometrically around 2012, and electric vehicles took over from there and pushed it further still. The first automotive revolution was a bet on rubber; the second is a bet on cobalt — and both resources sit mainly in the Congo. Sidharth's read: we are living through a second automotive revolution, and cobalt, like rubber before it, still comes from the Congo, where life is ‘plunged into catastrophe’ as a result.
— Siddharth KaraCobalt is cheap because the miners have no other choice
Large mining companies buy up land and clear villages, pushing an already poor population toward a choice between ‘do dangerous work today and survive’ and ‘have nothing to eat today’. When someone is injured, develops cancer, or dies in a pit collapse, thousands more are waiting to take the place. This effectively captive, modern-slavery workforce puts continuous downward pressure on the price of cobalt. Sidharth still holds out hope: once Leopold's atrocities were exposed, the reform movement brought down the regime, and he believes today's truth will produce a new Champion in the same way.
— Siddharth KaraIn their own words · checked verbatim
What I saw in front of me was this cavernous chasm in the earth of just pure cobalt mountain and stone. And inside that cavern was close to 15000 human beings crammed so close to each other, they barely had room to move.
Siddharth Kara5:00
Ru and ivory in, weapons and soldiers out.
He was very ambitious, and he was an absolute master of public relations.
Adam Hochschild18:40
We shall show the world what the black man can do when working in liberty, and we shall make the Congo the pride of Africa.
Patrice Lumumba35:00
You either play ball or will chop you up and find someone who will. They had no chance at good governance.
Siddharth Kara47:49
And then you offer them a few dollars a day to do hazardous work. So you can survive today doing this hazardous work, getting the cobalt out of the ground, or you can not eat today.
Siddharth Kara52:29
Figures
| Congo's share of global cobalt supply | About three quarters | 3:53 |
| Workers inside the pit | Close to 15,000 | 5:00 |
| A cobalt miner's daily earnings | A few dollars | 5:00 |
| Size of the Congo Free State | More than 70 times the territory of Belgium | 16:13 |
| Population change in the Congo Free State | From roughly 20 million down to roughly 10 million (about 50%) | 30:00 |
| When Katanga was split off | 11 days after independence | 44:16 |
| Length of Lumumba's time in office | Two and a half months | 47:49 |
| When cobalt demand exploded | Around 2012 | 50:16 |
Glossary
- Congo Free State
- The Congolese territory held as Leopold II's personal possession — a ‘free state’ in name, a slave-labor rubber empire in fact.
- Katanga
- The Congo's richest mining province, in the south, which briefly seceded in 1960 with Belgian backing.
- Congo Reform Association
- The transnational anti-Leopold movement founded by E.D. Morel, which used missionary photographs to move public opinion.
How to listen
People working in consumer electronics and clean-energy supply chains, investors studying responsible sourcing, and engineers who want to understand the real cost of a technology boom.