Mining galore: southern Congo already produces 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt. Production is predicted to double between 2021 and 2028.
Mining galore: southern Congo already produces 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt. Production is predicted to double between 2021 and 2028.
Photo: Pascal Maitre/Panos

Marie* used to live in Kabombwa, a peaceful farming village of more than 1,000 people in the south of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). A river meandered past the community, where villagers drew water for household tasks. Until one day in 2020, the water started irritating their skin.

Not long before this, the Tenke Fungurume Mine (TFM) had built a factory upstream, producing quicklime used to process cobalt ores. According to a report by an official commission, untreated wastewater was allowed to drain into the water system.1

Marie lists the ailments she saw proliferating around her: ‘Swollen stomach, nosebleeds, choking, dry throat, coughing, breathing difficulties, skin rashes and urinary infections – mainly in women and girls.’ Village elders told the Congolese advocacy group Afrewatch they believed 11 people had died due to pollution-related disease.

TFM insisted that scientific tests showed no link between their plant and reported diseases. Nevertheless, the government eventually agreed the community would be paid to relocate, following experts’ recommendations. But villagers objected that the resettlement was partial and substandard, and the compensation offered was a fraction of the value of the homes they would lose.

‘We were threatened with arrest and intimidation, forcing us to accept the money offered,’ Marie says. In September 2023, as the villagers protested for a fairer deal, Congolese security forces arrived, triggering two days of violent clashes, including alleged firing on civilians. The army denied the incident.

Today, Kabombwa is a ghost town. ‘The village is completely destroyed,’ says Emmanuel Umpula, executive director of Afrewatch. ‘They lost everything.’

TFM denied any malpractice in Kabombwa, stating that it worked ‘jointly with the community’ and ‘adopted a constructive approach’ in which most eligible individuals had received fair compensation.2

The story is not unique. A 2024 report by the NGO RAID cited evidence of widespread health impacts from polluted water, associated with numerous mines throughout the copper-cobalt belt of southern DRC.3 Alarmingly, there is mounting evidence of severe gynaecological impacts on women, from urinary infections to miscarriages and birth defects. Near some mines, the water is reportedly disappearing altogether.

The proliferation of these sacrifice zones is part of a broader picture of unrest brewing around the minerals at the heart of the energy transition. Global Witness has mapped 334 incidents of violence or protest related to four critical minerals in 19 major producing countries between 2021 and 2023.4,5 All 13 related to cobalt – almost certainly an under­estimate – were registered in the DRC’s copper-cobalt belt, which produces over 70 per cent of this crucial battery mineral.6,7

And with the DRC’s cobalt production predicted to double between 2021 and 2028, the pressure is mounting.6

Informal miners collect rock containing cobalt at the bottom of a shaft near the mining hub of Kolwezi.
Informal miners collect rock containing cobalt at the bottom of a shaft near the mining hub of Kolwezi.
Photo: Pascal Maitre/Panos

Story as old as colonialism

As the energy transition gathers pace, the DRC has found itself at the centre of a new global scramble for resources. In December 2022, the US government signed a memorandum of understanding with the DRC and Zambia, committing to develop an ‘integrated value chain’ for electric vehicle (EV) battery production in the African countries.8 In October 2023, both states signed a similar ‘strategic partnership’ with the EU.9

The US and EU both form part of the Minerals Security Partnership, a multinational initiative which aims to ramp up Western investment in critical mineral supply chains.10 New mineral-related megaprojects in the DRC include the Lobito Corridor, a $6 billion rail-linked industrial network from the mines on the DRC-Zambia border to the Angolan coast.11 They also include pledges to support the DRC to move beyond its current dependence on extraction to a more profitable industrial economy. But lack of consultation or transparency around the deals’ implementation plans leaves members of civil society doubtful.12 ‘How do you add value at a local level when you build a railway just to evacuate raw minerals?’ Umpula asks.

His scepticism is born of decades of bitter experience. After the financial collapse of state-owned mining company Gécamines in the 1990s, then-President Joseph Kabila opened the doors to foreign investment in 2002. International companies flocked in, entering joint ventures with Gécamines to develop industrial copper-cobalt mines. When multiplying human rights and corruption concerns pushed some Western companies to leave, Chinese companies were ready to take their place.

For Umpula, it’s a story unchanged since colonialism. ‘People come and take raw materials and make huge profits in the Global North,’ he says. Today, the DRC’s cobalt sector is dominated by at least 19 industrial mines, with major investors including China’s Zijin Mining and CMOC Group, Luxembourg­-registered Eurasian Resources Group (ERG) and Swiss commodities giant Glencore.

Scars of mining expansion are everywhere, from ghost villages like Kabombwa to cavernous open-pit mines. In the mining hub of Kolwezi, a vast hole yawns in the middle of the city, swallowing whole neighbourhoods in tiers of red dirt. A haze of metal-laden dust blows from the tailing piles into residents’ houses and lungs. In the shadows of these megaprojects, an estimated 150,000-200,000 Congolese survive from the dirty, dangerous business of artisanal mining, eking out a precarious living on the margins.

Digging in the shadows

Jean* digs for cobalt in the quarry of a vast industrial mine. But he is not a company employee. ‘We work clandestinely,’ he says. ‘Every day we make arrangements with the guards and soldiers responsible for security on the concession to negotiate access.’

His team arrives in the early evening and leaves under cover of night. They use crowbars and sledgehammers to break off rocks, which are packed in 50-kilogram sacks and carried up steep tiers to the surface.

‘It’s very dangerous,’ he says. ‘Once, I was almost swallowed by a landslide. We also risk being attacked by guard dogs, which are often released by the concession guards, or being shot at by security staff when negotiations go wrong.’

On a good day, Jean sells the ore at informal depots, from where traders sell it on to major mining companies. On a bad day, he leaves with nothing.

Jean, a trained mechanic, wishes the mining companies would directly hire more local workers. But the few jobs available are often filled by agency workers, allowing international companies to cut costs, avoid liability and prevent unionization.13 RAID researchers estimate that some subcontracted labourers earn as little as $2-$2.50 a day, similar to artisanal miners. This is compared to Kolwezi’s living wage of $501 per month.

The workers have little choice. Artisanal mining is legally restricted to certain zones but there are nowhere near enough of these to support all. This forces men like Jean to risk dog bites and bullets to dig in secret, for no certain payment. Women and children scour over tailings piles, risking exposure to dangerous radiation as they sort and wash discarded ore.

In recent years, international scrutiny has led to attempts to crack down on child labour in the DRC’s mining sector, and many mining conglomerates say that they do not source commodities from artisanal mines due to the risks involved. But to many human rights advocates, this approach misses the point.

‘Artisanal mining is a response to poverty,’ says Mark Dummett, head of business and human rights at Amnesty International. ‘You can’t just send police into mines and kick children out – you’ve got to provide them with education and alternative livelihoods for their families.’

This is the paradox at the heart of the DRC’s cobalt sector: despite its vast resource wealth, it remains among the world’s five poorest countries and three-quarters of the population live on less than $2.15 a day.14 Artisanal mining is a survival strategy in a country whose riches have been plundered.

A woman washes cobalt and copper. Water polluted by mining activities is reported to cause vomiting, urinary infections and increased rates of miscarriage.
A woman washes cobalt and copper. Water polluted by mining activities is reported to cause vomiting, urinary infections and increased rates of miscarriage.
Photo: Pascal Maitre/Panos

Winners and losers

In December 2022, Glencore agreed to pay the DRC $180 million to settle ‘all present and future claims arising from any alleged acts of corruption’ between 2007 and 2018.15 The agreement came months after the Swiss commodities giant pleaded guilty to bribing officials to secure improper business advantages in numerous countries, including the DRC.16

Civil society watchdogs say $180 million was just a fraction of what is owed.17

For more than a decade, Global Witness has reported on how the Congolese state has haemorrhaged mining revenues through opaque deals, tax irregularities and official corruption.18 In another notorious case in 2009, Glencore reportedly acquired a majority stake in Kamoto Copper Company (KCC), one of the DRC’s biggest copper-cobalt mines, after securing a $440 million discount on the expected signing bonus due to Gécamines.17,19

The discount alone represented 8.5 per cent of the country’s entire budget that year.20

Behind this and many other mining deals was Israeli diamond trader Dan Gertler, a close friend of then-President Kabila who became a key broker for mining companies. Gertler amassed huge sums buying cheap Congolese mining assets through offshore companies and selling them for a profit to multinational miners.

The Congolese anti-corruption coalition Congo Is Not For Sale (CNPAV) in 2021 calculated the total loss to the DRC from Gertler’s deals at $1.95 billion, with the country standing to lose another $1.76 billion over the subsequent 20 years.21 Gertler has long denied the allegations against him, insisting that there is ‘there is not a shred of reliable evidence’ to support them.

The current administration of Felix Tshisekedi, who took power in 2019, has pledged to crack down on corruption. But impunity runs deep. Despite being sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2017 for ‘opaque and corrupt’ mining deals in the DRC, by 2021 Gertler was still collecting an estimated $254,000 per day in royalties from three major DRC mines, according to CNPAV. Global Witness even found evidence that Gertler may have set up another network of shell companies to continue doing business in the DRC whilst under sanctions.22,21,23

After receiving a sanctions relief licence from the first Trump administration that was withdrawn by Joe Biden, Gertler has reportedly begun negotiating a new sanctions relief deal that could see him receive hundreds of millions of dollars for selling his DRC mining assets.24

Gertler has previously claimed that transferring his assets to the DRC will benefit its people.

A greener, fairer future?

While the profits are still being fought over, the products are all around us – from the copper cables in our electricity grids to the EVs multiplying on our roads. The energy transition depends on the DRC. And the DRC depends on mining – although in February the country took the unusual step of putting a temporary ban on cobalt exports to try and curb global over-supply and halt falling prices.

‘We are not asking for investors to withdraw from Congo, but to improve the situation,’ Umpula insists. ‘We need those minerals to protect the planet. [But] we can’t save the planet by letting people die. We can’t save the planet by leaving people poor.’

The first step is to demystify the supply chains that link ‘clean’ technology to the dirtier reality

The first step is to demystify the supply chains that link ‘clean’ technology to the dirtier reality. The NGO Resource Matters has developed an innovative supply chain mapping tool, tracing cobalt from individual DRC mines through the complex global web of smelters, traders, refiners and manufacturers through to finished EVs.25

‘Companies allege that it is too complicated, too expensive [to document supply chains],’ says Cristian Trujillo, a researcher at Resource Matters who led on developing the tool. ‘But if we could do it for more than 200 companies, they can do it for their own.’

‘By using this information,’ he explains, ‘NGOs, governments, even consumers can hold companies accountable for the actions of their clients and suppliers.’

Civil society groups are sceptical about companies’ tendency to hide behind industry initiatives – such as the Responsible Minerals Assurance, Fair Cobalt and the Global Battery Alliance – which claim to certify or promote clean cobalt. They say these schemes offer a partial view of the industry’s problems, often focusing on child labour while downplaying issues with industrial mines. At worst, they can undermine the DRC’s own efforts to clean up the sector.

‘[The companies] come with a new system,’ Umpula says. ‘They don’t want to implement what is in place.’ He is referring to the 2018 reforms to the Mining Code, hard-won through years of advocacy by Congolese civil society. The new Code increased mineral royalties, required mining companies to contribute to development funds for affected communities, and set out protections for displaced villages. Umpula now considers it highly progressive – if only it were fully enforced.

Marie says she was denied the resettlement she should receive under the Code, and is now living with family about 10 kilometres away from her former home. ‘Life here is increasingly difficult,’ she says. ‘The cost of living is too high compared to the village where I was, and I have no source of income.’

In another part of the TFM concession, a familiar story is unfolding. Months after a copper-cobalt processing plant was opened near the community of Manomapia, residents started complaining of coughing, increased miscarriages, and vomiting and urinating blood. Although TFM insists the plant is ‘strictly in line’ with environmental standards, there are plans to relocate the community. But they fear an uncertain future.

‘If the authorities do nothing,’ Marie reflects, ‘all our villages risk disappearing.’

* name has been changed

Cat Rainsford is an investigator with Global Witness. globalwitness.org

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