Cobalt Red

August 1, 2022

Cobalt is essential to the lithium-ion rechargeable batteries that keep our iPhones, laptops, and other devices humming. But mining it has been horrifically damaging to the people and the environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as evidenced by this work. A senior fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, Kara collected testimonies from the Congolese people themselves. Winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize; a 50,000-copy first printing.

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Starred review from November 14, 2022
In this tour-de-force exposé, Kara (Modern Slavery), a professor of human trafficking and modern slavery at Nottingham University, uncovers the abuse and suffering powering the digital revolution. Explaining that cobalt is “an essential component to almost every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today,” and that the Katagana region in the Democratic Republic of Congo “holds more reserves of cobalt than the rest of the planet combined,” Kara describes young children and pregnant women mining the metal by hand for a dollar a day. Predatory middlemen then sell the cobalt to foreign- and state-owned mining operations, who supply the materials for Apple, Samsung, and Tesla products. The details are harrowing: young men and boys are crushed in tunnel collapses, women and girls work in radioactive wastewater, villages are razed, and 14-year-olds are shot for seeking better prices. While corrupt government officials siphon the profits from the cobalt industry, ordinary Congolese “eke out a base existence characterized by extreme poverty and immense suffering.” “Here,” says the widow of one artisanal miner, “it is better not to be born.” Throughout, Kara’s empathetic profiles and dogged reporting on the murkiness of the cobalt supply chain are buttressed by incisive history lessons on the 19th-century plunder of the Congo for ivory and rubber, the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of democratically elected president Patrice Lumumba in 1960, and more. Readers will be outraged and empowered to call for change.

Starred review from November 1, 2022
A penetrating expos� on the deliberate smoke screens created by powerful companies to obscure the realities behind the abysmal conditions of cobalt miners in the Congo. Cobalt is highly valuable as an essential component of the rechargeable batteries that power laptops, tablets, smartphones, and electric vehicles. As such, the demand for cobalt has risen exponentially in the last decade. In 2021, 72% of the global supply was mined in the Congo, along what is called the Central African Copper Belt. In this eye-opening and disturbing investigative report, Kara, the author of multiple books on modern global slavery, paints a stark portrait of the appalling conditions in the mining villages, expertly capturing the "frenzy" of digging by so-called artisanal miners, who toil in unspeakable conditions for a pittance. These workers are the first link in the exploitative chain of resource extraction that keeps millions of Africans in poverty and ill health and degrades the environment, all while enriching massive corporations and foreign investors. Nationalized by former dictator Joseph Mobutu, then sold to the Chinese in 2012 by subsequent dictator Joseph Kabila, the mines were supposed to support infrastructure, education, and health care, yet little of that money has benefited the Congolese people. Peasants are so desperate for work that digging compels the whole family to participate, even the children; there are few schools, and those that exist are too expensive for low-wage workers. Corporations such as Apple, Tesla, Samsung, and Daimler claim to follow regulations, but Kara demonstrates their duplicity and empty public relations rhetoric. In more than two decades of "research into slavery and child labor, I have never seen more extreme predation for profit than I witnessed at the bottom of the global cobalt supply chains." The author's well-written, forcefully argued report exposes the widespread, debilitating human ramifications of our device-driven global society. A horrifying yet necessary picture of exploitation and poverty in the Congo.

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Starred review from November 1, 2022
As the introduction of this significant and haunting title explains, cobalt is ubiquitous to modern life. An essential part of nearly every rechargeable lithium battery, it is a component of smartphones, laptops, electric vehicles, and more. Apple needs it. Samsung needs it. Tesla needs it. In ways big and small, the world needs cobalt. The problem is that like so many crucial elements over the past century, cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In that country today, as it has in the past, people labor under horrific conditions to fulfill a frenzied demand for something they have and the world wants. Cobalt mines are predominantly owned by Chinese companies who rely on pervasive local government corruption to cheaply extract cobalt at the high price of Congolese life, liberty, and safety. Kara, who traveled the country, entering mines and speaking to workers at every level of the labor chain, exposes slavery, child labor, forced labor, and other ongoing horrors and crimes. Extensively researched, this piercing narrative is muckraking journalism at its finest. There is no turning a blind eye to the hell that is cobalt mining. Kara will not allow that, and neither should anyone else.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.