Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

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There is no known deposit of cobalt-containing ore anywhere in the world that is larger, more accessible, and higher grade than the cobalt under Kolwezi. Although most people have never heard of Kolwezi, billions of people could not conduct their daily lives without this city. Governments offered commercial entities the rights to mine minerals from a parcel of land in exchange for a portion of revenues, a system that continues to this day. You will meet the artisanal, small scale miners who dig up the ore and sell it to a middleman for little money.

Consequently, countless children are compelled to work to support their families, especially in the mining provinces.The scramble for cobalt is just the most recent venture in the long history of exploitation in the Congo spanning as far back as the late 1800s.

He tells the story of Congo and cobalt and all that has happened to the author in a straightforward, easy to listen to way and I am so grateful to have received this audiobook; it made an already very difficult read a teeny bit easier. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. This book is fullEach of these devices have, at the very least, one element that inflicts extreme suffering and even death on the Congolese people. While I was expecting more of a human interest story and I felt bogged down with the amount of information presented, I did realize the importance of this book. After all, who was going to go all the way to the West Indies and prove otherwise, and even if they did, who would believe them? Out of an abundance of caution, I have used pseudonyms for my guides and the brave individuals whose testimonies are included in this book. In the Congo, cobalt ore occurs right at the surface, so child labor can be employed to scrape it up by hand.

Which is essentially demanding something be done for a social cause without risking anything myself.

Cobalt is an essential ingredient of the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power our smartphones, laptops and electric cars. This is the exact situation taking place today with a crucial mineral that will be as important to our future as fossil fuels have been to our past.

In this stark and crucial book, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo―because we are all implicated.

They fear tunnel collapsing, working in radioactive water, and speaking out against their meagre wages.