The Democratic Republic of the Congo is on a treasure of $ 24 billion buried in blood. Benead its soil is the largest cobalt reserve on Earth: the elementary vital element of electric vehicles, smartphones, laptops, solar panels and each promise of a “green future” that west swears. However, in the shadow of this energy revolution, the Congo is dying, by design and silent.
In the artisanal mines of Kolwezi and beyond, the children descend in hand sunk wells, wielding hammers and sacks, digging for cobalt under the threat of collapse, illness and death. Some are crushed by the earth that cannot control. Others suffocate toxic dust. Many never return.
This is not a supply chain. This is a war economy disguised as progress.
Western companies, from Apple to Tesla and Samsung, have built empires in Congolese cobalt. Their supply chains extend through Chinese refiners, multinational merchants such as Glencore and regional warning lords who have child labor work with rifles and bribes. Each transaction is a meat cut, disinfected through joint rooms, white white and green slogans.
An International Amnesty Report 2016 entitled “This is what we” He presented how the main technology companies obtain cobalt undermined by children in dangerous conditions in the south of the Congo. The UN Security Council report has documented repeated warnings of the UN group of experts to the left between cobalt commercial networks and armed groups that feed regional instability.
However, the world looks the other way, because the iPhone still works, the Tesla still drives and the climatic summit still smiles for the cameras.
Where is the International Criminal Court? Where is the protest of the so -called West Human Rights Champions? It is drowned in gains and geopolitical calculations. It is buried under the silence of energy forums, the exposures of green finance and ESG corporate reports that conveniently exclude black suffering.
The Congo is not just a resource zone, it is a first line of global apartheid. A black nation is being destroyed so that white and Asian markets can boost their clean future. The environmental movement, which boasts justice and sustainability, says nothing about black bodies buried the batteries. Greta Thunberg is silent. Greenpeace does not emit urgent alerts. The UN environment program knows, and does nothing.
Africa is once again a victim of the same imperial logic who carved its borders and looted its minerals a century ago. This is not just a Congolese crisis: it is a theme of the global southern, a problem of racial justice and a calculation for each nation affirms climate leadership while subcontracting their violence.
Congo cobalt is the 21st century oil. And like oil, it has light a violent and imperial economy where the death of millions becomes collateral damage due to the comfort of billions.
Meanwhile, IMF data reproduces that Congo’s mineral wealth has not been able to translate into development, with approximately 70% or the Congolese living room in extreme poverty despite the decades of extraction. These are not coincidences. They are political.
But there is another reason why this story has been buried: it implies everyone.
The future of energy, mobility and computer science is based on this mineral, and those who control it control the future. That is why the United States, China and Europe are running to press their control over the Congo. It is not a conflict zone. It is a battlefield in the new cold war.
The BRICS GAMBIT and the Global Mineral Carrera
As the West fights to ensure alternative chains of cobalt supply, a new axis is emerging, and is not based on Washington or Brussels. It is BRICS. With China in command of the cobalt refining, and Russia in investing strongly in the African infrastructure through private military and commercial associations, the global south is recalibrating the energy map.
The Initiative of Calls and Roads of China has injected billions in Congolese mining and logistics, offering infrastructure in exchange for access to minerals. Russia, using the proxies of the Wagner group, has forged quiet agreements with regimes in central Africa. And now, with Iran, Brazil and South Africa joining your hands through the BRICS+coordination, Africa’s mineral wealth is redirecting east.
West, in contrast, offers reports and sanctions of ESG, not excavators, roads or effective.
According to a 2023 analysis by the African report, the Congolese government has moved to review the main cobalt mining contracts with Chinese companies, looking for a most revenue and the strongest regulatory control. The report indicates that Beijing’s domain in refining and export infrastructure influences renegotiations. Experts warn that this could push the cobalt trade to more opaque corridors aligned with BRICS, weaving western efforts to enforce transparency and labor standards.
Green washing, hypocrisy and silence of the technological empire
Apple’s annual ESG report is boasted or “100% recycled cobalt” in certain product lines. Tesla affirms “Ethical supply protocols.” However, a 2023 investigation carried out by Al Jazeera in 2023 on child labor linked to Cobalt said that the main technological companies continue to face scrutiny of the cobalt supply chain linked to child labor and unregulated min conditions. Despite public commitments, Neinder Company has revealed a totally transparent supply map.
Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency (IEA) praises the global growth of lithium -ion batteries without as many as a line on Congolese working conditions.
This is not a green growth. It is the green washing in blood.
Human toll: not only statistics, but stories
According to Amnesty International and reports of Global Witness, children of such young as seven have been documented with heavy mineral bags, or in extreme conditions without protection equipment. Women have reported wide sexual violence in mining areas controlled by informal militias. Men frequently disappear in unregulated axes, with unregistered deaths and unnovated bodies. These are not isolated tragedies: they are the invisible cost of promoting the global economy.
The only figures that import tonnage reports sent to Zurich, Beijing and San José.
What happens after: a collapse or resistance forecast
If the world continues on this path, the so -called green transition will be remembered as a Black genocide on slow motion. A transformation marketed as progress is driven by death. And unless radical transparency, local property and global responsibility are forced to the supply chain, the Congo will have a scar in the conscience of civilization.
This is no longer about phones or cars. It is if the energy will be built on justice, or in the blood.
Cobalt is the new oil. And unless we change course, the 21st century will be as dirty, violent and imperial as the previous one.
