For communities in the region, artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is one of very few easily accessible sources of employment.ĪSM provides a livelihood for thousands in a country where many people have no job at all, yet it is associated with highly hazardous working conditions, systemic child labour, and unfair trading practices taking advantage of local workers selling to traders on the open market.Īs it stands, most artisanal miners lack the means and expertise to adopt safer mining practices. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has the world’s largest reserves of the metal but concerns have been raised about working conditions and child labour. In 2016, an investment firm co-founded by Hunter Biden helped a Chinese mining conglomerate get control of a large Congolese cobalt mine from an American company. Countries across the globe are pursuing zero-emission goals, which have created a bottleneck of critical rare earth elements (REE) such as cobalt, copper, and lithium. Most of the world’s supply of this highly sought-after mineral is produced in the Congolese province of Lualaba, and a significant proportion of that originates from artisanal mines. The Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was known to colonial adventurers as the Copper Belt. The demand for cobalt is increasing as its use in batteries and everyday technology grows.
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