Kolwezi's Cobalt Feeds the World's Electric Cars. Children Die Digging It.

The boy is twelve years old and his name is Pascal. He is standing at the edge of a pit thirty meters deep, carved into red earth outside Kolwezi, in Congo's southern Lualaba province. He has been here since dawn. It is now past noon and the sun has turned the pit into a furnace. Pascal wears plastic sandals and torn shorts. His hands are stained black from the cobalt ore he has been hauling in woven sacks all morning. Each sack weighs twenty-five kilograms. He is paid fifty cents per sack. Yesterday he earned three dollars. The week before, a tunnel collapsed on the other side of the pit and killed two men. Their bodies were removed by nightfall. By morning, new diggers had taken their places.

This is how the world gets its cobalt. Sixty percent of global supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Half of that comes from industrial mines operated by Glencore, the Swiss commodities giant, and China Molybdenum Company, known as CMOC. The other half comes from artisanal mines like this one, where an estimated 255,000 Congolese dig by hand with shovels, pickaxes, and bare fingers. At least 40,000 of them are children. The cobalt they extract ends up in lithium-ion batteries manufactured by CATL, LG Chem, and Samsung SDI. Those batteries power electric vehicles made by Tesla, Volkswagen, and BMW. They power iPhones made by Apple and laptops made by Dell.

The supply chain is documented. The deaths are not. Congo's Ministry of Mines does not keep casualty figures for artisanal sites. Neither does the UN. Hospital records in Kolwezi show 187 admissions for mine-related injuries in 2025, but most victims never reach a hospital. They are buried the same day they die.

The Two Systems

Kolwezi sits atop one of the richest mineral deposits on Earth. The Katanga Copperbelt holds an estimated 3.4 million metric tons of cobalt reserves, more than half the world's known total. In 2008, Glencore acquired a majority stake in Katanga Mining, which operates the Kamoto Copper Company mine complex. In 2016, CMOC paid $2.65 billion for a controlling stake in Tenke Fungurume, one of the world's largest copper-cobalt operations. By 2025, these two companies accounted for 34 percent of Congo's cobalt exports.

The industrial mines are fenced, surveilled, and ostensibly regulated. Glencore and CMOC publish sustainability reports. They describe due diligence procedures, environmental monitoring, and community investment programs. In 2024, Glencore reported spending $18.4 million on social infrastructure in Lualaba province, including two schools and a medical clinic. CMOC announced a $12 million investment in water treatment facilities. Both companies state that they do not employ children and that they source cobalt only from their own controlled operations.

But surrounding those fenced perimeters are hundreds of informal digging sites, locally called creuseurs' pits. Here, miners tunnel as deep as sixty meters without ventilation, shoring, or safety equipment. They work without contracts, insurance, or legal protection. When they extract cobalt-bearing ore, they sell it to traders who operate as middlemen. Those traders, in turn, sell to larger buying houses, which aggregate shipments and sell to Chinese processors. The processors refine the ore into cobalt sulfate and cobalt hydroxide, then sell it to battery manufacturers. At every stage, the origin becomes harder to trace.

What the Buying Houses Know

In 2019, International Rights Advocates filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court on behalf of fourteen Congolese families whose children were killed or maimed in artisanal cobalt mines. The defendants were Apple, Alphabet (Google), Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla. The complaint alleged that all five companies knowingly benefited from child labor in their cobalt supply chains. It named Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, a Chinese refiner, as a direct purchaser of artisanal cobalt, and cited due diligence reports showing that Huayou supplied cobalt to battery manufacturers serving all five defendants.

The companies moved to dismiss the case, arguing that they did not directly employ the children and could not be held liable for conditions at mines they did not own. In November 2021, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols rejected the motion to dismiss, allowing the case to proceed. In December 2023, the case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. The terms included no admission of wrongdoing.

Since then, all five companies have published updated supply chain policies. Apple's 2025 Supplier Responsibility Report states that the company "does not source cobalt from artisanal mines" and requires suppliers to undergo third-party audits. Tesla's 2025 Impact Report says that "100 percent of our cobalt is sourced from audited industrial operations." But audits conducted by Amnesty International in January 2024 found that traders purchasing from artisanal sites continued to sell into the same supply chains. The audits traced ore from three unregulated pits near Kolwezi to a Chinese-owned processing plant in Likasi, which sold refined cobalt to Huayou. Huayou, in turn, supplied CATL, which manufactures battery cells for Tesla.

The Eastern Alternative

Kolwezi is in government-controlled territory. Six hundred kilometers to the northeast, in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, a different mineral economy operates. Here, armed groups control artisanal mines extracting coltan, cassiterite, and gold. The UN Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo has documented this economy in annual reports since 2001. The most recent report, published in June 2025, names thirty-two armed groups engaged in mineral extraction or taxation of mining sites. The largest is the M23 rebel movement, which has controlled parts of Rutshuru and Masisi territories since November 2021.

The Group of Experts has repeatedly concluded that Rwanda provides military support to M23, including weapons, intelligence, and direct troop deployments by the Rwanda Defence Force. Rwanda denies this. But evidence presented in the 2024 and 2025 reports includes satellite imagery of Rwandan artillery positions inside Congolese territory, intercepted radio communications, and testimony from captured M23 fighters who identified their Rwandan commanders by name. The reports also document how M23 finances itself: by taxing trucks carrying coltan from mines in Rubaya, Bibatama, and Kitshanga. In 2024, M23 collected an estimated $14.6 million in mining taxes.

Coltan, or columbite-tantalite, is refined into tantalum, a metal used in capacitors for smartphones, laptops, and gaming consoles. The largest buyers are electronics manufacturers in China, Japan, and South Korea. Unlike cobalt, tantalum supply chains are subject to mandatory due diligence rules under the U.S. Dodd-Frank Act and the EU Conflict Minerals Regulation, which require companies to verify that minerals are not financing armed conflict. In practice, enforcement is weak. Ore mined in M23-controlled zones is trucked to Rwanda, where it is declared as Rwandan production and exported legally. Rwanda's official tantalum exports rose 240 percent between 2021 and 2024, despite the country having no significant tantalum deposits.

The Kinshasa Response That Never Came

In March 2024, President Félix Tshisekedi announced the creation of a state-owned enterprise, Entreprise Générale du Cobalt, to formalize artisanal mining and assert government control over the sector. The enterprise was to purchase ore directly from registered cooperatives, cutting out middlemen and ensuring traceability. It was allocated a budget of $87 million. By April 2026, it had purchased fewer than 400 metric tons of cobalt, less than one percent of artisanal production. The enterprise has no offices in Kolwezi. Its director, appointed in May 2024, has not visited Lualaba province.

Congolese civil society organizations have proposed an alternative model. In 2022, the Carter Center and AFREWATCH published a detailed plan for mine site formalization, including cooperative registration, child labor elimination programs, and a blockchain-based traceability system. The plan estimated a cost of $340 million over five years. It was endorsed by the Mining Ministry but never funded. International donors, including USAID and the European Commission, have pledged $124 million for artisanal mining programs in Congo since 2019. Most of that money has gone to technical assistance contracts with foreign consulting firms. None has funded direct mine site improvements.

What the Children Say

Pascal stopped going to school in 2023. His father, a subsistence farmer, could not pay the fees. The school, a crumbling concrete building with no roof on two of its four classrooms, charged $35 per term. Pascal began working in the pits the following month. He says he wants to go back to school. He does not believe he will. His older brother, Jean-Pierre, worked the same pits until a rockfall crushed his left leg in August 2024. Jean-Pierre, now sixteen, walks with a crutch and can no longer dig. He earns occasional money washing motorbikes in Kolwezi town center. The family received no compensation. There was no investigation.

In a settlement of mud-brick houses an hour's walk from the pit, this correspondent met eleven other children who work as diggers or ore carriers. The youngest is nine. Her name is Grace. She carries water to the diggers and is paid twenty-five cents a day. She has a persistent cough and says her chest hurts when she breathes. Her mother says Grace has had the cough for six months. The nearest clinic is twelve kilometers away and charges for consultations. They have not gone. Grace's mother knows that prolonged exposure to cobalt dust causes respiratory disease. She also knows that the family will starve if Grace stops working.

UNICEF estimates that child laborers in Congo's mining sector miss an average of 180 school days per year. Most never return to education. A 2023 study by the University of Lubumbashi tracked 500 child miners over three years. Fewer than eight percent re-enrolled in school after leaving the mines. The majority continued in informal labor. Twelve died during the study period, all from preventable injuries or illness.

What the Manufacturers Say Now

In February 2026, Tesla published its fourth annual supply chain transparency report. It states that the company sources cobalt from Australia, Canada, and "certified industrial operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo." It does not name those operations. Apple's 2025 report lists twenty-three cobalt smelters and refiners in its supply chain. It says that all underwent third-party audits in 2024 and that "zero non-conformances related to child labor were identified." Volkswagen's report states that the company "does not tolerate child labor in any form" and that it has "discontinued relationships with suppliers found to be non-compliant."

None of the reports explains how artisanal cobalt is excluded from supply chains when it is physically indistinguishable from industrial cobalt once refined, when it is purchased by the same Chinese processors, and when those processors aggregate shipments before selling to battery makers. The reports describe audits of smelters but not of mines. They describe due diligence at the top of the supply chain but not at the bottom, where the digging happens.

In March 2026, this correspondent sent detailed questions to Tesla, Apple, Volkswagen, Dell, and Alphabet. The questions asked whether the companies could guarantee that no cobalt from artisanal mines entered their supply chains between January 2024 and March 2026, and if so, how that guarantee was verified. Tesla and Alphabet did not respond. Apple, Dell, and Volkswagen replied with statements referring to their published reports and declining to provide additional detail.

What Happens Next

Global demand for cobalt is projected to grow by 280 percent by 2030, driven by electric vehicle adoption and grid-scale battery storage. The International Energy Agency estimates that meeting net-zero emissions targets will require 950,000 metric tons of cobalt annually by 2040, more than four times current production. New mines in Australia, Canada, and Indonesia will supply some of that growth. But Congo will remain the dominant source, because its reserves are unmatched and its extraction costs are the lowest in the world. As long as cobalt can be dug by hand for three dollars a day, industrial-scale alternatives cannot compete.

Pascal will be at the pit tomorrow. He will be there the day after. So will Grace, and forty thousand others like them. They will dig until they are injured, or until the pit collapses, or until they are old enough and broken enough that no one will pay them anymore. And every gram of cobalt they extract will enter a supply chain that leads, eventually, to a factory in Shenzhen or Shanghai, where it will be refined and sold and built into a battery that powers a car advertised as the future of clean energy.

The manufacturers will publish more reports. The auditors will conduct more audits. And the children will keep digging, because no one with the power to stop it has decided that they matter more than the metal.