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

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of injuries, violence, death, and human trafficking. 

Cobalt Red is primarily an investigation into the working conditions of artisanal cobalt miners in Congo. Artisanal miners work on a piece-rate basis and generally do not have work contracts. Instead they work on a freelance basis and are paid per kilo of ore that they unearth. Although these small-scale operations are often organized around family units, their work accounts for a large amount of the cobalt mined in the world. Kara combines on-the-ground observations with interviews with miners and their families to paint a picture of the working conditions that they face. Kara emphasizes child labor, workplace hazards, and low wages as critical issues in the industry, highlighting the exploitation in artisanal mines.

Kara describes how many children in Congo are obligated to work at mining sites instead of attending school because their families need the money to survive and they cannot afford the school fees. Kara notes this issue could be quickly resolved if miners earned more money, but “no one up the chain considers themselves responsible for the artisanal miners, even though they all profit from them” (65). Kara interviews many child miners and describes their health challenges in vivid detail.