A while ago, after the post I wrote prompted by my return visit to Zambia, a reader suggested I might like to read Cobalt Blue: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. The relevant bit of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is right next to Zambia, and the two countries share the geological Copperbelt, rich in copper (biggest export for both countries) and cobalt. There is now huge demand for cobalt as a component in lithium-ion batteries, and more than half the world’s fast-growing output currently comes from the DRC. It is no secret now (various reports in recent years) that, shall we say, labour conditions in cobalt-mining in the DRC are not the best. The focus of attention is around so-called artisanal mining, in which rocks with cobalt ore are gathered, broken, washed etc by hand (large scale industrial mining isn’t in focus at all). Wages (or earnings) are low, safety standards usually barely existent, injury and death rates apparently quite high,
The author of the book, Siddarth Kara is a professor in human trafficking and modern slavery at Nottingham University in the UK, and the book is based on several trips to the Katanga region of the DRC, with observations and interviews (often in some secrecy, and now with anonymity, given the very real risks that interviewees in particular often seemed to be running in talking to him.). Much in the book is pretty harrowing.
The author’s focus seems to be on big international companies that are keen to shield themselves from reputational risks and loudly proclaim their commitment that (for example) no child labour is being used in the mining of the cobalt that is so necessary to the batteries that power their products (be it phones, EVs, lawnmowers, or whatever). It is pretty demonstrably clear that any such claims are simply false, and are knowably false (any company board or executive that claims a child-labour free supply chain is almost certainly either consciously lying or consciously choosing not to look any more closely). The amounts of cobalt obtained from rocks collected, broken etc by “artisanal” labour are not marginal, peripheral or incidental. They seem to be a significant chunk of total Congolese production. As the book explains, it is often more economic to get some of the higher grade cobalt-rich rocks this way (lots are very near the surface) than through more traditional industrial processes. The conventional mining and processing companies are typically the buyers for these rocks.
If Kara is harsh, and probably fairly so, on the companies producing products that use cobalt, there are glimpses of recognition in the book that the responsibility runs more widely. He’d really like to be able to tell a relentless tale of the unremitting evils of global capitalism, destroying Congo since the first Portugese explorers arrived in the 15th century, on through the simply-evil phase of Leopold’s turn-of-the -20th-century Heart of Darkness immensely lucrative private estate. Colonialism and all that.
But he does recognise that a whole variety of interests are at work, and that successive Congolese governments and their factotums have scarcely shown (or show today) much sign of unremitting dedication to advancing the interests of the Congolese people. And while Patrice Lumumba is his hero, heroes who were killed before their own record in government was really able to be tested are handy rhetorical devices but not much more.
The DRC is staggeringly rich in natural resources. And yet (perhaps partly because of it?) it is one of the worst failures of modern post-colonial Africa. Here is real GDP per capita for the sub-Saharan African countries, from the IMF’s latest WEO database.
Africa is the world’s poorest and least productive continent, but there are poor performers, really bad performers, and then countries like the DRC – 4th lowest per capita incomes anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa. As it happens, the three poorest countries happen to border the DRC, but so do Angola, the Republic of Congo, Zambia, and Tanzania which are in the top half of countries in the chart.
Some will want to blame empire and colonialism for Africa’s overall performance, but it was a widespread story across Africa, and simply cannot credibly explain why the DRC has done so poorly. Independence came 63 years ago now, and actually – evil as earlier Leopold regime was – in the late 1950s what is now the DRC had fairly high rates of literacy and average GDP per capita is estimated to have been not much lower than Zambia or Zimbabwe or Kenya. South Korea wasn’t that much richer. Then.
For that longer-run of data we can turn to the Maddison Project database.
Barely two-thirds of the real GDP per capita of 1960. Only five countries seem to have gone backwards over that period, and not even Haiti has done as badly as the DRC. To the extent such long-term comparisons across countries make sense, real GDP per capita in the DRC now is about a fifth that of New Zealand 150 years ago.
It isn’t all bad. Life expectancy is about 50 per cent greater than it was for the hugely increased population
But the material living standards for ordinary people have gone backwards over 60+ years.
And this is a dimension that got not a mention in Kara’s book. I’m not really criticising him for not writing a different book – his real focus is companies in the West – but consider that the countries ranked 2-5 in cobalt production last year were Indonesia, Russia, Australia and Canada. You don’t hear alarming stories about artisanal cobalt mining in those countries – even in neighbouring, much richer, Zambia artisanal mining seems to be mostly for gemstones – not first and foremost because such activities would be regulated out of existence, but because they are priced out of existence. Workers in Australia or Canada have much more remunerative options than grubbing for cobalt-bearing rocks at, for many in the DRC, something like US$1 a day (a bit more if you take risk of tunnelling underground in tunnels with few/no supports for veins of cobalt). In the DRC they seem to not have such options. That is what long-term mismanagement, misgovernment, and productivity failure means (in extremis). Given the chaos and failure around them people do what they have to do, for themselves and for their children, even when that means children having to drop out of school very early, even when injury, illness, sexual assault, even death are foreseeable and realistic risks.
I’m not sure what Cobalt Red’s author would propose in response to the situation uncovered in his book. There are suggestions that the artisanal mining be properly regulated, regular wages paid, safety standard and equipment put in place and provided. Which sounds all well and good, but this is the deeply corrupt PRC where most often the financial interests of those around those in power, or able to pay them off, are really what matter. Kids are taken out of primary school mostly not because parents don’t want them to have schooling but because state revenue is used for other things (personal enrichment) – often never reaching the state coffers – rather than more-conventional basics. Rules already in place are blatantly circumvented, for just a few dollars. When your country has been gotten into such a deep mess by its own leaders, it is very hard to dig yourself out again, and quite impossible for other countries to do it for them (even more so, when as the DRC is, the rivalry between the West and China is very much in play, Chinese companies doing most of the cobalt processing). Heart-wrenchingly sad as it for ordinary people of the DRC.
I’m not one of those who ever runs the line about people being “lucky” to be born in particular places or times. Cultures are built and sustained, not just magicked into existence. We are heirs to what our ancestors built or adapted. But reading the book is a helpful occasional reminder that for all the faults, failings and frustrations of New Zealand, we shouldn’t take lightly, or dismiss readily, the cultures and cultural disciplines that still put us in top quartile of countries in terms of GDP per capita, that mean we can be pretty confident that losing parties will turn over the keys of office when they lose elections, that public officials mostly can’t be bought, and so on.
