Conflict minerals, child labor, and luxury goods
By Dr. James E. Sulton Jr.
JA International Correspondent
When customers in the United States unlock a smartphone or plug in an electric vehicle, they do not consider from where the essential components came. These products’ origin often began in the copper-cobalt belt of the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) or the hills of North Kivu province.
There, men, women, and children dig by hand for minerals that make nearly everyone rich except them. The arrangement is not new. We know it as colonialism. Today’s version is only a modern variation of nineteenth century practices: Africa supplies raw materials and labor, and value is captured elsewhere.
The term “artisanal mining” sounds almost quaint. In practice, it means small-scale, informal mining done with picks, shovels, and bare hands, usually with no contracts, no protective equipment, and little regulation.
The DRC produced roughly 73 percent of the world’s mined cobalt in 2025, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Most of it comes from industrial operations, but an estimated one-fifth is dug informally. An analysis by Global Trade Watch found none of the 10,000 to 15,000 tunnels dug by artisanal miners have supports, ventilation shafts, or other safety measures. Collapses are routine.
UNICEF estimates approximately 40,000 children work in mines across southern DRC. Amnesty International has documented children as young as seven at cobalt sites. In February 2026, testimony before a U.S. House Foreign Affairs subcommittee put the number at no fewer than 40,000 and possibly as many as 200,000 children under age 14.
Pay depends on output: no minerals, no money. Adult diggers earn about $2 to $3 on a good day, and children earn up to $2.50 a day.
In eastern DRC, war makes conditions worse. Rubaya sits on deposits of coltan, tin, and tungsten. Congolese officials say a disaster there in March 2026 killed 200 people, including 70 children.
In a September 2026 briefing, Amnesty International documented forced labor and torture by the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group, which controls the site, along with the killing of 18 miners. The briefing also showed how coltan is smuggled into Rwanda. United Nations investigators estimate that M23 collects at least $800,000 a month from the coltan trade.
The numbers are striking. Cobalt traded near $34,620 per ton on October 20, 2026, or about $35 per kilogram. A smartphone battery holds roughly 8 grams of cobalt, and an electric vehicle about 10 kilograms. That makes the cobalt in a phone worth about 28 cents, while an iPhone 17 Pro starts at $1,099, nearly 4,000 times as much. The cobalt in an EV is worth around $350. The average new EV sold for $55,879 in September 2026, so the cobalt comes to well under 1 percent of the sticker price of the car.
Even that small raw value rarely reaches the digger. Artisanal ore passes through local depots, traders, exporters, refiners, and manufacturers, and each takes a cut. Miners interviewed by Amnesty International France said they were forced to sell only at mine depots, where they alleged the scales and grade tests were rigged.
The historical parallels are hard to ignore. From 1885 to 1908, King Leopold II ran the Congo Free State as his personal possession. He imposed rubber quotas, enforced by mutilation and death, to supply a booming world market for automobile tires. Historians debate the death toll, but Jan Vansina and Adam Hochschild estimate roughly 10 million people died.
A century ago, Congolese labor produced rubber for car tires. Today, it produces cobalt for car batteries.
What has carried over is less the open brutality than the way value is divided. Ore leaves Africa raw, and the refining, manufacturing, branding, and profit happen abroad.
Kinshasa has begun to push back. It suspended cobalt exports in 2025, then imposed quotas driving prices sharply higher. Analysts say the policy raised the payable value of Congolese cobalt hydroxide from about 55 percent of the metal price to 100 percent. That shifted profit away from foreign refiners and toward Congolese producers and the state. Whether those gains reach the diggers is another question.
Real reform requires enforceable supply-chain due diligence instead of voluntary pledges. It also requires formal artisanal zones with safety standards (at last count, only three officially recognized zones were operating, according to Cambridge University Press), investment in local refining, and pricing that returns value to mining communities.
Battery recycling and cobalt-free batteries may ease demand, but they will not undo the inequity already built into the global economy.
The devices in our pockets and driveways are marketed as symbols of progress. For the children of Kolwezi and Rubaya, that progress still looks a great deal like the past.
