"An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo's cobalt mining operation--and the moral implications that affect us all. Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposâe of the immense toll taken on the people and environmentof the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living,working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt. Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today, the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. More than 70 percent of the world's supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often by peasants and children in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophein the Congo. In this stark and crucial book, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo--because we are all implicated"-- - (Baker & Taylor)

An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo’s cobalt mining operation—and the moral implications that affect us all. - (Baker & Taylor)

The revelatory Pulitzer Prize finalist for General Nonfiction, New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller, shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year Award.

An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo’s cobalt mining operation—and the moral implications that affect us all.

Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt.

Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today, the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. Roughly 75 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often by peasants and children in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. In this stark and crucial book, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo—because we are all implicated.

SIDDHARTH KARA is an author, researcher, and activist on modern slavery. He is a British Academy Global Professor and an Associate Professor of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery at Nottingham University. Kara has authored several books and reports on slavery and child labor, and he won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. He has also taught courses on modern slavery at Harvard University, UC Berkeley, and Cornell University. He divides his time between the U.K. and the U.S. - (McMillan Palgrave)

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* As the introduction of this significant and haunting title explains, cobalt is ubiquitous to modern life. An essential part of nearly every rechargeable lithium battery, it is a component of smartphones, laptops, electric vehicles, and more. Apple needs it. Samsung needs it. Tesla needs it. In ways big and small, the world needs cobalt. The problem is that like so many crucial elements over the past century, cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In that country today, as it has in the past, people labor under horrific conditions to fulfill a frenzied demand for something they have and the world wants. Cobalt mines are predominantly owned by Chinese companies who rely on pervasive local government corruption to cheaply extract cobalt at the high price of Congolese life, liberty, and safety. Kara, who traveled the country, entering mines and speaking to workers at every level of the labor chain, exposes slavery, child labor, forced labor, and other ongoing horrors and crimes. Extensively researched, this piercing narrative is muckraking journalism at its finest. There is no turning a blind eye to the hell that is cobalt mining. Kara will not allow that, and neither should anyone else. Copyright 2022 Booklist Reviews.

Library Journal Reviews

Cobalt is essential to the lithium-ion rechargeable batteries that keep our iPhones, laptops, and other devices humming. But mining it has been horrifically damaging to the people and the environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as evidenced by this work. A senior fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, Kara collected testimonies from the Congolese people themselves. Winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize; a 50,000-copy first printing.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

In this tour-de-force exposé, Kara (Modern Slavery), a professor of human trafficking and modern slavery at Nottingham University, uncovers the abuse and suffering powering the digital revolution. Explaining that cobalt is "an essential component to almost every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today," and that the Katagana region in the Democratic Republic of Congo "holds more reserves of cobalt than the rest of the planet combined," Kara describes young children and pregnant women mining the metal by hand for a dollar a day. Predatory middlemen then sell the cobalt to foreign- and state-owned mining operations, who supply the materials for Apple, Samsung, and Tesla products. The details are harrowing: young men and boys are crushed in tunnel collapses, women and girls work in radioactive wastewater, villages are razed, and 14-year-olds are shot for seeking better prices. While corrupt government officials siphon the profits from the cobalt industry, ordinary Congolese "eke out a base existence characterized by extreme poverty and immense suffering." "Here," says the widow of one artisanal miner, "it is better not to be born." Throughout, Kara's empathetic profiles and dogged reporting on the murkiness of the cobalt supply chain are buttressed by incisive history lessons on the 19th-century plunder of the Congo for ivory and rubber, the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of democratically elected president Patrice Lumumba in 1960, and more. Readers will be outraged and empowered to call for change. (Jan.)