バッテリーに使われる金属で世界で7割のコバルトがコンゴで算出
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmqf0L52rD8
Photos: DR Congo’s faltering fight against illegal cobalt mines
DRC, the world’s largest cobalt producer, is struggling to impose structure among the artisanal miners in the country.
4 Nov 2022
At the bottom of a crater in southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, 5,000 diggers pack tightly together, swinging hammers and picks to prise chunks of speckled blue-gold ore from the earth.
In this scene of almost Biblical toil, the prize is cobalt – a strategic metal found in abundance in the central African nation.
But the huge pit in Shabara, about 45 kilometres (30 miles) from Kolwezi, is also a big headache.
About 20,000 people work at the mine, in shifts of 5,000 at a time. Mining operations have been ongoing for years here in flagrant violation of the DRC’s laws and in defiance of the site’s owner, a subsidiary of mining and commodities giant Glencore.
As the diggers gouge at blue-tinged soil, hundreds of dust-covered porters trudge up a ramp leading out of the pit, their backs bent under the weight of sacks of ore.
Marcel Kabamba, age 31, taking a break amid the sounds of clanging and the shouts of his fellow diggers, said he could make the equivalent of $200 on a good week – a small fortune in a country where most live on under $2 a day.
https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2022/11/4/dr-congos-faltering-fight-against-illegal-cobalt-mines
