A recently collapsed ‘slag’ dump in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)’s southeastern province of Katanga highlights the danger ordinary Congolese face amidst the country’s almost three-decade resource conflict involving foreign actors.
‘Slag’ refers to metal waste produced during smelting or refining.
As content creator Hadija (@readingafricana on Instagram) describes, artisanal miners without protective equipment use their bare hands to extract minerals to make a living. In November, viral videos described what many said was a collapsing ‘mountain.’ Based on the mining activities in the copper-belt region spanning northwest Zambia into south-eastern Congo, it appears to have been a massive dump of soil containing copper, not a mountain per se. According to Amnesty International, multinational companies’ industrial-scale mining of copper and cobalt has led to human rights abuses and forced evictions in Congo.
Many Congolese, the rightful owners of the country’s estimated $24 trillion mineral wealth, resort to scavenging for leftovers from soil dumps, at times losing their lives in the process.
The accelerating transition from fossil fuels to ‘clean energy’ has pushed demand for copper and cobalt, used to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles and mobile devices. DRC has the world’s seventh-largest reserves of copper and the world’s largest cobalt deposits.
Additionally, about 40,000 child miners toil away in operations run by giant tech companies that claim they make their products using ethically sourced minerals. However, in March, a US appeals court ruled 3-0 in favour of five tech companies—Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Apple, Dell Technologies, Microsoft and Tesla—absolving them of responsibility for unethical mining operations involving child labour in a case filed by former child miners and their representatives.
Video credit: Hadija (@readingafricana on Instagram)
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