From Congo’s copperbelt to global battery factories, cobalt exposes a troubling gap between the strategic security governments demand and the protection mining communities receive.
The future has a mineral footprint. Before an electric car reaches a showroom, before a battery stores renewable electricity, somebody must extract the materials that make those technologies possible. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), that promise of technological progress can arrive with a very different demand: surrendering a home, accepting environmental risks or working in conditions that offer few protections.
“We did not ask to be moved,” Edmond Musans told researchers working on an Amnesty International investigation into mine expansion in Kolwezi. His testimony captures a central question confronting the global minerals economy: when a resource is classified as critical to national security and technological progress, whose interests bear the greatest cost?
Amnesty International’s 2023 investigation documented allegations of forced displacement and inadequate compensation linked to copper and cobalt mining in the DRC, particularly around Kolwezi. The findings placed a human dimension on a supply chain increasingly presented in strategic terms.
Cobalt offers a revealing case. Used in several rechargeable battery chemistries, the mineral connects African deposits to global manufacturing and increasingly urgent national-security calculations. Its journey demonstrates how technological progress can create extraordinary commercial value while leaving some extraction communities struggling to secure basic rights.
The commercial trail begins with Kamoto Copper Company (KCC), a major copper and cobalt operation in Lualaba province. Glencore holds a 75 per cent stake in KCC, while the company produces cobalt hydroxide, an intermediate material that undergoes further processing before entering battery supply chains. KCC’s 2024 Responsible Supply Chain Due Diligence Report states that its mineral feedstock comes entirely from its own production, according to documentation published by Glencore.
The next stage illustrates how far the material can travel from the communities where it is extracted. In February 2020, Glencore announced an agreement with Samsung SDI under which it would supply the battery manufacturer with up to 21,000 tonnes of cobalt contained in hydroxide between 2020 and 2024. The cobalt was to come from Glencore’s industrial operations in the DRC, while both companies committed to annual independent audits against responsible-sourcing standards.
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The agreement establishes a documented commercial connection between Congolese industrial mining and a major global battery manufacturer. It does not, however, establish which KCC-origin material ultimately entered specific Samsung battery cells. Public disclosures do not provide that final level of traceability. That distinction matters when consumers, investors and governments increasingly demand proof that critical minerals have been responsibly produced.
The manufacturing pathway is clearer. Cobalt is refined into chemicals that can be used in the production of battery precursor and cathode materials before cells are manufactured. Samsung SDI’s responsible-cobalt supply-chain documentation describes these successive stages and the range of companies involved. Each transformation creates additional commercial value, but every additional intermediary can also make accountability more difficult.
The human cost extends beyond any single commercial chain. Across the DRC’s cobalt sector, industrial mining and artisanal mining present different risks. Evidence of abuse at one operation cannot automatically establish wrongdoing at another. Equally, purchasing cobalt from an industrial mine does not resolve every question surrounding labour conditions, community rights or environmental protection.
Also read; Africa’s Critical Minerals: From Resources to Industry
The U.S. Department of Labor’s 2024 findings on the worst forms of child labour identified dangerous child labour in Congolese cobalt mining. The finding points to a challenge that cannot be solved simply by excluding children from formal supply chains. Effective intervention also requires access to education and measures that address the household income lost when children are removed from hazardous work. Without those measures, exclusion from supply chains can push exploitation further from view rather than eliminate it.
For adult workers, responsible investment should mean enforceable safety protections, fair contracts, freedom to organise and complaints mechanisms that operate without retaliation. Those protections should extend to contractors as well as permanent employees. Companies cannot credibly claim responsible sourcing while the people performing some of the most difficult work in the supply chain remain inadequately protected.
Industrial expansion creates another pressure: competition over land.
Amnesty International and the Congolese organisation Initiative pour la Bonne Gouvernance et les Droits Humains (IBGDH) documented displacement around copper and cobalt projects in their 2023 investigation. At the COMMUS operation in Kolwezi, residents reported inadequate consultation and compensation that they considered insufficient to replace their homes. COMMUS disputed aspects of the findings, stating that compensation exceeded market prices and that it had sought to improve communication with affected communities. Importantly, these findings concern operations separate from KCC and should not be presented as evidence of wrongdoing by KCC.
Environmental risks add another layer to the debate. A 2018 study published in Nature Sustainability examined residents of a Kolwezi neighbourhood transformed by artisanal mining and found substantially higher cobalt concentrations in blood and urine than among comparison populations. The differences were particularly pronounced among children, alongside evidence of exposure-related oxidative DNA damage. The research establishes significant exposure concerns, although it does not predict the future health of every child living in a mining area.
For Washington, the issue extends beyond environmental and labour standards. Critical minerals are increasingly treated as a national-security concern. In a January 2026 proclamation, President Donald Trump accepted Commerce Department findings that dependence on imported processed critical minerals and derivative products posed a threat to U.S. national security. The proclamation directed negotiations with trading partners and contemplated additional measures, including possible minimum import prices.
The concern is not without economic basis. The International Energy Agency reported that China accounted for 78 per cent of global cobalt refining in 2024. That figure illustrates an important vulnerability in the critical-minerals economy: access to ore does not automatically guarantee access to usable battery material. Processing capacity, technical expertise, infrastructure and reliable commercial relationships can be just as strategically important as ownership of mineral deposits.
This creates a policy danger. Strategic urgency can become a justification for overlooking local harm.
Governments supporting mines, refineries and purchasing agreements should therefore attach measurable requirements to critical-mineral partnerships. These should include independently verified labour protections, transparent environmental monitoring, meaningful consultation with affected communities and accessible mechanisms for remedy. Financing should reward demonstrable improvements and require corrective action when standards are not met.
Development must also be part of security.
Partnerships with the DRC should support electricity, skills, infrastructure and commercially viable processing alongside transparent revenues and stronger public institutions. The objective should not simply be to diversify where the world obtains its critical minerals. It should be to ensure that the countries and communities producing those minerals capture a greater share of the value created from them.
Technology can reduce some of the pressure. Lithium iron phosphate batteries, for example, do not require cobalt, while recycling can recover materials already circulating through the global economy. Yet the emergence of alternative technologies does not remove the responsibility to address present abuses. Samsung SDI itself describes a battery portfolio that includes both cobalt-containing and cobalt-free chemistries, reflecting different technological requirements and applications.
The decisive test for policymakers is therefore not simply whether mineral partnerships secure reliable supplies. It is whether those partnerships improve conditions where extraction begins.
A secure critical-minerals supply chain requires more than protected factories, dependable shipments and strategic stockpiles. It requires workers who can refuse dangerous conditions without losing their livelihoods, families who can retain their homes or receive genuinely adequate compensation when relocation is unavoidable, and communities with the power to demand clean surroundings and meaningful participation in decisions affecting their future.
The mineral transition is being sold as a pathway to a cleaner and more technologically advanced world. For the communities that provide its raw materials, the measure of that progress should be equally clear: the future should carry their progress too.
