Child labor and collapsing tunnels in DR Congo's cobalt mines are bringing electric cars and other vehicles into disrepute. But the push for transparency along the country's cobalt supply chain is met with resistance.
"As soon as they reach the vein of ore, they start extracting the raw materials," says Kangenda who is decked out in a high-visibility vest as he conducts his daily patrol of the site which has 59 shafts. "If there are incidents, we report them to our partners. We try to correct them so that the supply chain is internationally acceptable," Kangenda explains.Kangenda documents everything he observes on his patrols into a computer program. The mine is one of eight that are part of RCS's Better Mining program, which aims to continuously monitor and support the improvement of conditions on and around artisanal and small-scale mine sites.
But it's more difficult to stop children selling the raw ore they find by sifting through rock scraps on-site to the Chinese middlemen who control the majority of the trading depots. He oversees as many as 5,000 miners, who work on the site. They aren't formally employed. Rather, they work together to excavate a tunnel and pool their earnings.But the issue of death hangs over the mine's operations:
"This is a continuous effort in which people come to understand that within perhaps a month or a year they have to abandon behaviors that they have been doing for five or ten years. It's not always easy," he says from his air-conditioned office in Kolwezi.Once the ore is trucked off for further processing, it can be mixed with material from other mines with less transparency