Hell on Rare Earth

The scourge of child and slave labour still plagues global commerce. Despite well-meaning corporate social responsibility policies, the technology, convenience and entertainment of middle and high income populations are still facilitated  by the gruelling sweat and suffering of the most exploited people on our planet.

In April 2024, Carl Beech and Mark Preston travelled to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with the aim of gaining access to an ‘artisanal’ quarry where critical minerals are mined in excruciating conditions by men, women and  children.

Why the hell would you go to hell?

In January 2023, Mark Preston, until recently an executive at a large international development charity, read an eye-opening book about the plight of slave and child miners in the DRC. So deep was the impact of reading this book that he committed to travelling to witness this great injustice and in the hope that some action could be taken to shine a light on this situation and to bring relief and hope for the future to those trapped in such scandalous conditions.  

Some months later, Mark asked Carl Beech, also a charity leader and entrepreneur, if he would join him for the trip. Carl didn’t hesitate in accepting the invitation. 

Through several conversations, a trustworthy contact within the government of the DRC made himself available to partner with Mark and Carl as they endeavoured to find a way into the mines. After an unsuccessful pursuit of a government-sanctioned path to enter the site, Beech and Preston and their in-country contact, elected to take a chance on a senior local official who offered access for a fee. 

Posing as potential investors, on 30th April 2024, after much delay and uncertainty, we spent 40 minutes touring an artisanal mining site just a few minutes drive from the Congolese town of Kolweze. Remarkably, we were able to film and photograph. Our interactions in the DRC and ultimately our visit to the quarry carried a high risk of arrest or even threat to life. While on the mining site, our small group was approached by armed, under-cover government agents who were more than a little agitated by the presence of 2 westerners who had no business being there. We would not encourage others to do what we did, but we do ask readers to consider how they might help us to sound the alarm about the appalling scenes we witnessed. It is almost unthinkable that such cruelty and oppression are possible in 2024 – but this is exactly what we saw. 

We could write many pages about what we saw on that day. But for the purpose of brevity, here are 3 striking observations  from what transpired to be a harrowing, unforgettable visit. 

Firstly, we saw hundreds of men, women and children mining key minerals and transition metals with no safety equipment and in punishing heat. These ‘artisanal miners’, (slaves would be a more accurate noun) receive no salary or benefits. They work over 10 hours per day, clawing away at dry rock, often risking their lives by descending into precariously structured amateur tunnels to recover small amounts of cobalt and copper which can be placed in a sack and sold to a buyer at the end of each day. These tunnels sometimes collapse, leaving men, women and children buried alive in a dry earth coffin with only the minerals of the rich for company. 

They have few if any tools. As we approached with our senior official, we were startled to see the miners run away en-mass, clearly in fear of the man with whom we approached this stone-age scene.  

We saw babies strapped to their young mothers as they toiled in rasping 30 degree temperatures. We could hardly believe the biblical scene before our eyes. We were perhaps even more astounded that we were allowed to photograph and film throughout our time at the quarry. For a period of 40 minutes, we were both aghast and sickened at the sights as well as acutely aware of the importance of documenting this distressing reality.

In the hope that we might access to such a place, we had used some spare luggage allowance to bring shoes, footballs and skipping ropes for the children – these were kindly donated by friends and family. Watching the elation of a boy – no more than 12 years old – bounce around for joy after receiving a simple pair of trainers was deeply humbling.  

Our second observation is that these artisanal miners worked in immediate proximity to industrial machinery and trucks. We were eye-witnesses to artisanal miners loading their mineral hauls onto industrial lorries. One mining engineer told us that in his estimation, 20% of all minerals coming from the mines in Kolweze are recovered by artisanal miners. A 60KWh electric vehicle contains 8kg of cobalt and 20kg of copper. By far the best quality and largest known deposit of cobalt anywhere in the world is to be found in Kolweze, DRC. In 2021, 72% of the world’s cobalt supply was mined in the DRC, and the most recent US Geological Survey reports that the DRC has one of the four largest copper ore reserves in the world. Cobalt and copper are  found together in the same dry Kolweze earth. We saw both of these minerals being hacked from the Kolweze ground by artisanal miners. If our engineer contact is correct, then an average EV, just like one driven by one of the authors, will likely contain minerals mined by artisanal miners. If supply chains were as clean as our largest companies would have us believe, would not artisanal mining be a futile and unrewarding activity? 

And in a further and final blow to our confidence in corporate governance and frankly, human nature, our final observation comes from a conversation with a senior mining engineer who has until recently worked for a large European mining company. He told us that the artisanal miners are dealt an even greater injustice as the weighing scales used middle-men who buy their haul of hard-earned minerals are unjustly rigged against them and in favour of a more profitable trade for themselves. The miners are also routinely told that their product lacks quality and this also reduces their remittence at the end of each day of back-breaking labour.    

As we left the DRC behind, the well-intended platitudes of corporate social responsibility, and the noble-sounding claims of ESG, rang violently in our ears as clanging cymbals and noisy gongs. We returned to the comfort of the UK certain that the true price of our devices is greater than our consciences can bear. 

There is virtually no scenario in which the world will cease using smartphones, laptops and EVs, and of course there is much that is good to be said of them, but the hell on rare earth we witnessed cannot be justified, however serious our climate predicament might be. 

To be clear, we do not oppose tech or EV’s, and climate science is far outside of our expertise. We do believe though that the children of Kolweze deserve better. 

Mark and Carl are in the process of establishing the  Freedom and Justice Partnership which will seek to offer a way out of artisanal mining for the families and children of Kolweze. The project will leverage technology and philanthropy to bring education and inclusion to the DRC’s child miners. 

You can accelerate the work of helping the DRC’s child miners by supporing via this Go Fund Me