The smartphone in your pocket, the electric vehicle in your neighbour's driveway, the laptop on your desk: all depend on cobalt, and roughly 70% of the world's cobalt comes from a single country, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Specifically, from the Lualaba and Haut-Katanga provinces in the DRC's south-east, where some of the richest cobalt deposits on earth were laid down by ancient geological processes.
The DRC's cobalt dominance should be a developmental bonanza. The metal trades at $25,000-35,000 per metric tonne, and the DRC produces roughly 130,000 tonnes annually, equivalent to $3-4 billion in gross output. Against a national GDP of around $55 billion, cobalt revenues are economically significant. But the translation of mineral wealth into broad-based development has, as in so many African resource contexts, been deeply incomplete.
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Artisanal Mining: The Ethical Complexity
An estimated 20-30% of DRC cobalt production comes from artisanal and small-scale mining, where individual diggers work informal pits under dangerous conditions. Images of child labour and tunnel collapses from sites around Kolwezi have driven reputational crises for global technology companies and automakers, prompting supply chain due diligence requirements from the EU, US, and multiple industry coalitions.
The responsible sourcing response has been significant. The Responsible Minerals Initiative and the DRC government's own formalisation programme have enrolled over 200 ASM sites in traceability and certification schemes. Battery manufacturers including CATL, Samsung SDI, and LG Energy Solutions have implemented blockchain-based cobalt tracking from mine to cell.
Price Volatility: The Structural Challenge
Cobalt prices fell 70% between 2022 and 2024, from over $80,000 per tonne to under $25,000, as a combination of new Indonesian nickel-cobalt production and battery chemistry evolution toward lower-cobalt formulations compressed demand expectations. This volatility devastates both large mining companies and artisanal miners who invested at the peak.
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