Forced evictions from DR Congo mineral-rich villages blights outlook
A general view of houses in the Gecamine District on the edge of the abyss of the Chinese mining company COMMUS, downtown Kolwezi, DRC on October 13, 2022. PHOTO | AFP
Kolwezi town in the Democratic Republic of Congo was nicknamed the cobalt capital of the world for having plenty of the mineral. The town in Lualaba Province in the south of the country is one of the reasons the DRC has nearly half the world’s cobalt reserves and accounts for 70 percent of global production.
There are other things that tick. The DRC also holds the 7th largest copper reserves in the world. And according to the IEA, copper is the mineral most widely used in “clean energy” technologies, while cobalt is an essential mineral in most lithium-ion batteries, an important element in the energy transitions the world is moving towards.
