Cobalt mining for green energy risks women’s reproductive health in DRC

LUBUMBASHI, Democratic Republic of Congo — Our investigation begins at the Trinité Medical Center, less than 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, from the city of Kolwezi, in the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Just 100 meters (330 feet) away, a copper and cobalt industrial mine operates right next to people’s homes. The dust from the mine is kicked up by passing trucks loaded with ore and settles into the houses, even reaching as far as the health center. Sometimes, when the company guards are chasing illegal immigrants out of the mine, they throw projectiles that reach the medical center,” says Julie Nshinda, a nurse who runs the center. The sun blazes intensely while we’re reporting on Monday, July 22, 2024. We take a winding path that runs along the long concrete wall surrounding the huge open-air copper mine owned by the company COMMUS (Compagnie Minière de Musonoïe), a subsidiary of Zijin Mining, a multinational mining company headquartered in China. The area bustles with activity as vans loaded with bags of ore, extracted from the mine’s backfill by local artisanal miners, head off to be sold elsewhere. Higher up, heavy vehicles circulate: COMMUS dump trucks loaded with the same material. Later, workers and machines will crush these stones in the mining factory and transform them into copper ingots and a greenish powder: cobalt, a critical mineral in the lithium-ion batteries that power computers to renewable energy technologies. Welcome to the Golf Musonoie, a neighborhood next to downtown Kolwezi, also…This article was originally published on Mongabay