Now in paperback: the powerful revelatory New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller
shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year Award. An unflinching
investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo's cobalt mining operation-and
the moral implications that affect us all. Cobalt Red is the searing first-ever exposé of
the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by
cobalt mining as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and
researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies
of the people living working and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining
practices Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas traced the supply chain of
child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants and gathered shocking
testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt. Cobalt is an
essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today the batteries that
power our smartphones tablets laptops and electric vehicles. Roughly 75 percent of the
world's supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo often by peasants and children in sub-human
conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without
participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. In this stark and
crucial book Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo-because we
are all implicated.
