Cobalt And Blood: The West’s Green Rush And Congo’s Unfinished Struggle – OpEd
Kinshasa’s streets hum with restless energy, a city suspended between hope and despair. In the east, rebels loot villages, their guns paid for by the minerals that power the world’s electric dreams. Beneath the soil lies a wealth vast enough to rebuild a continent—yet, for over a century, it has been the currency of its destruction.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is not merely a country; it is a parable of modern imperialism. From the severed hands of Leopold’s rubber plantations to Cold War puppet regimes and today’s green energy stampede, the script has changed, but the plot remains the same: wealth flows outward, suffering remains local. The West, quick to denounce China’s economic incursions into Africa, conveniently forgets its own role in scripting this unending tragedy.
From Leopold to Lumumba: A Nation Strangled in Its Cradle
In 1885, the Berlin Conference declared Congo a “free trade” zone under King Leopold II of Belgium. What followed was neither free nor trade but plunder at an industrial scale. By the time the world woke up to the horrors—forced labor, mutilations, and millions dead—Leopold had already rewritten history, selling his colony to Belgium as a “humanitarian” gesture. The new colonial rulers promised reform, but exploitation merely changed hands.
When Congo won independence in 1960, its young prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, spoke of forging a future on African terms. But his defiance of Western control was short-lived. Within months, Belgian-backed secessionists, corporate interests, and the CIA sealed his fate. He was tortured, shot, and dissolved in acid—an erasure so complete it seemed designed to obliterate the very idea of Congolese sovereignty. In his place, the West installed Mobutu Sese Seko, a despot who looted the nation’s wealth while keeping foreign investors satisfied.
The Green Energy Boom: A New Chapter of Exploitation
Today, the stakes are different, but the methods remain hauntingly familiar. Congo’s cobalt and copper are essential to the global energy transition—powering electric vehicles, solar grids, and the very batteries that fuel the West’s green revolution. The rhetoric is no longer about civilizing the natives or fighting communism; it is about sustainability, climate justice, and responsible sourcing. However, the empirical evidence contradicts this narrative.
Eighty-five percent of mining revenues never touch Congolese hands, funnelled instead through multinational giants like Glencore, Eurasian Resources Group, and China Molybdenum. The newly resurrected Lobito Corridor—a $1.6 billion railway project bankrolled by the US and EU—promises development but delivers extraction at scale, expediting cobalt exports to Western markets. American officials frame it as a counterweight to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, yet the fundamental logic remains unchanged: infrastructure is built not for Congolese prosperity but for easier access to its minerals.
The Human Cost of the Green Revolution
Meanwhile, the human toll is staggering. In Kolwezi, a cobalt hub in the south, thousands of children as young as six spend their days in tunnels, breathing in toxic dust, their hands blistered from clawing at the earth. “Without this, we starve,” says Amina, a 12-year-old girl whose family has known nothing but the mines.
Though the industry is supposedly “formalized,” it still relies on unregulated artisanal miners who lack protective gear, legal rights, or bargaining power. Multinational corporations sanitize their supply chains with selective audits, but reality is harder to obscure: cobalt, like rubber and ivory before it, remains too valuable to leave in African hands.
The violence that props up this system is equally strategic. In the east, militias like M23, armed with Western and regional support, terrorize communities to control coltan and gold deposits. The weapons may come from the US, but the justification echoes the past: stability, counterterrorism, economic opportunity. This playbook is old. Under Leopold, soldiers cut off hands to enforce rubber quotas; today, rebels use rape as a weapon to clear land for mining. The methods evolve, but the logic remains chillingly consistent.
Western Hypocrisy: Greenwashing Exploitation
The West’s response is, at best, cosmetic. Companies tout ethical sourcing standards while lobbying against stronger regulations. Tesla, for example, claims its cobalt is “conflict-free,” yet nearly half of its supply comes from Congo’s informal mines. The EU’s new Critical Raw Materials Act carves out exemptions for defense contractors, ensuring that moral considerations never obstruct strategic access.
Corporate pledges to clean up supply chains ring hollow when the world’s hunger for cobalt continues to fuel abuses. In the past, it was Leopold’s bureaucrats who ensured that Congo remained a reservoir of wealth for Europe. Today, it is investment banks, mining conglomerates, and Western governments that maintain the same dynamic—dressed in the language of free markets and development.
Congo’s Fight for Sovereignty
And yet, Congo resists. From the grassroots LUCHA movement organizing mine sit-ins to legal battles waged against multinational corporations, a new generation is pushing back. “We are not poor. We are being robbed,” says Prosper Mwembo, a lawyer challenging corporate land grabs. Pan-African leaders, invoking Lumumba’s legacy, are calling for resource nationalism—demanding a model that mirrors Bolivia’s lithium policy, where the state reaps the rewards of its own wealth. The African Continental Free Trade Area, still in its infancy, could provide a framework for breaking foreign monopolies, though the road remains fraught.
But resistance, as history shows, is dangerous. Félix Tshisekedi’s government, while outwardly promoting sovereignty, remains deeply compromised. His inner circle quietly moves millions into offshore accounts, and dissenters face swift repression. The echoes of Lumumba’s fate are never far away.
The West’s Green Revolution Cannot Be Built on Exploitation
Congo’s tragedy is not a local crisis; it is a microcosm of global exploitation. The world’s green transition, much like the industrial revolution before it, is built on the backs of the vulnerable. The West may no longer send gunboats to enforce its will, but its corporations, financial institutions, and political alliances ensure the same outcomes: resources extracted, wealth hoarded, suffering ignored.
If the world truly seeks justice, it must confront not just the symptoms of this exploitation—child labor, environmental destruction, rebel violence—but the system that perpetuates it. This means more than performative outrage or regulatory loopholes; it requires dismantling the structures that keep Congo’s wealth flowing outward. It means holding corporations accountable, cutting the strings of puppet regimes, and recognizing that sustainable energy cannot be built on the graves of the exploited.
Near Lumumba’s statue in Kinshasa, someone has scrawled in red paint: “They killed the man, not the dream.” The question now is whether the world will let that dream live—or once again crush it under the weight of its own greed.
