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Is your phone part of a curse that cannot be lifted [1]

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Date: 2023-07-14

China is "present" in 39 African countries and is the continent's biggest trade partner. Democracy Now! did a story on Wednesday revisiting a story on cobalt mining that reminds us how child labor still exists and that the “resource curse” remains in less developed nations cursed with colonial legacies. Unfortunately the same companies that do large scale mining also buy the materials dug by hand. Fortunately there are material substitutes for the cobalt minerals upon which 60% of the planet relies for heavy metals in products like EV batteries and cell phones.

“Cobalt Red”: Smartphones & Electric Cars Rely on Toxic Mineral Mined in Congo by Children The Democratic Republic of the Congo produces nearly three-quarters of the world’s cobalt, an essential component in rechargeable batteries powering laptops, smartphones and electric vehicles. But those who dig up the valuable mineral often work in horrific and dangerous conditions, says Siddharth Kara, an international expert on modern-day slavery and author of Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. In an in-depth interview, he says the major technology companies that rely on this cobalt from DRC to make their products are turning a blind eye to the human toll and falsely claiming their supply chains are free from abuse, including widespread child labor. “The public health catastrophe on top of the human rights violence on top of the environmental destruction is unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the modern context,” says Kara. “The fact that it is linked to companies worth trillions and that our lives depend on this enormous violence has to be dealt with.” www.democracynow.org/...

The resource curse, also known as the paradox of plenty or the poverty paradox, is the phenomenon of countries with an abundance of natural resources (such as fossil fuels and certain minerals) having less economic growth, less democracy, or worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources. Since 2018, a discussion has emerged concerning the potential for a resource curse related to critical materials for renewable energy.[14] This could concern either countries with abundant renewable energy resources, such as sunshine, or critical materials for renewable energy technologies, such as neodymium, cobalt, or lithium. Dutch disease, defined as the relationship between the increase in the economic development of a specific sector (for example natural resources) and a decline in other sectors, first became apparent after the Dutch discovered a huge natural gas field in Groningen in 1959. The Netherlands sought to tap this resource in an attempt to export the gas for profit. However, when the gas began to flow out of the country, its ability to compete against other countries' exports declined. With the Netherlands focusing primarily on the new gas exports, the Dutch currency began to appreciate, which harmed the country's ability to export other products. With the growing gas market and the shrinking export economy, the Netherlands began to experience a recession. This process has been witnessed in multiple countries around the world including but not limited to Venezuela (oil), Angola (diamonds, oil), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (diamonds), and various other nations. All of these countries are considered "resource-cursed".[19] DRC

Indeed, the concepts of neo-colonialism or neo-imperialism have been often used to describe Chinese interest in Africa. In his critique of the under-theorisation of Sino-African relations, A'Zami (2015, p. 725) exposes the contradictions in the concept of equal partnership propagandised by the CCP (unequal equal).

China and Neocolonialism in Africa Many analysts contend that China has become the new face of neocolonialism in Africa, having loaned tens of billions of dollars to the continent's governments while knowing that in all likelihood, many of those debts will never be repaid.

Siddharth Kara's "Cobalt Red" takes a deep dive into the horrors of mining the valuable mineral — and the many who benefit from others' suffering. Artisanal cobalt is bought on-site from the miners by roving traders, some former miners who’ve amassed enough capital to pay for a motorcycle or pickup, along with the bribes and permits necessary to pass through checkpoints. The traders bring the ore to depots known as maisons d’achat, (Buying houses) “small shacks that advertise with telltale pink tarps and painted names such as $1,000,000 Depot.” Although these are supposed to belong only to Congolese nationals, those Kara visits are operated almost exclusively by Chinese agents. At every step, laws and regulations are circumvented through bribery, while men with guns keep the miners in their place. The depots sell the artisanal ore to processing facilities, where it blends indistinguishably with industrially mined cobalt, and so, Kara writes, “there is no such thing as a clean supply chain of cobalt from the Congo.” www.nytimes.com/...

Critics argue that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has become a neocolonial power. Although it does not hold the kinds of colonies imperial powers used to lord over, it is said to conduct itself as one of them. Thus, for instance, according to Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, a China scholar, “the general features of China’s relations with many countries today bear close resemblance to the European colonial powers’ relations with African and Middle Eastern countries in the 19th and 20th century. Among other things, we witness countries exchanging their primary products for Chinese manufactured ones; China dominating the local economy; countries becoming heavily indebted to the PRC; China exerting greater weight on local political, cultural, and security dynamics; and Chinese abroad living in their own ‘expat enclaves.’” While Blanchard adds nuance to this narrative in his own analysis, many scholars appear to take it as common wisdom. thediplomat.com/...

A colonial gaze The colonial mindset of Cobalt Red makes for a disturbing read. While Kara accurately identifies many of the issues and actors at play, he greatly oversimplifies the analysis into binaries of victims and villains. The Congolese miners are portrayed as helpless and suffering, while most of the other characters possess a generally malevolent agency. Kara’s consistent depiction of Congolese people as victims is at odds with his emphasis on the importance of Congolese lives. He replicates the dehumanisation he calls out, referring, for instance, to the “subhuman existence” of miners, or how they “scavenged” for leftover minerals “like birds picking at bones”. Or his description of a woman named Jolie: Grief pressed hard against her slender frame. Her wide eyes were sunk deep within her face. The bones in her wrists seemed to stand up above the flesh. Her teeth were clenched like a skeleton’s. The skin on her neck had striated discolorations that appeared like ribbons. She breathed with a raspy cadence, but the voice that emerged was somehow reminiscent of the soft song of a nightingale. His overwrought attempts to evoke an emotional response resemble writing on Africa from decades ago. Like Joseph Conrad did with Heart of Darkness, he reinforces colonial dynamics even as he purports to call attention to them. This form of narrative, as Arundhati Roy explains, commits the very sin it condemns: Apolitical (and therefore, actually, extremely political) distress reports from poor countries and war zones eventually make the (dark) people of those (dark) countries seem like pathological victims. Another malnourished Indian, another starving Ethiopian, another Afghan refugee camp, another maimed Sudanese…in need of the white man’s help. They unwittingly reinforce racist stereotypes and reaffirm the achievements, the comforts and the compassion (the tough love) of Western civilization. They’re the secular missionaries of the modern world. This is a spot-on description of the white, colonial gaze of Kara’s book. It makes little difference that Kara himself is not white – people of colour are also capable of inhabiting this mindset. His book recognises the continuities between DRC’s modern mining industry and colonialism, but it fails to see how pathologising Africans was a tool of the colonists as well. www.opendemocracy.net/...

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