When did you last check whether the company that made your phone can actually tell you where the cobalt in its battery came from?

Not where it says it comes from. Where it actually comes from.

Here is the number that should stop you mid-scroll: roughly 72% of the world’s cobalt supply originates in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s 2024 Mineral Commodity Summaries. And right now, the eastern DRC is burning. Armed groups have tightened their grip on mining territory in North Kivu province, supply routes are fractured, and the companies powering your devices are scrambling in ways they would rather you not notice.

This is the real story behind the headlines about EV growth, smartphone innovation, and the clean energy transition. None of it moves without cobalt. And almost none of it comes without a cost someone else is paying.

The Ground Truth Nobody Puts in the Press Release

Picture Jean-Baptiste Muhindo, a composite portrait drawn from accounts documented by human rights researchers at Global Witness and the UN Group of Experts. He works a hand-dug shaft near Rubaya, North Kivu, roughly 40 kilometers from an active conflict line. His tools are a chisel, a headlamp held together with electrical tape, and the knowledge that today’s militia checkpoint fees have gone up again. He earns the equivalent of $2 to $3 per day when the buyers show up. When they do not, he earns nothing. His ore will change hands four or five times before it becomes a battery cell in a device retailing for $999 in an American store. He will never see a cent of that margin.

Think of it this way: the supply chain is not a neutral conveyor belt. It is a series of choices about who absorbs the risk and who captures the profit. Jean-Baptiste absorbs the risk. Someone else captures the profit.

Why This Moment Is Different From the Last Crisis

The DRC has been unstable for decades. So why does 2024 and 2025 feel different to supply chain professionals?

Two reasons. First, the scale of displacement. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported in early 2024 that over 6.9 million people were internally displaced in the DRC, the highest figure on record. Mining communities in North Kivu are not just disrupted; in some areas they have effectively ceased to function under legitimate operators.

Second, China moved first. Beijing imposed export controls on germanium and gallium in 2023, and the signal was read clearly by every minerals desk in the world: critical mineral access is now a geopolitical tool. When eastern DRC supply tightened further through early 2025, the margin for Western companies that had delayed diversification suddenly shrank to nearly zero.

Did You Know: The DRC also holds an estimated 3.5 million metric tons of cobalt reserves, more than any other country on Earth, per USGS 2024 data. Australia is second with roughly 1.7 million metric tons. The gap explains why no one has found a quick replacement source.

Who Is Actually Scrambling (And Who Is Just Talking)

Let me be direct. Some of these companies are acting. Others are issuing statements and hoping the news cycle moves on.

Apple published its 2023 Conflict Minerals Report filed with the SEC, claiming 100% of identified cobalt smelters and refiners underwent third-party audits through the Responsible Minerals Assurance Process. That sounds thorough until you read the methodology footnotes and realize “identified” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Apple’s report covers the smelters it can trace. What happens in the informal trading chains before the ore reaches a smelter is where the accountability evaporates. Their legal exposure is managed. The sourcing problem is not.

Tesla announced years ago that it was reducing cobalt content in its battery chemistry, pivoting toward lithium iron phosphate cells for standard-range vehicles. That is a genuine engineering shift. Their premium vehicles still rely on cobalt-containing cells, and the sourcing paper trail in that tier has gaps a supply chain auditor would find genuinely uncomfortable. Tesla gets credit for direction; the gap between direction and arrival is still wide enough to matter.

MP Materials, the operator of the Mountain Pass rare earth mine in California, is the company American politicians love to photograph with. It produces rare earth elements, not cobalt specifically, but it represents the domestic production argument. Here is the catch: Mountain Pass currently ships a significant portion of its ore to China for processing because the U.S. lacks sufficient domestic separation and refining capacity. Reshoring the mine without reshoring the processing is political optics dressed up as industrial policy.

By The Numbers:

  • 72% of global cobalt supply: DRC (USGS, 2024)
  • 6.9 million internally displaced people in DRC: UNOCHA, 2024
  • 255,000 artisanal miners estimated active in DRC cobalt zones: OECD, 2023
  • U.S. cobalt import reliance: approximately 76% of consumption, per USGS 2024

If your supply chain cannot tell you where a mineral came from, why exactly should you trust anything else it tells you about sustainability?

Side B: The People the Press Release Does Not Mention

Here is what this actually means for you, and I say this as someone who dug into the actual research so you do not have to.

Artisanal and small-scale mining in the DRC employs an estimated 255,000 people in cobalt zones alone, according to a 2023 OECD report on responsible mineral supply chains. These miners are not anomalies. They are structural. The formal mining sector cannot meet demand without them, and the traceability systems designed to exclude “unverified” ore effectively push those workers deeper into informal, unmonitored channels.

The same 2023 UN Group of Experts report on the DRC documented that a significant proportion of workers in unregulated artisanal mining sites are children, according to a 2023 UN Group of Experts report on the DRC, with some sites in South Kivu reporting that minors made up more than 40% of the workforce in spot surveys. That is not a rounding error. That is a policy failure wearing a supply chain audit as camouflage.

And who benefits from you not knowing this part? Every company that files a conflict minerals disclosure thin enough to satisfy the SEC’s Form SD requirements while leaving the hard questions about artisanal supply unanswered.

Warning: “Responsibly sourced” does not mean conflict-free. The Responsible Minerals Initiative’s conformant smelter list tells you an auditor visited a processing facility. It does not tell you what happened in the 200 kilometers of informal trading routes before the ore arrived there. Read certifications critically, not gratefully.

Diversify Fast: The Strategy Everyone Agrees On and Nobody Has Actually Done

Australia, Canada, and the Philippines hold significant cobalt reserves. The problem is that building a mine from greenfield exploration to production takes 10 to 16 years on average and costs billions of dollars in capital before a single kilogram ships, a timeline that makes today’s supply crunch look like a short-term problem with a very long-term solution.

Battery recycling is the faster play. The IEA estimated in its 2023 Critical Minerals Report that recycled cobalt could meet up to 12% of demand by 2030 if collection infrastructure scales aggressively. That is meaningful but not sufficient. The math still leaves a gap that someone, somewhere, is going to fill with DRC supply, conflict context included.

Your Next 3 Steps

You have read this far, which means you are already more informed than most consumers. Now do something with it. Each of these takes under 10 minutes.

Step 1: Go to sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar, search your phone or laptop manufacturer’s name, and filter for Form SD filings. This is their legally required conflict minerals disclosure. Look at the methodology section and ask one question: does it cover artisanal supply chains or only identified smelters? The answer will tell you more than their sustainability homepage ever will.

Step 2: Check whether your EV or electronics brand is listed as a participating company on the Responsible Minerals Initiative at responsiblemineralsinitiative.org. Being listed means they have committed to the process. Then check whether their specific smelters appear on the conformant smelter list, not just the company name. There is a meaningful difference between a brand joining a program and that brand’s actual supply chain meeting the program’s standards.

Step 3: Contact your U.S. House representative about the Critical Minerals Mining and Recycling Research Act using 5Calls.org. The site gives you a script and connects you directly. Ask your representative specifically to push for mandatory artisanal mining traceability requirements in any critical minerals legislation, not just domestic production subsidies. Production subsidies without traceability requirements solve the political optics problem, not the human cost problem.

The cobalt in your pocket has a story. Most of the people who sold you the device it powers are counting on you never asking what that story is.

Ask anyway.