SPECIAL FEATURE
Substitute diamonds for any of the other natural resources Africa boasts and you have a mini-history of the continent’s economy over the last couple of centuries: outside nations find and extract a resource, becoming rich at the expense of the local population.
PHOTO: Magnifical Productions/ Shutterstock.com
distinction belongs to the Democratic Republic of Congo, which accounted for 130,000 tonnes, or roughly 70 percent of the world’s supply. DR Congo is so far ahead in the cobalt extraction game that the second highest country, Indonesia, “only” managed to dig out 10,000 tonnes of the mineral. DR Congo certainly isn’t going anywhere anytime soon as the king of cobalt. The central African nation sits
on about 4 billion tonnes worth, roughly half of the global reserves estimated by the USGS. Mining cobalt also goes hand in hand with mining copper or nickel
(led by Indonesia), yet for all that potential DR Congo isn’t the world’s top producer of refined cobalt; that accolade belongs to China, which mostly imports partially refined cobalt from DR Congo and processes
ESSENTIAL MINERALS FOR A DIGITIZED WORLD
Cobalt The leading use of this adaptable mineral is in rechargeable battery electrodes
Copper Copper is one of the best
Lithium This soft metal is used in
Nickel As well as its use in batteries, nickel is essential for building infrastructure and chemical production
conductors of electricity and is widely used in computer chips and circuit boards
rechargeable batteries for mobile phones, laptops, digital cameras and electric vehicles
PHOTOS (left-right): RHJPhotos/Shutterstock.com; Zelenskaya/Shutterstock.com; Björn Wylezich – stock.adobe.com; EVGEIIA/Shutterstock.com
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