![]() "The DRC does not export finished products that are ready to be used by Apple, Samsung and the other big battery users in the world," said economist and activist Florent Musha. It results in an intermediary product composed mainly of hydroxide with a cobalt content of between 20 and 40 percent. Only an initial treatment of the ore is possible in DRC at present. The big names in this part of the process are foreign-owned: China Molybdenum, Rangold, the Swiss firm Glencore and MMG, an Australian-Chinese venture, and the Indian-controlled Chemical of Africa. ![]() ![]() The middlemen-predominantly Chinese and some Indians-then sell the raw material to operators for semi-processing. "The buyers have increased prices since the start of the year by five percent," said a miner called David, who was unaware that cobalt prices on the world market have reached such stratospheric heights. The cobalt component is determined by a machine called "Metorex" which is used by the buyer. Handwritten signs at the buying houses in Kolwezi show the varying prices offered for a tonne: "3 percent = $500" and "15 percent = $7,000". There are approximately 30 major kinds of cobalt-bearing rock and over 100 more where the metal is present in smaller quantities. Transactions in the buying houses depend on the purity of the ore. In Kolwezi, a mining town in southeastern DRC, Chinese entrepreneurs dominate the middle section of the market, purchasing the raw cobalt from miners and selling it on for refining. But in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which produced two-thirds of the global supply of the coveted metal last year, artisanal diggers called "creuseurs" sell their best-quality ore for about $7,000 a tonne, blissfully unaware of how much the global price has rocketed.
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