Child workers at an artisan mine in Kailo, DRC. Julien Harneis, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This article was submitted as part of the Global Voices Climate Justice fellowship, which pairs journalists from Sinophone and Global Majority countries to investigate the effects of Chinese development projects abroad. Find more stories here.

When Chinese President Xi Jinping stood before African leaders at the 2024 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing in September and promised a greener, more sustainable future, the applause was loud. China pledged USD 50 billion over three years to develop a clean energy grid and green infrastructure across the continent. Official Chinese media painted the move as a win-win for global climate justice and Africa’s development. But thousands of miles away, in the dusty mining towns of the Democratic Republic of Congo, that promise rings hollow.

Cobalt is often found alongside copper and malachite (the blue-green stones). Therefore, these supply chains and the related risks are often closely linked to each other. Image from Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0

The African continent holds a significant share of the world's natural resource reserves. The continent's subsoil contains large quantities of gems and minerals such as gold, diamonds, platinum, chromium, uranium, copper, colton, cobalt, and more.

Beneath the red earth of southern DRC lies more than 70 percent of the world’s known cobalt reserves — a mineral so vital to modern batteries that it's been dubbed the “new oil.” Indeed, cobalt is a crucial resource used in nearly everything with rechargeable lithium batteries, from smartphones and computers to electric vehicles and manufacturing equipment. Over the past decade, Chinese companies have come to dominate cobalt mining in the DRC, controlling extraction, processing, and export. What’s left behind is a wasteland.

A range of smartphones released in 2024. Cobalt is a crucial component in cell phone batteries. Image from YouTube. Fair use.

Apart from cobalt, the DRC is facing a number of other challenges, including decades of political instability due to its colonial past and violence driven by insurgency groups. These factors, plus the environmental consequences of dangerous, unchecked mining, are making life abjectly miserable in some parts of the DRC.

Resource management in the DRC

A network of “artisanal mines” where residents dig for minerals in Rubaya, DRC. Photo taken by MONUSCO Photos, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Despite being the world's leading producer of cobalt, with 70 percent of the market share, the exploitation of this globally scarce resource does not fully benefit the Congolese.

The sector is plagued by smuggling and corruption. Some Congolese earn a living through artisanal cobalt mining, where the workers aren't officially employed by a company and mine independently, often by hand, then sell their collections to larger mining companies. These artisanal miners are mostly found in very remote and isolated areas where the ore exists, while state oversight is scarce, meaning safety protocols are nonexistent, and child labor is rampant.

Children working in an “artisanal mine” in the DRC. Julien Harneis from Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In one of its publications, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) estimates that many of the mining companies present in the DRC, including over 140 Chinese companies, are involved in this organized smuggling and illegal exploitation:

En raison de l’instabilité du pays, de nombreuses sociétés étrangères titulaires de licences minières ne produisent pas elles-mêmes le cobalt, mais s’approvisionnent auprès des mineurs artisanaux. Environ 150 000 à 200 000 mineurs artisanaux exploitent les gisements de cobalt en RDC et un million de personnes dépendent de leurs revenus.

Due to the country's instability, many foreign companies holding mining licenses do not produce cobalt themselves, but source it from artisanal miners. Some 150,000 to 200,000 artisanal miners exploit cobalt deposits in the DRC, and 1 million people depend on their income.

Artisinal miners account for 10–20 percent of the country's copper and cobalt exports, while the rest of the yield comes from more advanced industrial sites like the one featured below.

An industrial mining site in the DRC. Image from Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0

Most of the country's cobalt mining sites are owned by Chinese companies, and today, China is responsible for 80 percent of the refined cobalt output from the DRC. This has been the case since September 2007, when the DRC signed a USD 9 billion contract with a consortium of Chinese state-owned companies to build the country's infrastructure in exchange for privileged access to minerals and mining sites. The contract included high interest rates and a USD 3 billion pledge from the DRC to support the Chinese investments. Although the contract was revised down to USD 6 billion in 2009, with lower interest rates and no financing from the Congolese state, China still came out on top.

Nowadays, many Congolese see the contract as a one-sided deal that largely benefitted the former President Joseph Kabila Kabange (2001–2019) and his government, rather than the Congolese people. A report by the Congolese Inspectorate General of Finances (IGF) published in February 2023 denounced the unbalanced exploitation and blamed the former government for selling off the country's valuable resources:

Les entreprises chinoises ont déjà encaissé un gain évalué à près de 10 milliards de dollars américains, tandis que la République démocratique du Congo n’a bénéficié que de 822 millions de dollars en termes d’infrastructures. Le déséquilibre criant qui a été constaté, le bradage, la dilapidation de nos minerais constatés dans ce contrat a été également l’œuvre de fils égarés de notre pays, qui ont accompagné les entreprises chinoises dans cette œuvre macabre contre notre pays.

Chinese companies have already pocketed a profit estimated at almost USD 10 billion, while the Democratic Republic of Congo has benefited from only USD 822 million in terms of infrastructure. The glaring imbalance, the sell-off and the squandering of our minerals in this contract were also the work of our country's misguided sons, who accompanied the Chinese companies in this macabre act against our country.

Major environmental incidents

According to Amnesty International and environmental watchdog groups, Chinese-owned mining sites have been linked to repeated toxic waste spills, deforestation, and widespread water contamination. In recent years, at least 14 major environmental incidents were reported near mining operations in the DRC, including a tailing dam collapse and acid discharges into rivers used by local communities. Cleanups are rare, and accountability is even rarer.

In some areas, entire villages have been forcibly evicted to make way for industrial expansion. Displaced persons report beatings, sexual violence, and intimidation. “We were not consulted. One day, they just came with machines,” recalls a woman who lost her home near Fungurume in an Amnesty International report. “We lost our homes and our fields. What kind of clean energy is this?” Residents who do stay report seeing their waterways polluted and facing health issues because of chemical spills and pollution.

Back in Beijing, Chinese state media continues to tout its global green credentials, calling the country's push for renewable energy a “gift to humanity.” Official outlets like Xinhua highlight China’s plans to help African nations build solar farms and hydropower projects.

Chinese state-owned media, including the big four — Xinhua, People’s Daily, China Daily, and CCTV and its overseas branch CGTN — have long bragged about the nation’s ability to invest and develop in the DRC, along with other countries.

A fleet of electric vehicles. Image from Flickr. CC0 1.0

As it deploys its strategy through its network of influence made up of major mining companies in the DRC and other African countries, China is asserting its energy power and positioning itself as a world leader in renewable energies and electric vehicles.

But a deep dive into the Chinese side of this narrative shows the investments are to emphasize the state’s role as a benevolent energy partner, while in reality, its contributions are top-down, technocratic, and largely disconnected from the everyday well-being of DRC communities.

In an article on cooperation between China and Africa, a researcher from Tsinghua University writes:

尽管资源丰富……非洲大陆的能源贫困问题依然严重.

Despite its abundant resources, Africa’s energy development potential has not been fully realized due to long-standing weaknesses in infrastructure, lack of technology, and funding shortages.

The article frames Africa’s energy poverty as a technical gap rather than a result of exploitative extractive practices. There is no mention of community impact, land rights, or participatory governance — only a call for more capital and infrastructure. The author continues:

中国在与非洲各国共同推动清洁能源务实合作的过程中，建设了一批技术先进、环境友好的能源项目，遍布非洲40余个国家和地区，涉及光伏、风电、水电、生物质能等多个领域，帮助非洲新增电力装机1.2亿千瓦，建设电网线路6.6万公里，显著增强了非洲的电力供应能力，有效促进了非洲的能源转型.

In the course of promoting pragmatic cooperation on clean energy with African countries, China has built a number of technologically advanced and environmentally friendly energy projects across more than 40 African countries and regions, covering solar, wind, hydro, and biomass energy. These efforts have helped add 120 million kilowatts of installed power capacity and build 66,000 kilometers of power transmission lines in Africa, significantly enhancing the continent’s electricity supply capacity and effectively promoting its energy transition.

Even as Chinese companies are creating pollution, deforestation, and water contamination, they are being closely monitored by local community populations; however, it’s rarely discussed in the Chinese public sphere.

Environmental damage in Africa by Chinese investment remains one of the most ignored taboos in the Chinese public sphere — media are not discussing it, civil societies have no access to data on the issue, and the public remains in the dark about the situation.

At the September 2024 Beijing Summit on China-Africa Cooperation, Chinese officials and state media made sweeping promises to support Africa’s sustainable energy development. However, little attention was paid to whether these interventions would truly benefit local communities or instead generate new environmental and social harms.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and leaders from around the continent posing at the 2024 China-Africa cooperation forum in Beijing in 2024. Image from Présidence de la République du Bénin's Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

To better understand the narratives surrounding China-Africa clean energy cooperation, Global Voices conducted a small narrative search using keywords such as “environmental damage,” “pollution,” and “deforestation.”

Image by Global Voices. Used with permission.

Across a wide range of Chinese government and state-affiliated media sources, there is a consistent discursive pattern: Complex sustainability challenges are routinely reframed as technical or financial issues — emphasizing capital, infrastructure, and access. At the same time, environmental degradation and local social impacts are downplayed or omitted entirely. These sources overwhelmingly portray Chinese intervention as benevolent, transformative, and welcomed by African nations, while criticism or alternative views are notably absent.

For example, a Xinhua feature describes China’s role as injecting “green power” into Africa’s development, highlighting over 100 clean energy projects without discussing ecological side effects. People’s Daily presents solar and hydro energy projects as milestones of green partnership yet omits any mention of deforestation, displacement, or regulatory oversight. A CCTV report includes UN Secretary-General António Guterres praising China-Africa cooperation but fails to acknowledge grassroots or environmentalist concerns.

Meanwhile, criticism that China promotes fossil fuels in Africa while going green at home — noted by international media — is absent from the Chinese-language narrative.

Another example is despite the gravity of the illegal logging case involving Chinese companies COKIBAFODE and SCIFOR in the DRC, a search for either company in Chinese-language media yields almost no results — not a single investigative report, not even a mention on social media.

The near-total absence of coverage reflects Beijing’s tightly controlled information environment, where scandals that may tarnish China’s overseas image or challenge its self-proclaimed green leadership are censored by design. Chinese private media are either denied access or preemptively silenced, while the state narratives drown out any potential dissent, leaving the Chinese public almost completely unaware of the environmental destruction carried out in their name.

With such systematic neglect and media silence, it’s not surprising to find that Chinese authorities could only focus on financial and economic investment returns. Environmental damages brought to DRC local communities are not on Chinese governmental officials and the Chinese companies’ operation agenda.