The Road to a Clean Energy Future Runs Through the Democratic Republic of the Congo

A child breaks rocks extracted from a cobalt mining at a copper mine quarry and cobalt pit in Lubumbashi on May 23, 2016. The price of copper has fallen heavily, directly impacting workers in the town. JUNIOR KANNAH / AFP

The former President of the National Assembly of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Jeanine Mabunda Lioko, wrote an impassioned appeal for the world to recognize the important contribution that the DRC will make to the world as it moves into the post-carbon era, largely from the use of DRC-mined cobalt in electric vehicle batteries.

“The world will need our country’s resources to save itself from the impacts of climate change, for which the Congolese bear little responsibility,” she wrote in a column published on the U.S.-based All Africa website. ” It is time for the organizations and government working to save the world to realize the value of that contribution,” she added.

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by Eric Olander

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