The electric-car boom sets off a scramble for cobalt in Congo

ON THE STREETS of Kolwezi, a mining city in the Democratic Republic of Congo, huge billboards advertise “executive” mobile-phone-data packages, a few gigabytes for a few dollars. They are popular not just with the suited types shown on the hoardings; they also sell to more roughly dressed men who work in crude “artisanal” mines, who use the data to check the price of cobalt. “Every day we look at the LME,” says Claude Mwansa, a miner who lives in Kapata, a neighbourhood where most people work in mining. He means the London Metal Exchange, where cobalt is traded.