An American mining company backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos is deploying artificial intelligence to search for lithium across thousands of square kilometers in the Democratic Republic of Congo—while local miners in the region earn less than $200 monthly and the area lacks drinking water and electricity.
KoBold Metals, founded 8 years ago, has set up operations in Manono, a remote southeastern town, and obtained 14 exploration permits covering more than 3,000 square km since 2025. The company's geologists combine high-precision GPS units and tablets with an AI system running on servers in California, processing historical geological maps, old drill logs sometimes dating back to the colonial era, and satellite images to predict where lithium deposits lie. Teams have been collecting an average of 2,000 soil samples per week since April, searching for the "geochemical signature" of pegmatite—the mineral from which lithium is extracted.
KoBold's arrival follows a December 2025 strategic partnership agreement between Washington and Kinshasa, part of a broader US strategy to secure supplies of critical minerals and reduce China's dominance in the sector. China controls 70 to 80 percent of the Congolese copper and cobalt market and has invested massively in the DRC since the 2000s. The country ranks as the world's second-largest copper producer and the top producer of cobalt, both essential for clean energy and rechargeable batteries. Global demand for lithium is expected to more than double by 2030, according to projections by the International Energy Agency.
The Reality on the Ground
Benjamin Katabuka, KoBold's managing director in the DRC, said the company has "very encouraging results," though he provided no specifics. The company plans to invest more than $50 million in the DRC by early 2027 and hopes to move from exploration into production within a few years. Yet on Manono's streets, the picture looks starkly different. The poverty rate in the region sits at 88 percent according to official statistics. Motorbike taxi drivers drop workers off at Chinese or Indian mines for a few dollars. The Lukushi River, which once fed the town and teemed with fish, has been diverted to serve mining operations.
Territory administrator Cyprien Kitanga acknowledged the harsh reality: "Manono lacks drinking water. Manono is not electrified." He recalled that mining companies "came, took the ore, and left holes behind for the children of Manono." Earlier this year, miners burned tires at the entrance to the mine operated by China's Zijin—which shipped its first tons of concentrate in June—to protest meagre wages and endless workdays.
Workers' Hopes and Lingering Distrust
Vicar general Wilson Katende expressed cautious optimism that competition between American and Chinese operators might improve conditions. "Right now, you don't feel like people here have been fairly paid," he said, alluding to the stark reality that miners often earn less than $200 a month at operations already extracting resources in the area. One unnamed miner, dressed in work clothes, said simply: "We want to go and work for the Americans."
The arrival of KoBold has shaken Manono from decades of torpor. Manono was founded in the early 20th century with tin production by Belgian colonizers but fell into poverty following plummeting commodity prices and years of turbulence after independence in 1960. Today, the town remains marked by the visible presence of Congolese army soldiers and recently reported Mai-Mai local militias in nearby villages.
According to mining and diplomatic sources, talks are underway to determine how to attract American investment to a Congolese mining sector plagued by corruption and marred by financial and environmental scandals. Almost a year since the strategic partnership agreement was signed, American investment hasn't poured in as hoped. To date, only one other American company, Virtus Minerals, holds assets in the DRC. Zijin told AFP in a statement it had "engaged with employee representatives" and agreed to measures addressing their concerns.
Why This Matters:
The competition for critical minerals reveals a fundamental tension in the global energy transition. While lithium and cobalt are essential for electric vehicles and renewable energy storage—technologies crucial for addressing climate change—the extraction of these minerals in the DRC raises urgent questions about who bears the costs of that transition. Workers in Manono earn less than $200 monthly while multinational corporations invest tens of millions in the same region. The 88 percent poverty rate, lack of basic infrastructure, and environmental degradation show that resource extraction has historically enriched distant investors while leaving local communities behind. Whether American competition will meaningfully improve labor standards, environmental protections, or community benefit remains uncertain. The structural challenge is clear: without strong regulation, transparent governance, and genuine community participation in decisions about resource extraction, the pattern of extraction-without-development may simply repeat itself with a different foreign company in charge.