A sharepic is circulating again, which was apparently created by the “The Greens” party.

The sharepic tells of a boy named “Kanku” who has to work 12 hours a day for low wages in a cobalt mine in the Congo in order to extract cobalt, which is needed for “the electric cars of Green voters”.

We received further inquiries about this sharepic:

The sharepic about "Kanku", pixelation by us
The sharepic about “Kanku”, pixelation by us


This is Kanku. He is 8 years old and works 12 hours a day for one to two dollars a day in a cobalt mine in the Congo.
With a bit of luck (?) he will reach the age of 30. The cobalt he mined is urgently needed for the
electric cars of Green voters . So at Kanku every day is a
“Friday for future” . Thank you, Kanku!”

Clearly, this fake picture of the Greens (this picture cannot be found on any official Green Party website) is intended to discredit Green voters and Fridays for Future participants by suggesting that cobalt is used for electric cars (which supposedly only come from Greens - driven by voters) is basically supported by children in poor countries for a pittance.

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The picture

We have pixelated the image in the preview and in the article because it is protected by copyright. It was used, among other things, in this report on cobalt mining in the Congo.
The child's name is unknown, the alleged name "Kanku" does not appear anywhere.

Why cobalt?

In fact, cobalt, as a transition metal, is an important component in the production of batteries, including for electric cars. Around 64 percent of the world's cobalt comes from the Congo; working conditions there are often harsh, unsafe and poorly paid.

Children are often employed to mine cobalt, which is a sad truth and has been widely reported .
Those who spread the above image often don't consider one thing:
the smartphone they are holding in their hand also has a battery! And this too was only created by mining cobalt!

It is therefore a little hypocritical to put the “blame” for cobalt mining on users of electric cars while at the same time holding a smartphone in their hand or a laptop in front of them: devices with batteries are also widely used.

Child labor is only part of the problem

The accusation that electric cars are to blame for the increase in child labor in Congo comes from Vera Lengsfeld, who expressed this view Epochtimes

Handelsblatt describes in detail that fewer electric cars will not reduce the problem of child labor, let alone solve it, since child labor is only part of the problem. These minors work mainly in small-scale mining in mines, some of which operate illegally, where children search for cobalt in discarded waste products from industrial mines and sort and wash the ores before they are sold.

Nevertheless, it is of course possible that cobalt, which was mined through child labor, also ends up in the batteries of electric cars.
To prevent this, however, both the VW Group and BMW decided to trace the origin of the cobalt for their electric cars or to completely avoid using cobalt from the Congo.

And what do the Greens say?

They are also aware that a switch to electric cars cannot happen overnight, so they are demanding that from 2030 only emission-free new cars be registered. Until then, however, there are still a number of technical, organizational and bureaucratic hurdles to overcome.

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Conclusion

The sharepic is not from the party “The Greens” and uses a short, polemical text to suggest that electric cars are generally only driven by Greens voters, but that they are therefore responsible for child labor in the Congo, which is why the “Friday for Future” movement is absurd.

However, the text from an unknown source only addresses a fraction of the problem . Cobalt is used to make all batteries in smartphones, laptops, wheelchairs and cameras, for example, and the major manufacturers of electric cars are aware of the problem of child labor and will ensure this in the future that their cobalt comes from traceable and legal sources.

Also interesting:


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )