The list of electric vehicles, laptops, smartphones, and battery packs is extensive, and they all rely on the key material lithium.

But who mines lithium? In Northern Nigeria, it's children!

Lithium mining is dangerous and exhausting work. Miners descend several feet into dark pits and then use axes to remove the lithium-bearing rock. In some mines, children have to crawl through narrow passages and wedge between mud walls before digging out the lithium.

To open new mines, the ground is first blasted open with dynamite, which is usually illegally smuggled in because a license is required for its possession and use. These blasts send tremors across the land.

Abdullahi Sabiu has spent years in the lithium pits after he started working at the mines at 20.

"I know that mining activities are dangerous, and there are disadvantages, but every profession has its own disadvantages, including driving, and death is unpredictable," said Abdullahi in Nassarawa state, north central Nigeria.

"The reason why I went into the mining business is so that I can take care of myself, my wives, and my children. It generally helps me to take care of my needs, and we cannot wait for the government to help us," he said.

Poverty is a serious problem in Nigeria, and despite being aware of the dangers, many people, including children, continue to mine lithium. For them, it is a simple matter of exploited survival.

Once sorted, the minerals are bagged in standard lots and journey to the global electricals market from Abdullahi's village of Pasali in Nassarawa State, near Abuja, the federal capital.

The lithium produced typically feeds Chinese manufacturing businesses, which dominate Nigeria’s laxly regulated mining industry and are often blamed for illegal mining and exploitative labour. However, the Nigerian government is ultimately responsible for what happens in their country, whether exploitative or otherwise.

Local officials say children are not spared in what is becoming a business for the poorest and most vulnerable. According to a local lithium seller, six children can sort and bag up to ten 25-kg bags daily.

Two child miners - Zakaria Danladi, a five-year-old boy, and Juliet - once attended the local school before they started mining under the weight of poverty; many others have never been to school.

Generally, they hunch over heaps of rock, sifting through the rubble, picking rocks they chipped away to extract the lithium fragments.

The hidden world of Nigeria’s illegal mining uses informal networks of buyers and sellers, operating with minimal government oversight but implied approval by inaction.

Aliyu Ibrahim, a lithium merchant in Nasarawa, owns unlicensed mines and buys lithium ore from other sites, such as those in Pasali. He is aware of the children working in the mines and those supplying him, but he justifies it.

"Many of the children are orphans or from poor families, with no other means of survival," he said in Hausa.

According to official data from Nigeria’s statistics bureau, children amount to 51 per cent of the country's poor, the vast majority of whom live in rural areas.

In the face of a severe economic crisis, Africa’s top oil producer aims to reduce its reliance on petroleum exports by replacing them with solid minerals.

Yet much of this wealth - lithium included - is siphoned off through unlicensed mines like those in Pasali, driving an illegal trade that costs the nation billions of dollars and drives insecurity, according to a Nigerian parliamentary probe this year.

There have been multiple cases of illegal mining arrests and prosecutions involving Chinese nationals in recent months.

China, a dominant force in global supply chains for renewable energy, is controversially involved in Nigeria’s mining sector. Its nationals and companies are frequently spotlighted for environmentally damaging practices, exploitative labour and illicit mining.

Additionally, Nigeria's president, Bola Tinubu, has blamed illegal mining for the worsening insecurity and insurgency in the nation's northern region.

Nigeria is not the only exploiter of children mining lithium; South America is rife with the practice.

13/12/2024

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