Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

In Cobalt Red, Kara engages with various anti-colonial discourses throughout history. He writes admiringly about the British writers and government officials who worked to draw international attention to the horrors of the Congo Free State under King Leopold II. He frequently cites Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness (1899), who wrote repeatedly about the human rights abuses in central Africa. Kara also references Roger Casement and E.D. Morel, who were British journalists and politicians who raised public awareness through shocking reports based on their on-the-ground reporting of the situation in Congo. These reports ultimately led to the end of the Congo Free State. As an academic at a British university doing on-the-ground reporting of the conditions at the cobalt mines in Congo, Kara situates his work within this tradition. Like these earlier reports, Kara’s work was well-received by Western audiences as a shocking exposé. Cobalt Red was praised by National Public Radio, The Joe Rogan Podcast, and the Financial Times.

Kara also references Black anti-colonial discourses with a particular emphasis on Congolese politician and activist Patrice Lumumba. He also cites Martiniquais anti-colonial theorist and politician Aimé Césaire. Despite this tacit engagement with anti-colonialism, Kara’s work has been criticized by African writers and critics for adhering to colonial-era tropes about the country. Congolese writer Espérant Lukobo and Canadian researcher Sarah Katz-Lavigne, writing in Open Democracy, condemned what they call “[t]he colonial mindset of Cobalt Red,” arguing that the work’s “indulgent use of dehumanizing rhetoric, lack of research ethics, and ignorance and/or erasure of local knowledge undermines Kara’s purported mission at every turn” (“Cobalt Red: A Regressive, Deeply Flawed Account of Congo’s Mining Industry.” Open Democracy, 3 July 2023). A similar critique is echoed by academic Ben Radley in African Arguments, who writes:

If there were a test based on the late Binyavanga Wainaina’s wonderful satirical piece How to Write About Africa, Cobalt Red would tick every box. […] There is certainly no laughter or dignity in Kara’s stories of a wasteland of utter ruin (Radley, Ben. “Who Wants to Hear About White Saviourism Gone Wrong?” African Arguments, 3 March 2023).

Such criticisms raise questions about the accuracy and ethical standards of Kara’s reporting and the tropes upon which his writing relies. In making bold claims to garner Western attention to the issue of Congolese artisanal cobalt mining, Kara occasionally veers into language akin to that of “The White Man’s Burden” by Rudyard Kipling (1899), which proposes that intervention by imperial powers is necessary to improve standards of living in the colonies, or, in this case, in a former colony.