## Metadata - Author: [[Last accessed on]] - Full Title: The Elements of Power - Category: #books ## Highlights - Cobalt was first refined into a metal in 1735. At that time, it was seen as junk, an impurity in nickel, silver, or copper—useful in some forms as a blue pigment perhaps, but not particularly valuable. Its name derived from the German Kobold, the term for an impish household spirit that miners blamed for making their silver impure. Cobalt is almost always a byproduct of mining another metal: In Congo, it comes with copper, but elsewhere, like in Indonesia and Australia, it is bound to nickel ore. ([Location 507](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0F5PJ9ZMT&location=507)) - According to the ASM Database, a web-based archive of artisanal mining documents, somewhere between 1.8 million and 2.5 million people in Congo work as artisanal miners. ([Location 520](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0F5PJ9ZMT&location=520)) - When I met him in Kolwezi in 2019, Richard Muyej Mangez Mans, the governor of Lualaba Province, told me that around 170,000 artisanal miners like Kajumba worked to extract cobalt and copper from the mines around Kolwezi. ([Location 522](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0F5PJ9ZMT&location=522))