Child labour: Nigeria’s lithium mines reveal the dark side of our electric future

Electric vehicles, laptops, battery packs, smartphones...it's a long list of items we rely on every day that rely on a key material: lithium.

But have you stopped to think who mines for this precious metal? In northern Nigeria, it has been found to be children.

Lithium mining is dangerous and exhausting work.

Miners descend several feet into dark pits then wield axes to hack through rocks.

In some old but viable mines, they crawl through yards of snaky, narrow passages, wedging themselves between unstable mud walls before starting to dig.

Miners are aware of the dangers

Abdullahi Sabiu has spent years in these pits after he started working 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," says the lithium miner in Nassarawa state, north central Nigeria.

"Someone might be riding on a motorcycle, and a driver could knock him down and die," Abdullahi added.

For new mines, the ground is first blasted open with dynamite, which is usually smuggled because a license is required to keep the chemical, sending tremors across the land.

Despite being aware of the dangers many, like Abdulahi, continue to mine. For them, this is more about survival.

“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.

Perhaps unbeknownst to him and others, once sorted the minerals are bagged, beginning their journey from his rural village of Pasali in Nassarawa State, near the federal capital Abuja, to the global electricals market.

Their work feeds the stock of Chinese businesses, who dominate Nigeria’s laxly regulated extractive industry and are often blamed for illegal mining and exploitative labour.

A business for the poorest, including children

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

Two of the children - Zakaria Danladi, a five-year-old boy, and Juliet - once attended the local elementary school before their paths diverged under the weight of poverty, while others have never been to school at all.

Generally, they hunch over heaps of rock, sifting through the rubble, picking rocks that they chipped away at with crude stone tools to extract valuable fragments.

The shadowy world of Nigeria’s illegal artisanal mining thrives on informal networks of buyers and sellers, operating with minimal government oversight.

Aliyu Ibrahim, a lithium merchant in Nasarawa, owns unlicensed mines and also buys lithium ore from other illegal sites like those in Pasali.

He is aware that children out of school are working at his mines and those supplying him, but he has a chilling justification.

“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 serious economic crisis, Africa’s top oil producer now aims to reduce its reliance on petroleum exports with solid minerals.

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

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

China, the dominant force in the global supply chains for renewable energy, is controversially involved in Nigeria’s extractive sector.

Its nationals and companies are frequently spotlighted for environmentally damaging practices, exploitative labour and illicit mining.

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