Blood Cobalt In Our Smartphones, Tablets, and Electric Vehicles

And why we simply can't afford to look the other way

Photo by Anna Demianenko on Unsplash

Three decades ago, there was a civil war in my home country, Sierra Leone. Charles Taylor, a brutal warlord needed funding to continue the war that he was waging in his own country, Liberia. When he ran out of funding to buy guns and ammunition, he turned to neighboring, diamond-rich Sierra Leone and ignited a civil w…