Six-year-old Juliet Samaniya squats beneath the blazing Nigerian sun. She uses a stone tool to chip away at a white rock. Dust covers her hair. She works for hours to make less than a dollar a day.
The white rock contains lithium. The lightweight metal is a key component of electric vehicle batteries. Lithium helps power all sorts of rechargeable electronics—maybe even the device you’re reading this on. In an electronic age, lithium mining is the new gold rush.
Lithium’s high value also leads to situations like Juliet’s in Nigeria. There, illegal mines pock the countryside. Many of the miners are children.
Juliet’s mother, Abigail Samaniya, knows her daughter should be in school. But their family needs the money to survive. About 63% of Nigeria’s people live in poverty.
“That is the only option,” she says.
Nigerian law requires basic education and forbids child labor. However, officials struggle to enforce those laws. Many illegal mines are in hard-to-reach areas.
These mines often employ outdated and dangerous methods. Miners break through rock with chisels and hammers. They climb through narrow, unstable passages. They use dynamite to blast open new holes. The dust from mining can cause breathing problems.
Nineteen-year-old Bashir Rabiu knows the risks. He’s seen miners suffocate in narrow tunnels or get buried in mine collapses. Still, he continues the work.
“It is God that protects,” he says.
Mine operators say they have no trouble finding buyers for their illegal lithium. Aliyu Ibrahim is a lithium merchant. He owns unlicensed mines. He sells the metal in bulk to Chinese companies. He knows poor children work in his mines.
“It is dangerous, but the work helps them survive, while the government has abandoned poor people,” says Ibrahim.
There’s another side to that story. Illegal mine owners don’t buy the licenses the government requires. According to Nigerian officials, that money could help the country improve its economy. Licensing would make mining safer. The mines pollute and destroy land, which can make residents, especially farmers, even poorer. Illegal mining might give families the money they need to scrape by in the moment. At the same time, it may also dig Nigeria deeper into poverty.
God gave humans the ability to turn raw minerals like lithium into technological wonders. That’s a great gift. Yet greed can twist even good gifts into dangerous dilemmas.
Nigerian officials say they’re working on new programs to fight child labor. They also plan to add more marshals to clamp down on illegal mines.
They face a tough situation. By law, officials must shut down illegal mines and make children go to school. That might help ease the nation’s poverty over time. But will change happen quickly enough to help families struggling to afford their next meal?
Whoever oppresses the poor to increase his own wealth, or gives to the rich, will only come to poverty. — Proverbs 22:16
