"In Nigeria’s lithium boom, many mines are illegal and children do much of the work“ December 12, 2024

Dressed in a faded pink dress, 6-year-old Juliet Samaniya squats under scorching skies to chip at a jagged white rock with a stone tool...Juliet should be in school, her mother, Abigail Samaniya, admits. Instead, she spends her day mining lithium, a mineral critical for batteries needed in the global transition to clean energy, to earn money that helps sustain her family...

The growing demand for lithium has created a new frontier for mining in mineral-rich Nigeria. But it has come with a steep cost, exploiting its poorest and most vulnerable: its children. Their work often provides material for Chinese businesses that dominate Nigeria’s laxly regulated extractive industry and are often blamed for illegal mining and labor exploitation.

The Associated Press recently traveled to the deep bush of Pasali, near the federal capital of Abuja in Nasarawa state...AP also witnessed negotiations and an agreement to purchase lithium by a Chinese company with no questions about the source of the lithium or how it was obtained. That company, RSIN Nigeria Limited, did not respond to repeated requests for comment...

Nigeria has laws requiring basic education and prohibiting child labor, but enforcement is a challenge with many illegal mines in hard-to-reach areas...

Bashir Rabiu, now 19, started in these pits as an underage worker. AP journalists watched as he wriggled around at the bottom of a pit, where miners can be at risk if dynamite explodes prematurely... Rabiu hauled up raw lithium ore and passed it to Juliet and five other children, all younger than 10...For working from early morning to late evening, the children typically share 4,000 naira (about $2.42)...

Nigeria...has deep mineral resources...Yet much of this wealth — including lithium — is siphoned off through unlicensed mines...

The illegal mining thrives on informal networks of buyers and sellers who operate without much fear of the government. Aliyu Ibrahim, a lithium merchant in Nasarawa, owns unlicensed mines and also buys lithium ore from other illegal sites...Ibrahim said he knows that children are working at his mines and others he buys from, but he said many of the children are orphans or poor...