June 30 marked the celebration of Africa Scientific Renaissance Day (ASRD). This date was established in 1987 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by the Organization of African Unity (OAU), now known as the African Union (AU), to be observed in all member countries, to recognize Africa’s modern contributions to science and technology globally and highlight the continent’s ancient and ancestral technologies, such as forest medicines for healing, climate pattern interpretation, sustainability, food security, and more.

We acknowledge epistemicide, a philosophical concept developed by Sueli Carneiro, as a means by which European whiteness, during the period of slavery, suppressed African knowledge and traditions as a strategy to dominate and discredit them as cognizant subjects. This led to the concealment of African contributions to the cultural heritage of humanity, particularly by denying Africans and their descendants the status of being subjects of their own history’s knowledge. A counterpoint to this understanding is the work Geniuses of Humanity: African and Afro-descendant Science, Technology, and Innovation, by Carlos Eduardo Dias Machado and Alexandra Baldeh Loras (2017), which explores the historical contributions of Africans to the exact, biological, and human sciences that were marginalized by Eurocentrism in modern times.

In the Eurocentric view—where the book was the primary vehicle of cultural heritage, and writing was considered superior to orality—it was long believed that nonliterate peoples were devoid of science and knowledge. It is worth noting, in line with Cheikh Anta Diop, that in addition to various nonliterate civilizations, there were also civilizations with their own writing systems that originated in Africa.

As mentioned by Ìyálòrìsá Marli Ògún Méjìre Azevedo, scientific sources come from various origins, including written documents; archeology (e.g., silent material evidence that reveals valuable contributions to African history, iron objects and the technology involved in their production, ceramic objects with their production techniques and style, writings, and graphic symbols); and oral tradition, which is repository and vector of the accumulated socio-cultural creations of so-called nonliterate peoples.

June 30 was marked as a (re)birth, to strengthen dialogue among African leaders in the present day and to highlight scientific discoveries by Africans for the social development of humanity. This day’s celebration also typically takes place in African universities, such as the event at the University of Ghana that brought together experts to discuss the challenges of illegal mining and solutions to reduce its impact on the environment and health.

Another milestone in African Studies was the collection edited by UNESCO called the General History of Africa, which in its original form comprised eight published volumes. In recent years, UNESCO has embarked on the preparation of three new volumes, and in November 2023, the 10th volume was launched during the third Global Forum Against Racism and Discrimination in São Paulo, Brazil. Under the subtitle “Global Africa,” the volume integrates the discussion of the African diaspora as an integral part of knowledge about Africa. The movement to create this series began in the 1960s, during the wave of independence struggles across the continent, when a significant portion of leaders and scholars were focused on writing the history of Africa from an African perspective, breaking away from the legacy of Eurocentric colonial libraries.

The project, which was begun in 1964, involved hundreds of historians and  experts and faced many challenges during its production. Research drew from oral and archaeological sources, as well as analyses from antiquity up until 1935. The material is available in Portuguese, English, Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Swahili, Fulani, and Hausa. Undoubtedly, it is one of the most important collections of the 20th century, a significant contribution to the field of humanities and part of a great epistemological revolution from an academic and scientific perspective.

Africa Scientific Renaissance Day, which celebrates the continent’s contributions to human and technological sciences, offers a bitter contrast when we consider the reality behind the extraction of natural resources like cobalt. The violence and oppression involved in this industry are examples of how capitalist globalization benefits at the expense of many, perpetuating a cycle of inequality between the Global North and South. Cobalt has been dubbed “blood cobalt,” analogous to “blood diamonds” exploited in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, to raise awareness of the devastating impacts of this exploitation.

Cobalt, an essential element for lithium battery production, has been hailed as a sustainable alternative for electric vehicles and electronic devices. However, the exploitation of its mines, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), raises serious concerns due to appalling working conditions, which include child labor. The DRC is responsible for about 60 percent of global cobalt production, and reports of human rights abuses and slavery-like conditions are alarming.

Despite promises of reform from the industry and major tech companies like Apple and Google, which use cobalt in their products, demand for the metal continues to grow. In 2016, Amnesty International denounced the use of child labor in DRC mines, linking major corporations to these practices. However, a US court recently refused to hold companies accountable for these violations, highlighting the difficulty of achieving justice.

Therefore, the contradiction we present here underscores the fact that although in the 20th and 21st centuries there have been substantial denunciations of racism in the human sciences and recognition of the scientific and social contributions of Africans in the history of humanity, there is still much struggle ahead—as Amílcar Cabral said, “the struggle continues.”

African contributions to the globalized world cannot be celebrated while the place occupied by African peoples remains on the periphery of the social division of labor, relegating them to violent and inhumane living conditions, such as the exploitation of workers in cobalt mines in the DRC.

Companies involved, such as Huayou Cobalt and Gécamines, which profit millions of dollars from the trade of mineral resources, must be held accountable and punished, and the denunciations widely publicized. We do not want history to repeat itself; sustainability and technological development should not be achieved at the cost of human dignity.