The Congo Mines That Supply 'Conflict Minerals' For The World's Gadgets

KELSEY CAMPBELL-DOLLAGHAN for National Geographic

Most people who own a smartphone — or a laptop, or a new car — aren’t familiar with tantalum, the rare, blue-grey metal that conducts electricity through these devices. But thanks to skyrocketing demand from electronics makers, tantalum — along with a handful of other rare minerals — is an incredibly sought-after metal. And it’s fuelling the ongoing conflict in Congo. In the October 125th Anniversary issue of National Geographic, Jeffrey Gettleman and photographer Marcus Bleasdale travel into eastern Congo to investigate the current state of the country’s mineral trade, which Bleasdale describes as “an antlike army expending millions of calories and gallons of sweat to feed a vast and distant global industry.”

Eastern Congo is home to a huge wealth of precious metals, though it’s one of the the poorest countries in the world. The country’s mines produce near half of the world’s supply of tantalum, as well as a large percentage of its tin ore, tungsten, gold and dozens of other minerals used in electronics. And the militia groups that control them have long funded their activities by employing locals — and kids — to mine minerals in horrifying conditions.

These are “conflict minerals”, and they’ve been a simmering topic in the tech world for years (in 2010, Steve Jobs described it as “a very difficult problem”). The same year, Barack Obama signed a bill that required all public companies to disclose their use of conflict minerals, and companies like Intel and Motorola pledged to ban them. And indeed some of these mines are now able to tag their products as “conflict free”.

But reform has been hard. Today, experts estimate that more than half of Congo’s mines are still controlled by rebel groups, and the reality of the situation remains murky. Gettleman and Bleasdale, for example, were detained at one site after stumbling into a “double game” where officials collude with rebels to profit from the mines.

Read more at: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/09/the-congo-mines-that-supply-conflict-minerals-for-the-worlds-gadgets/


Workers rip the earth apart in search of gold at the Sufferance mine in the Ituri region. Much of Congo’s gold, more than $US600 million worth a year, is smuggled across borders. Marcus Bleasdale/National Geographic.


Gold is now the most lucrative of conflict minerals. Illicit profits from tin, tungsten, and tantalum have dropped 65 per cent since 2010, when the campaign to link minerals with violence began gaining ground. Marcus Bleasdale/National Geographic.