Electronics have bloody cost to Africa
By Simon Levine
West of Rwanda and Lake Tanganyika, the roads become impassable and the land grows eerily silent.
The people are sparsely populated in this far-flung province of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), about six million spread out over more than 100,000 square kilometers of verdant hillsides. Covering these hills is one of the densest tropical rainforests in the world, but as breathtaking as these jungles are, the mineral wealth lying beneath them is even more astounding.
Gold, diamonds, cobalt and tungsten can all be found in great quantities, but the most sought after are two ores that only recently rose to prominence: coltan and cassiterite.
Two valuable substances can be extracted from coltan: tantalum and niobium. Niobium is a rare and crucial component of the heat-resistant super alloys used to make jet engines, arcwelding rods and nuclear reactors. Tantalum is equally rare and in high demand, due to its use as a capacitor in such devices as laptops, video game consoles and cell phones.
Cassiterite is more abundant than coltan and is a source of tin.
These minerals are the major basis of the eastern Congolese economy and their estimated yearly value is over $200 million dollars.
But who is profiting from these minerals? It is certainly not the Congolese, who have never benefited from their nation’s abundant resources.
For the last two hundred years, the eastern Congo has been ravaged by heavy demand for the region’s raw materials.
The original export was slaves. After Arab and Indian slavers started exhausting the supply in East Africa, they began to pillage the Congo River basin.
In 1885 the Congo became the “Congo Free State,” the private fiefdom of King Leopold II of Belgium. His mercenary armies eventually defeated the slavers, bringing the region’s valuable ivory resources under Leopold’s control.
But the demand for ivory was soon dwarfed by the demand for rubber that the burgeoning automotive industry created.
The rubber terror that ensued in the Congo Free State was one of the worst atrocities ever committed. It left nearly 20 million Congolese dead and many more displaced from their homes or permanently disfigured. When the region was finally brought under Belgian governmental control, the forcible extraction of rubber still continued, albeit with less physical brutality.
After the Belgians gave independence
to the Congolese people in 1960, a short period of civil war ensued after a Belgianplanned assassination of the country’s democratically elected leader.
The eventual result was the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko. Mobutu was not particularly violent as far as despots go, but billions of dollars were stolen from the region by his corrupt government. Mobutu was eventually toppled by a Rwandan and Ugandan backed rebel army in 1997 after he gave refuge to the Hutu genocidaires responsible for the Rwandan genocide.
Initially the Rwandans and Ugandans controlled the mineral supply in the eastern Congo merely as a means of financing their war against the genocidaires in the eastern Congo. But soon after Mobutu was overthrown, it became clear that neither country had any plans to leave.
Thus Africa’s World War began, pitting among others the DRC, Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Hutu extremists against Uganda, Rwanda and their allies. After six years and more than five million deaths, the war was declared over.
However, most of the factions involved in the war still have some military presence, and the death toll is estimated to be 45,000 civilians every month. Fighting still occurs, but the various factions are mainly happy to control the mines. That is in part because recent events have caused a huge increase in the demand for coltan and cassiterite.
The tech boom of the late 1990s caused an enormous surge in tantalum prices. These prices reached their apex in 2000 when the release of the Playstation 2 caused prices to soar from $49 to $275 per pound.
More recently, in 2006, the European Union, China and California passed legislation banning the use of lead solder. Because tin is the main component of most lead-free solder, cassiterite prices have surged as well.
Sadly, little of the wealth makes it back to the Congolese people. After the minerals are mined in hazardous and inhumane conditions with only basic tools, the minerals are weighed and transported to the border. The rocks are carried in hundred-pound sacks on the backs of porters, through dozens of miles in the jungle.
At each stage of the journey, soldiers exact tribute from the miners and porters so that little of the money actually makes it into their hands. These soldiers use the money to buy more weapons, perpetuating the conflict.
After processing, the minerals are flown to Rwanda, where business and political interests make the biggest profits from the minerals. They are processed and the individual elements are sold to the electronics industry. Congolese tantalum represents about 1 percent of global production, and it is hard to track every pound of tantalum through the complex network of refiners and suppliers.
Accountability is therefore a lofty goal, but until we demand greater accountability from the companies the industry that buys these minerals, the bloodshed cannot help but continue. The next time you buy a new computer or cell phone, ask the maker, where do you get your tantalum from?
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