The Rape of the Congo in Six Steps

Cell phones are the cause of 4 million deaths in Congo. How?

To get to the heart of the world’s worst, and most unreported, conflict since World War II and which has accounted for four million deaths in over ten years, Enough Project, which aims to end genocide and crimes against humanity, traveled to eastern Congo. They went to put together the missing pieces of a puzzle: how do the 3 T’s (tin, tantalum and tungsten) and gold find their way from Congo to our cell phones, laptops, MP3 players and video game systems?

What they found was far less complicated than the electronics industry would have consumers believe. The journey from mine to cell phone can be broken down into six major steps that make the supply chain easy to understand.

Step One: the journey of a conflict mineral begins at one of eastern Congo’s many mines. There are 13 major mines, according to the Enough Project report, 12 of which are controlled by armed groups, and about 200 mines in the whole region. The major armed group is the FDLR (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda), militia whose origins lie in the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Many genocide perpetrators fled to eastern Congo and, according to an unreleased report of UN experts, are being financed by supporters in the US and Europe.

The average wage for a miner –many of whom are child workers aged between 10 and 16- is between $1 and $5 per day. The working conditions are harsh, and uncontrolled.

Two: from the mines the minerals are transported to trading towns and then to the two major cities in the area, Bukavu and Goma, across the border from Rwanda. The key trading hubs for gold are Butembo and Uvira, further north, and separated from western Uganda by the Ruwenzori Mountains.

Three: Export companies then buy minerals from the trading houses and transporters, process the minerals mechanically, and sell them to foreign buyers. These companies, locally known as ‘comptoirs,” are required to register with the Congolese government. Currently there are 17 companies based in Bukavu and 24 in Goma.

Four: The exporters send the minerals by road, boat or plane to the neighbouring countries of Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. Some minerals are exported legally, with taxes paid to the Congolese government; others are smuggled across Congo’s porous borders.

Five: For the minerals to be sold on the world market, they have to be refined into metals by processing companies. These companies, based mainly in East Asia, take the minerals and smelt or chemically process them in large furnaces, together with metals from other countries. According to the unreleased UN report, casseterite, a key component of tin, is refined in Thailand and Malaysia.

Six: the refiners sell Congo’s minerals to the electronics’ companies, the single largest consumer of minerals from eastern Congo. These companies, which include Intel, Apple, Nokia, Hewlett Packard, Nintendo, then make the products that we buy: cell phones, video games and laptops. Since companies do not at present have a system to trace, audit and certify where their materials come from, our cell-phones and laptops may contain conflict minerals from Congo.

Martyn Drakard is a writer based in Uganda and Kenya.