Mobile phones, coltan and fight

There is a good possibility that within your mobile phone there is a tiny amount of a metal that began its trip buried in the land of the Democratic Republic of the East of the Congo, where a war is currently being enraged.

It can even be directly connected to the M23 rebel group that was the global headlines this week.

The tantalio inside its device weighs less than half of the average garden pea, but it is essential for the efficient operation of a smartphone, and almost all other sophisticated electronic devices.

The unique properties of this weird metal, with bluish and lustrous gray, which include being able to maintain a high load compared to its size, while it operates in a range of temperatures, they make it an ideal material for small capacitors, which temporarily store energy.

It is also extracted in Rwanda, Brazil and Nigeria, but at least 40%, and perhaps, the global supply of the element comes from DR Congo and some of the key mining areas are now under the control of the M23.

The current wave of fighting has been happening for months, but the rebels caught the attention with Sunday’s assault to the Vital Center for Rubber Commerce and Transport. The city, which borders Rwanda, is a regional center for the mining business

During the past year, the M23 has made rapid advances through the east of the east of Dr Congo, taking areas where it is extracted, the mineral from which Tontalum is extracted.

Like dozens of other armed groups that operate in the area, the M23 began as a team that defends the rights of an ethnic group perceived as a threat. But as its territory has expanded, mining has become a crucial source of income, paying combatants and weapons.

Last April, he seized Rubay, the city in the heart of Coltan’s industry in the country.

Mineral extraction in this region is not in the hands of multinational conglomerates; On the other hand, thousands of people work in open wells that pay the landscape, or underground, under extremely insecure and unhealthy conditions.

They are part of a complex network and yet informal, that sees the rocks removed from the ground using blades, brought to the surface, crushed, washed, taxed, sold and then exported to be purified and finally cast.

Once the M23 moved to Rubay, the rebels established what a group of UN experts described as a “state administration”, issuing permits to excavators and merchants and demanding an annual rate of $ 25 (£ 20) and $ 250 respectively. The M23 doubled the salary of the Diggers to ensure that they will continue working.

He directs the area as a monopoly to ensure, through the threat of arrest and detention, that only their authorized merchants can do business.

The M23 also charges a $ 7 tax in each kilogram of Coltan. The UN group of experts estimated that, as a result, the M23 wins around $ 800,000 per month of Coltan’s taxes in Rubaya. It is almost certain that money is used to finance the rebellion.

There is an interrogation sign on how the mineral extracted from M23 controlled areas reaches the global supply chain.

Neighboring Rwanda, which is considered to support the M23, is in the center of the response, UN experts say.

Theoretically, a certification scheme, known as innovative tin supply chain initiative (ITSCI), should mean that what enters a telephone telephone and other electronic does not come from conflict areas where it could be used to finance armed groups responsible for carry out atrocities.

The Dodd-Frank Law of the United States approved in 2010, and a similar piece of EU legislation, aims to ensure that companies that buy tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold, called “conflict minerals” realize violence.

But ITSCI has been under some criticism.

Ken Matthysen, an expert in resource security and management in the IPIS Independent Research Group, points out that the dispersed nature of many small -scale mines makes it difficult for local authorities to control exactly what is happening everywhere.

ITSCI labels must be placed in bags in the mine, to demonstrate the origin of the minerals inside, but they are often transported to a collection point where it becomes more difficult to track where the mineral comes from, Matthysen said.

He added that there is also a possible problem with corruption.

“There is even an accusation of state agents who sell labels to merchants, because they do not make a living well. Therefore, merchants go for the east of the DR Congo and label the bags themselves.”

ITSCI did not respond to a request for comments from the BBC, but in the past he defended his record saying that the scheme has been submitted to a rigorous independent audit. He has also been praised for bringing “prosperity for hundreds of thousands of small -scale miners.”

In the case of Rubay, ITSCI suspended its operations there shortly after the M23 entered the city.

However, the group has managed to continue exporting coltan.

UN experts allocate a tortuous route that shows how it is transported for near the Rwanda border. Then it is transferred to “heavy duty trucks” that needed to expand the road to accommodate them.

Rwanda has its own Coltan mines, but experts say that the coltan unbelievable is mixed with the production of Rwanda that leads to a “significant contamination of supply chains.”

The M23 was already involved in Coltan’s business before the capture of Rubay, establishing obstacles and collection rates to cross them, according to Mr. Matthysen.

“Much of the trade of these minerals went through an area controlled by M23 to Rwanda. So even then, Rwanda was benefiting from the instability in the east of the DR Congo and we saw that the export volumes to Ruanda were already increasing” , he said to the BBC.

The figures of the United States Geological Service show that Coltan’s exports in Rwanda increased by 50% between 2022 and 2023. Mr. Matthysen said that this could not have come from Rwanda.

In a robust defense of the position of Rwanda, the government spokesman Yolande Makolo, reiterated to the BBC that there were minerals and refining capacity in his own country.

“It is very cynical to take a problem like what is happening in the east of the RDC, where a persecuted community is struggling for its rights … and convert (IT) into a problem of material benefit,” he added.

The president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, has also dismissed the reports of the UN experts, despising his “experience.”

Much of the east of Dr Congo has been ruined by the conflict for many years, asking questions about who has benefited and if the armed groups are benefiting from what is excavated there.

To highlight the problem and its connection with the smartphone industry, the Congolese government filed criminal complaints in France and Belgium at the end of last year against the subsidiaries of the Apple technological giant, accusing it of using “conflict minerals.”

Apple has played the accusation and pointed out that since the beginning of 2024, due to the growing conflict and the difficulties of certification, it stopped obtaining Tontalum, among other metals, both from Dr. Congo and Rwanda.

Other companies have not been so clear, which means that, as the M23 takes advantage of more territory, those small pieces of tantalio of the mines that control could still reach the devices in which we have trusted.