March 15, 2006 | Volume 3, Issue 1
Congo, Coltan, Conflict
General Kurtz muttered “the horror…the horror” at the end of Joseph Conrad’s 19th century novel Heart of Darkness. Widely regarded as a literary masterpiece, Joseph Conrad’s novel tells the story of Marlow sailing up the Congo River to find the lost General Kurtz. Heart of Darkness is set against the backdrop of what was then the Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). However, the unrest, brutality, exploitation, and “horror” that Conrad describes in his novel are unfortunately not a thing of the past. Modern day DRC is still the scene of unrest and civil war with various armed groups fighting the government and each other. Unlike the Congo of Conrad’s day, the current violence is between ethnic groups, political factions, and nations, and is fueled by modern weapons and financed by the exploitation of the DRC‘s natural resources. This paper explores the relationship of conflict commodities, global markets, and the DRC‘s continuing civil war. In particular, the author focuses on the Columbite-Tantalum (coltan) boom the DRC experienced between 1999 and 2000.
A Brief History of the DRC
We who have suffered in our body and in our heart from colonial oppression, we tell you very loud, all that is henceforth ended [...] Together, my brothers, my sisters, we are going to begin a new struggle, a sublime struggle, which will lead our country to peace, prosperity, and greatness.—Patrice Lumumba, The First Prime Minister of the Congo (Zaire)1
In order to understand coltan, conflict, and the DRC, one needs to first understand the history of the DRC, which is marked by exploitation, corruption and conflict. This survey considers only the DRC‘s colonial and post colonial eras—from King Leopold II’s Congo Free State to the present day2.
Leopold, King of Belguim, created the Congo Free State in 1885 through nefarious political back-dealing with other European powers. Following his philosophy that a nation needed colonies to be a European power, Leopold exclusively operated the private colony. He also used it as a means to enrich his personal wealth. Initial surveys by Lord Stanley found that the Congo had tremendous resource potential, and thus Leopold aggressively exploited the country’s rubber and ivory. To ensure maximum benefit, Leopold built a rail network across the country for the sole purpose of bringing these commodities to the coast, where they could then be shipped to Europe. Leopold further exploited the indigenous population by using them as slaves to harvest the commodities. As a means to control the native population, Leopold disrupted the traditional and delicate ethnic dynamic by pitting one tribe against the other through artificial and arbitrary levels of status. Under Leopold’s rule, an estimated 10 million indigenous people of the Congo were killed or maimed as a result of his policies.
By 1908, the Belgian government wrested control of the Congo Free State from Leopold and began to exploit the Congo’s vast mineral wealth. During this time, the Congo Free State experienced demographic changes. Christianity spread and rural to urban migrations caused increased ethnic dispersion. During the second half of the 20th century, many European powers relinquished their colonies and after brief spates of violence, Belgium followed suit on June 30, 1960. Shortly after taking power, Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of what was then known as the Republic of the Congo, was assassinated in 1961 and the Congo spiraled into chaos.
Colonel Joseph Mobutu quickly seized power amid the chaos in a coup d’etat and began a policy of “re-Africanization.” He renamed himself Mobutu Sese Seko, and the country became Zaire. Zaire under Mobutu saw extensive corruption. Resources were exploited for Mobutu and his ethnic kin’s personal enrichment, which caused ethnic tensions among those not part of Mobutu’s tribe. Furthermore, he purposefully created a strong informal economic sector under the auspices of ‘Debrouvillez-Vous!’ (‘fend for yourselves!’), otherwise known as systeme D, or system D3. This mentality is still embraced by many modern Congolese and dictates their general socio-economic and political philosophy.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Mobutu’s power weakened. By the mid 1990s, two critical events led to the DRC‘s first civil war. First, the spillover effect of Rwanda’s genocide caused many Rwandan Hutus to flee the advancing Tutsi rebel army, fearing reprisals from the Hutu-initiated genocide. These Hutus and Interahamwe rebels sought refuge in Eastern Congo. Second, rebel movements in Eastern Congo coalesced into a single fighting force and backed by Rwanda and Uganda, quickly captured most of the country and the capital Kinshasa in 1997. The newly installed leader, Laurent Kabila, renamed the country the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The eastern part of the country, where Kabila’s rebel movement started, was unable to establish peace. Turning on Kabila, the governments of Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda began backing different rebel movements and invaded with their own respective armies, further destabilizing the east. Zimbabwe, Angola, and Namibia came to the aid of Kabila and Africa’s “world war” ensued. In 2001, Kabila was assassinated and quickly replaced by his son Joseph Kabila. The aftermath of these consecutive civil wars is estimated to have cost between two and three million lives. This paper concentrates on the second civil war (1998 to 2002) and the provinces of North and South Kivu (the Kivus), and to a lesser extent the province of Ituri (depicted in Figure 1 below). Furthermore, the paper shows how Rwanda, Uganda, and the various rebel movements vied for control over the Eastern Congo’s mineral wealth, particularly coltan, to finance their militias.
Figure 1: Map of Eastern Congo
Coltan, the World and the DRC
The Web is central to making this enormous business opportunity happen, and Motorola is already there, with more than 80 percent of all Internet traffic passing through our communications processors. We expect the number of wireless phone users to reach one billion within the next 12 months. Devices of all kinds are getting smarter, evidenced by the 65 billion smart chips projected to be sold over the next five years. It all adds up to a vast marketplace for new products and services.—Christopher B. Galvin, CEO & Chairman of the Board, Motorola5
Columbite-Tantalum, otherwise known as coltan, is a mineral that contains Tantalum, Colombium and Niobium. Once refined, coltan has myriad uses, all of which pertain to its particular properties of being a dense mineral with the ability to withstand high temperatures and stress. As such, coltan derivatives are used as capacitors in devices such as mobile phones and complex missile guidance systems. In fact, “tantalite is classified as a strategic mineral by the US Pentagon,”6 and therefore, the US government owns “extensive stockpiles of it.”7 Furthermore, demand for tantalum averaged an increase of 10 percent per year throughout the 1990s, owing to the fact that “the main attraction of tantalum [...] has been in the construction of capacitors in mobile phones.”8 According to the U.S. Geological Survey, in 2001 the leading mine producers of coltan were Australia (485 metric tons), the DRC (130), Brazil (90) and Canada (57) for a total world mine production of 836 metric tons9. It is estimated that the DRC has 450,000 metric tons of tantalum reserves and “four fifths of the world’s tantalum is found in Africa, of which 80 percent is located in the DRC‘s eastern region.”10
Due to supply shortages and heavy demand from the technology boom, the price of coltan spiked in late 1999 and early 2000 (depicted in Figure 2). During the 1990s “sales of tantalum capacitors used in the electronics industry for cellular phones, pagers, PCs, and automotive electronics increased by 300 percent.”11 This translated to mass speculation on the coltan futures markets causing an astounding 500 percent increase in the dollar price per pound of coltan from 1999 to 2000. This was quickly offset the next year by an equal fall of over 500%, bringing the price from $220/lb to $37/lb in 2001. The price crash of 2001 occurred because of “oversupply, the impending recession in the advanced technology and communications industries and the continuing reduction in the size of tantalum capacitors meaning a reduction on the volume of tantalum required.”12 Furthermore, on December 8, 2000, the U.S. Government’s Defense Logistics Agency “released a large portion of the US government’s strategic stock of [coltan] onto the market, a portion whose value was quoted on the London Metal Exchange at $91.3 million.”13
Figure 2: Historical Price of Coltan14
Coltan, Conflict and the DRC
[As] demand for tantalum took off with the boom of high-tech products in recent years, a new, more sinister market began flourishing in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There, warring rebel groups—many funded and supplied by neighboring Rwanda and Uganda—are exploiting coltan mining to help finance a bloody civil war now in its third year—Essick, Boslet, and Grondahl15
Up to two million people have died in DR Congo, mostly from malnutrition and disease, since the war broke out in 1998 when rebels backed by Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda tried to topple the government of the late Congolese President Laurent Desire Kabila.—BBC News16
Global supply chains coalesced on the North and South Kivu and Ituri provinces during the DRC‘s civil wars (specifically, during the second civil war, 1992–2002): one supply chain focused on coltan, and the other on small arms and money. The networks that controlled these supply chains were murky at best and their activities are difficult to trace. What remains clear and generally agreed upon is that the Rwandan Government’s RPA (Rwandan Patriotic Army) together with their allies, the rebel group RCD-Goma (Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie, based in Goma) looted and then exploited minerals in the Kivus. Likewise, the Ugandan government’s UPDF (Ugandan People’s Defensive Forces) together with their allies, the rebel groups RCD-ML (Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie, based in Kisangani and Bunia) and the MLC (Mouvement de Libebation Congolais) plundered minerals in Ituri.
The DRC‘s “coltan belt” spans an area containing Bunia, Goma, Bukavu, and Kindu17—areas exclusively in the Kivus and Ituri. These areas are home to a great variety of ethnic groups, all of which have had historical tension between them since Leopold’s “created” ethnic rivalries. Ituri contains mostly Hema, Lendu, and Nande ethnicities, whereas the Kivus contain mostly Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis, Congolese Hutus and Tutsis, and Mai-Mai. The interplay of ethnic differences not only fueled the militias and tensions between them, but also provided the social structure in the supply chain of coltan. The map in Figure 3 shows areas of coltan (called niobium and etain—The French terms for tin, which also contains coltan) and lines of control in the Great Lakes region on the DRC‘s border with Rwanda and Uganda. Figure 4 depicts approximate troop location throughout the DRC. It is evident from the maps that Rwanda and Uganda exert control over much of eastern Congo through direct occupation and through alliances with various rebel groups. Rwanda and Uganda use these rebel groups as proxies to extract coltan, bring it to their respective capitals, and then ship it oversees for processing.
Figure 3: Map of Coltan Areas and Lines of Control18
Figure 4: Approximate Deployment of Armed Groups in DRC[19]
In order to truly understand the nefarious nature of the coltan trade, the local-to-global supply chain that underpins its structure must also be understood. Here, Rwanda is used as an example. Rwanda invaded the DRC under the initial plan to control Interahamwe rebels, the perpetrators of Rwanda’s genocide who fled to the DRC when the RPA (mostly Tutsis) took over the country. Considerable pressure was put on Rwanda to withdraw, and most of the RPA in the DRC integrated themselves with the RCD-Goma, still receiving orders from Kigali. However, it was clear from military officials on the ground that the DRC had massive resource potential and proxy companies and mining concessions were set up and granted whereby commanders in both the RPA and RCD-Goma—and other Rwandan elites with government connections—were the primary stakeholders. Initially, the RPA and RCD-Goma looted existing stocks of coltan with impunity. The former, legitimate mining companies operating in the Kivus acquiesced to violence. For example, “SOMINKI (Societe Minere et Industrielle du Kivu) had seven years worth of [...coltan] in stock in various areas. Rwandan forces and their RCD allies organized its removal and transport to Kigali [whereby…] between 1,000 and 1,500 tons of coltan were removed from the region between November 1998 and April 1999.”20 This same pattern of looting occurred on both sides with the “Interahamwe militias in Katoyi forest [...] frequently [making] sorties against the coltan-producing Kibabi area.”21 Once stocks had been looted to the point of depletion, proxy companies were created for the specific endeavor of extracting coltan from the DRC. The supply chain involved in the extraction of coltan is complicated. What follows is how coltan goes from ore to cell phone in the Rwandan controlled Kivus.
Extraction
The UN identified three methods for extraction used by rebels and occupying forces: ”(1) by individual soldiers for their own benefit; (2) by locals organized by Rwandan and Ugandan commanders; and (3) by foreign nationals for the army or commanders’ benefit”. It is noted that in some locations coltan miners “worked under the heavy guard of the Rwandan soldiers” and that “Rwanda utilized prisoners to dig coltan in exchange for a sentence reduction and limited cash to buy food.”22 Furthermore, reductions in school attendance and the presence of child miners were apparent and oftentimes children served as forced labor23. At the mine level, miners operated in an artisanal fashion. Teams would dig several meters into the ground and bring the ore to the surface. It was then loaded onto vehicles or carried by animal or person for sale to comptoirs, or brokers24.
Comptoirs and Brokerage
At every level, the rebel group in control of the stage of production received a tax. However, gross price exploitation allowed the comptoirs (who, in the Kivus, were usually connected to the RPA or RCD-Goma) to reap heavy profits. The distance of a mine from urban centers usually determined the number of comptoirs who handled the ore. The comptoirs, who mostly operated out of the urban centers, washed, separated, graded, consolidated and packaged the ore for shipment25. According to the UN, in one specific case Eagle Wings International (EWI), a subsidiary of the Ohio based Trinitech International, Inc., operated a comptoir in Bukavu. EWI shipped ore via air and truck to Kigali, where the manager of EWI in Kigali ”[had] close ties to the Rwandan Regime.”26 Because of these connections and its collaboration with the RPA, EWI was able to dodge customs duties and ”[received] privileged access to coltan sites and captive labor.”27
International Transit
Once in Kigali, the ore was prepared for international shipment. The receiving locations overseas vary widely, but in the case of EWI, “25 percent of Eagle Wings coltan [was] shipped from Kigali to the Ulba Metallurgical Plant of NAC Kazatomprom, in Kazakhstan.”28 Other coltan was sold to EWI‘s parent company based out of Ohio, Chinese processing facilities, and German based H.C. Starck29. The refined tantalum ore was then sold to chip manufacturers, and from there to various technology appliance manufacturers such as cellular phone producers.
Coltan and Military Financing
For brevity’s sake, this section focuses primarily on Rwanda. Paul Kagame was once quoted as saying the war in the Congo was “self-financing.”30 Indeed, it has been reported that “between late 1999 and late 2000 [...] the Rwandan army could have made $20 million per month, simply by selling the coltan that, on average, intermediaries [bought] from small dealers at about $10 per kg.”31 At that time, coltan speculation reached a fever pitch and could fetch $200 per kg on the global markets.32 This raises an important question: where was the money going? It certainly has not gone to the local economy. Instead, “all military experts consulted suggested that the official defense budget of Rwanda [$70 million] [could not] alone cover the cost of their war and presence in the [DRC].”33 Therefore, one can conclude that the plunder of minerals in the DRC not only directly benefited a few, corrupt elite, but also helped to finance Rwandan military operations, including aid to their RCD-Goma allies. Figure 5 shows the gains from coltan both Rwanda and Uganda received in terms of exports (note: Rwanda’s figures are official government figures and may be subject to debate).
Figure 5: Gains from Coltan in Uganda34
Figure 6: Gains from Coltan in Rwanda34
Coltan and Civil Breakdown
The coltan boom created mass exploitation and looting of resources in eastern DRC, but none of the profits have benefited the Congolese who live in the Kivus. Instead, coltan mining has had an equally devastating effect on the local populations and environment. People were forced from their farm land to make way for more mines, and militias constantly harassed civilians thought to be colluding with the opposition. The coltan mines were primarily worked by men and male youth, who had previously engaged in both surplus and subsistence farming. These factors destabilized the food supply tremendously. Rather than engage in grazing and farming, “many work only small plots close to their homes, not larger ones further into the hills [...which] in turn, means subsistence levels of production rather than traditional surplus, contributing to agricultural price inflation.”35 Furthermore, the UN identified the use of child soldiers, a rise in HIV/AIDS, implementation of the “rape weapon,” a drastic rise of internally displaced persons (IDPs), malnutrition, and higher mortality rates as a result of the myriad of militias and armed forces vying for the DRC‘s resources36. Native wildlife was also adversely affected by coltan mining. “The number of okapis, gorillas and elephants has dwindled to small populations. In the Kahuzi-Biega Park, a zone controlled by the Rwandans and RCD-Goma and rich in coltan, only 2 out of 350 elephant families remained in 2000.”37
NGOs and the UN
The illegal mining of coltan has raised serious environmental and political concerns. When Motorola first became aware of this controversy in early 2001, we took swift and effective steps to cease the use of materials containing tantalum, a coltan derivative, which could be traced to illegal mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo.—Motorola Position on Illegally Mined Coltan.38
The question remains: how does one ensure that exploitation on this level does not happen again? Indeed, an initial inquiry by the UN caused many NGOs to hold the actors in DRC‘s exploitation accountable. As evidenced by the above Motorola position statement and several others by H.C. Starck and Cabot Corporation (both tantalum refiners), popular resistance spurred by “a large-scale international lobby campaign [...] against the purchase of coltan from the Eastern DRC”39 caused many in the global supply chain to inspect their business practices and supply chains. In fact, the UN praised the work of NGOs, saying “it is important for the international community to support and strengthen the monitoring capacity of civil society, in the form of NGOs and other groups, so that they can play a greater and more effective role [in monitoring].”40
The UN reports cited in this paper have increased MONUC‘s (United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo) presence in the Eastern DRC. Small arms procurement by MUNOC is the number one priority in breaking the vicious cycle of “the flow of arms, exploitation and continuation of conflict.”41 Force and buying small arms is seen as the basis for this strategy. Global coltan certification has also been discussed, but western countries differ in the scope and difficulty of implementation, therefore putting such measures on hiatus.42 Instead, the overall goal of the UN in the Eastern DRC is to stop the violence by stemming the prevalence of small arms, creating non-corrupt governance, building institutions and allowing for the legal exploitation of the DRC‘s minerals that would benefit the Congolese people.43
Conclusion
The DRC‘s history is characterized by exploitation, corruption, and conflict. In the case of coltan, a divisive civil war was fought by many actors and financed through the DRC‘s mineral wealth. Global markets drove the demand for coltan, and the armies of Uganda and Rwanda in collusion with their respective rebel groups used the spike in demand and price to fill their respective treasuries and further finance their operations. A convoluted supply chain ensured that minerals mined would reach western manufacturers with none of the benefits going to the Congolese people. The blame for this “horror” falls squarely on corrupt government officials, multinational corporations, military leaders, and a handful of business elites. However, the UN and multiple NGOs exposed the coltan trade and the pressure exerted by these bodies caused many to reevaluate their coltan supply chains.
NGOs need to be encouraged in their work. In June 2005, Human Rights Watch released “The Curse of Gold”44 which highlighted the DRC‘s gold trade. This trade has stark parallels to that of the coltan trade. BBC News also recently reported that ”[...] Human Rights Watch says 2,000 civilians were killed during 2002 and 2003 as rival militias fought for control of the mines.”45 Unfortunately, it seems that exploitation continues to shift from commodity to commodity, but a strengthened NGO presence in these areas, together with a large UN presence involved in disarmament and institution building, is the only clear short term answer.
1 Africa Within. “June 30, 1960, Independence Day speech.” Available at
http://www.africawithin.com/lumumba/independence_speech.htm. Retrieved 10 July 2005.
2 Infoplease. “Congo, Democratic Republic of the: History.” Available at
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/world/A0857522.html. Retrieved 10 July 2005.
3 Jackson, Stephen. “Making a Killing: Criminality & Coping in the Kivu War Economy.” Review of
African Political Economy. No. 93/94. ROAPE Publications Ltd., 202. p. 520.
4 BBC News. “Quick Guide – DR Congo Conflict.” Available from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/quick_guides/04/africa_dr_congo/html/5.stm. 10 July 2005. Retrieved June 2005.
5 Motorola. “2000 Annual Report, Motorola,” 13. Available from
http://www.motorola.com/General/Financial/Annual_Report/2000/pdf/full_report.pdf. Retrieved June 2005.
6 Tegera, Aloys, et. al. “The Coltan Phenomenon.” POLE Institute. Available from
http://www.pole-institute.org/documents/coltanglais02.pdf. 2002. 5.
7 Ibid. 5.
8 Ibid.
9 USGS. “U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries, January 2002.” Available from
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/niobium/index.html#mcs. Retrieved on June 2005.
10 Stephen Jackson. “Making a Killing: Criminality & Coping in the Kivu War Economy,” Review of
African Political Economy No. 93/94:523;.Dena Montague, 2002. “Stolen Goods: Coltan and Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” SAIS Review 22(1):105.
11 Montague, 2002.
12 Aloys Tegera, et. al. “The Coltan Phenomenon.” POLE Institute. Available from
http://www.pole-institute.org/documents/coltanglais02.pdf. Retrieved June 2005. 2002. p. 5.
13 Ibid. p. 5.
14 U.S. Geological Survey, “Mineral Commodity Summaries, January 2002“and “U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries, January 2005.” Available from http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/niobium/index.html#mcs. Retrieved on June 2005
15 Kristi Essick, Mark Boslet and Boris Grondahl.. “A Call to Arms – Demand For Coltan Causes
Problems in Congo,” The Industry Standard. June 11, 2001. Retrieved from Findarticles.com. on June 13, 2005. Available from http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HWW/is_23_4/ai_75669917.
16 BBC News. “African leaders urge DR Congo pull-out.” BBC News. April 3, 2002. Available from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1908465.stm. Retrieved on June 13, 2005.
17 Montague, 112.
18 Rekacewicz, Philippe. “The coveted riches of the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Le Monde Diplomatique. Available from http://mondediplo.com/maps/congomdv49. Retrieved on June 15, 2005.
19 Relief Web. “Approximate Deployment of Armed Groups in DRC.” Available from http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900LargeMaps/SKAR-64GD59?OpenDocument&cc=cod&rc=1. Retrieved on June 14, 2005.
20 Safiatou Ba-N’Daw, et. al. 2001. “Report on the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” United
Nations. Security Council Document S/2001/357. Pages 8.
21 Jackson, Stephen. “Fortunes of War: The Coltan Trade in the Kivus.” Power, Livelihoods and Conflict: Case Studies in Political Economy Analysis for Humanitarian Action. Humanitarian Policy
Group: London. 2003. p. 27.
22 Ba-N’Daw, 11,12.
23 Jackson, 27; Aloys Tegera, et. al. “The Coltan Phenomenon.” POLE Institute.
Available from http://www.pole-institute.org/documents/coltanglais02.pdf. Retrieved June 2005. 5.
24 Jackson, 26.
25 Jackson, 28.
26 Mahmoud Kassem, et. al. “Final Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” United
Nations. Security Council Document S/2002/1146. 16.
27 Kassem, 28.
28 Kassem, 16.
29 Kassem, 16.
30 Montague, 112.
31 Ba-N’Daw, 29.
32 Ba-N’Daw, 29.
33 Ba-N’Daw, 27.
34 Safiatou Ba-N’Daw, et. al. 2001. “Report on the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” United
Nations. Security Council Document S/2001/357. 8.
35 Jackson, 32.
36 Kassem, 23–24.
37 Ba-N’Daw, 12.
38 Motorola. “Motorola Position on Illegally Mined Coltan,” Available from
http://www.motorola.com/mot/doc/1/1444_MotDoc.pdf. Retrieved on June 17, 2005.
39 Tegerap, 8.
40 Kassem, 21.
41 Kassem, 19.
42 Kassem, 22.
43 Kassem, 15–20.
44 Human Rights Watch. “The Curse of Gold.” Available from http://hrw.org/reports/2005/drc0505/. Retrieved June 2005.
45 Will Ross. “On the trail of DR Congo’s ‘cursed’ gold.” BBC News. 3 June 2005. Available from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4604627.stm. Retrieved on June 5, 2005.