Sustainable Switch: DR Congo and the cost of tech

Reuters

13 hours ago

Aug 14 (Reuters) - This is an excerpt of the Sustainable Switch newsletter, where we make sense of companies and governments grappling with climate change, diversity, and human rights on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
To receive the full newsletter in your inbox for free sign up here.
Hello!
All aspects of environment, social and governance issues are high on the agenda in today's focus as we look at the mineral-rich but conflict-stricken Democratic Republic of Congo.
Here, we'll be breaking down an in-depth Reuters investigation into the African nation's mines and looking into why parties such as the United States and China have been getting involved.
For a bit of context, the Democratic Republic of Congo has been fighting Rwanda-backed M23 rebels who have seized swathes of its territory this year. Click here for a brief Reuters explainer of the conflict.
As for the minerals, the Democratic Republic of Congo is rich in cobalt, lithium, uranium, tin, tungsten, tantalum, gold, diamonds, copper, charcoal and timber.
Click here for a Reuters story on the concerns among Congo's residents and environmentalists who witnessed illegal logging by M23 in the UNESCO World Heritage site west of Bukavu to produce charcoal and timber.
The Reuters investigation
Now, let's get into this latest investigation where Reuters reporters visited Rubaya in March this year. Rubaya produces around 15% of the world's coltan, all dug manually by impoverished locals who earn a few dollars per day.
Coltan is processed into a heat-resistant metal called tantalum used in mobile phones and other electronics and prized by the aerospace and medical industries among others.
Control of this mine is the biggest prize in a long-running conflict in this central African nation.
The area was seized in April 2024 by M23 to help fund its insurgency. Reuters reporters were told by M23 officials that the rebels had imposed a tax on mineral traders of 15% on the value of coltan they purchase from the informal miners who work the area.
M23 was taking in $800,000 monthly from levies collected from coltan mining in eastern Congo, according to the December U.N. report.
Rwanda's government has long denied that it traffics in coltan looted from its neighbor or that it backs M23.
Reuters journalists who visited the mining sites in March had to abandon their four-wheel-drive Land Cruisers after the vehicles became stuck on the muddy road from Goma. They walked 5 kilometers (3 miles) to reach the town and then hopped on the back of motorcycles with rebel officials to reach the pits.
There, the reporters saw laborers hauling coltan ore. The ore was loaded onto motorbikes and eventually shipped thousands of kilometers away to Asia.
There it's processed into tantalum, a heat-resistant metal that fetches more than $300 a kilogram and is in high demand by makers of mobile phones, computers, aerospace components and gas turbines.
U.N. experts and human rights activists have long warned that profits from illegal mining are funding conflict.
Reuters witnessed at least a dozen children working at the Rubaya mine: Young boys entered the shafts to haul out ore and carry it to the basins where girls worked alongside adults washing and drying the coltan.
The U.S. and China's involvement
Some U.S. entrepreneurs have set their sights on Rubaya's coltan as President Donald Trump seeks to 'broker a peace deal to end the conflict' and 'promote development of the region's mineral wealth.'
The country's formal mining sector at present is dominated by Chinese companies.
This week, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned participants for allegedly smuggling minerals in Congo.
The companies sanctioned included two Hong Kong-based exporters, the Cooperative des Artisanaux Miniers du Congo (CDMC) and the Coalition des Patriotes Resistants Congolais-Forces de Frappe (PARECO-FF), a pro-government Congolese militia that the U.S. said controlled the Rubaya mining site from 2022 to early 2024, prior to M23's takeover.
CDMC said in a statement received by Reuters that "the presence and taxation of mining activity by armed groups such as PARECO-FF and, more recently, the M23 rebels, have prevented CDMC from exercising lawful control over its concession," it said. PARECO-FF could not be reached for comment.
Additionally, Texas hedge fund manager Gentry Beach, who is chairman of investment firm America First Global and helped raise funds for Trump's election campaign in 2016, was part of a consortium looking to negotiate rights to the Rubaya mine, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
The source told Reuters that Beach's group had proposed to the Congolese government taking a majority stake in the mine, with Kinshasa retaining a 30% interest.
ESG LENS
In keeping with the focus on the Democratic Republic of Congo, today's lens highlights what's at stake and the regions captured by M23's Rwanda-backed rebels as peace talks scheduled to resume in Doha, Qatar, last week have been delayed.
The Qatar-hosted talks were intended to run parallel to a mediation effort by the Trump administration involving Congo and Rwanda.
Washington hopes the diplomatic push will produce a sustainable peace and attract billions of dollars of Western investment to a region rich in tantalum, gold, cobalt, copper and lithium.
Today's Sustainable Switch was edited by Mark Potter
Think your friend or colleague should know about us? Forward this newsletter to them. They can also subscribe here.