09-05-2025
Inside the mines fuelling Congo's brutal war — and the world's tech
Across the jagged scar of the hillside, white against the lush green, tiny figures scurry like worker ants, hauling, washing and bagging precious minerals pulled from the earth. Men and boys, their faces caked in white manganese, navigate paths slippery with laterite, their shoulders bowed with sacks.
At a rinsing pit, the mine manager, Patrice Musafiri, swirls his hands through a bucket of black stones. 'Coltan,' he declares. 'Without it a mobile phone cannot function. Modern life cannot function. Everyone in the world needs what is here.'
This is the Rubaya mine in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, an area ravaged by conflict stemming back to the 1994 Rwandan genocide and fuelled by three decades of the world's growing thirst for technology-critical minerals.
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