This report evaluates the links between coltan trade and violence in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and examines the potential for recent legislation to break such links and reduce conflict.

Coltan, a metallic mineral used in commodities from mobile phones to jet engines, has become headline news, and for all the wrong reasons. Recent rises in the price of this ore have led to unregulated mining of it in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the same forests that were home to 86% of the world's eastern lowland gorillas. The forests are being destroyed and gorillas are being killed and snared for 'bushmeat' to feed the hundreds of miners and to sell at markets. Recent reports indicate that up to 90% of eastern lowland gorillas may have been killed in the last 3 years. Fears are that without immediate political action, they may be headed towards an inescapable extinction.

Orientations -- Prologue: an introduction to the personal, methodological, and spatiotemporal scales of the project -- The eyes of the world: themes of movement, visualization, and (dis)embodiment in Congolese digital minerals extraction (an introduction) -- Mining worlds. War stories: seeing the world through war ; The magic chain: interdimensional movement in the supply chain for the "Black Minerals" ; Mining futures in the ruins -- The eyes of the world on Bisie and the game of tags ; Bisie during the time of movement ; Insects of the forest ; The battle of Bisie ; Closure ; Game of tags: auditing the digital minerals supply chain ; Conclusion: chains, holes, and wormholes.

A decade ago no one except geologists had heard of tantalum or 'coltan' - an obscure mineral that is an essential ingredient in mobile phones and laptops. Then, in 2000, reports began to leak out of Congo: of mines deep in the jungle where coltan was extracted in brutal conditions watched over by warlords. The United Nations sent a team to investigate, and its exposé of the relationship between violence and the exploitation of coltan and other natural resources contributed to a re-examination of scholarship on the motivations and strategies of armed groups. The politics of coltan encompass rebel militias, transnational corporations, determined activists, Hollywood celebrities, the rise of China, and the latest iGadget. Drawing on Congolese and activist voices, Nest analyses the two issues that define coltan politics: the relationship between coltan and violence in the Congo, and contestation between activists and corporations to reshape the global tantalum supply chain. The way production and trade of coltan is organised creates opportunities for armed groups, but the Congo wars are not solely, or even primarily, about coltan or minerals generally. Nest argues the political significance of coltan lies not in its causal link to violence, but in activists' skillful use of mobile phones as a symbol of how ordinary people and transnational corporations far from Africa are implicated in Congo's coltan industry and therefore its conflict. Nest examines the challenges coltan initiatives face in an activist 'marketplace' crowded with competing justice issues, and identifies lessons from coltan initiatives for the geopolitics of global resources more generally.

-Originally published in Great Britain in 2015 by Oxford University Press.---Verso.

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Politics - Region: Africa, grade: 2,0, University of Frankfurt (Main), language: English, abstract: "No blood on my mobile phone" - This slogan published by a Belgian human rights organization as part of a famous campaign gives a glimpse on what disadvantages the increasing digitalization and globalization has on our society.1 It refers to a material which is used in almost any device of our daily life. We are talking about coltan, one of the rarest and most sought commodities in the world. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) owes hereby one of the largest mineral deposits, but due to the illegal exploitation of natural resources it is at the same time one of the most affected countries.1 The DRC is rich in various minerals, but because of years of dictatorships and wars that lasted in Congo since the beginning of the so-called First Congo War in 1996, there was not only the death of up to an estimated 5.4 million people, but also the dissolving of ordered structures and the economic system.2 In the context of rival rebel groups, government militias as well as occupying forces from neighbouring countries like Rwanda and Uganda one can also find a number of foreign companies that take advantage from the lack of structure and use it for tracking economic interests. Over the last decades a web of corruption, exploitation and trafficking developed, through which it was possible for the beneficiaries of the conflict to achieve their profit.