Mining is one of the most important land use activity in the Republic of Congo. It has employed millions of people, especially in the informal sector. Over the past few decades, it has surpassed time as the largest economic activity. The major resources that are mined in Congo include copper, diamonds, cobalt, gold, and oil. Recently, mining in Congo has taken a shift in the focus of mining groups have turned to rare minerals namely cassiterite and coltan used in electronics such as cell phones.
What is Coltan? You may not know what coltan is, but surely when you inspect your electronic gadget like cell phone, pagers, and laptops, you won't miss it. The mineral has become very important in day to day communication in America more so in the United States. A coltan is a short form of columbite-tantalite, a dull metallic ore found in bulk in the eastern part of Congo (Delawala 1). The mineral becomes a metallic tantalum when refined. As a metallic tantalum, the mineral can be used as a heat-resistant powder capable of holding a high electrical charge. The property here makes it very useful in creating capacitors. Capacitors made of metallic tantalum are used in nearly all cell phones, pagers, and laptops (Delawala 8). Due to this significance, the price of coltan has risen to a whopping four hundred dollars per kilogram.
How is coltan mined? Mining of coltan is via a first process quite similar to the way gold was mined in California around the eighteenth century. Groups of men work together as they dig huge craters in streambeds scratching away the unwanted dirt from the surface to get to the coltan deposited underground. Water and mud are then sloshed around in huge washtubs. Coltan can then settle at the bottom because it is relatively heavy. Apart from coltan, another mineral that has found its use in electronic gadgets and is highly mined in Congo is cobalt. Cobalt is mostly used in smartphones (Smith 4).
Mining in Congo in the recent times has become a lucrative venture. As such, it is for this reason that underage youths have decided to work in the coltan and cobalt mines. With the increased level of famine among the average Congolese, child labor has become the order of the day in most parts of Congo. Most of the children working in these mines are paid a dollar a day. Data from amnesty illustrates that children as young as seven years mine cobalt used in computers, cell phones, and cars. These children work under life threating conditions just only to be underpaid by their self-proclaimed bosses. In collaboration with Afrewatch, (African Resource Watch), amnesty international in their findings outline that young children from the age of seven have been sported carrying heavy loads and working in intense for as little as a dollar or two on a daily basis without wearing any face masks or gloves. To make it worse, these children narrate how they get beatings at times by security guards working for mining companies. They are also enforced to pay fines by the police sent by state officials to extract money from mine workers. The Amnesty report also posit that a Chinese mineral company by the name Hua you Cobalt Limited sources more than forty percent of its cobalt from Congo (Smith 12). It carries out processing on the said mineral before selling it to battery makers supplying companies such as Vodafone, Microsoft and Apple.
Congo being one of the African countries where there is a huge disparity between the rich and the poor, curbing child labor may prove to be an uphill task. It is a country where the rich get richer, and the poor become poorer. After all, the children need basic needs-they need food, water, and shelter. Some of the underage youths working in the mines may be orphans which leaves them with nearly no option than to work in the mines.
Mining in Congo has brought with it several effects. Coltan, for instance, is mined on a daily basis by children, youth and adults thanks to its high demand all over the world. There has also been a high demand for other minerals such as copper, gold, diamond, and tin (Sutherland 14). The demand for these minerals has led to an unmerciful civil war that has claimed the lives of over six million Congolese in a span of twenty years. The civil wars have been fueled by the scramble for recourses. Majority of Congolese mines rich in great minerals like gold and coltan are owned by rebels.
Child labor has also become a serious problem in Congo. Children are forced to work under terrible conditions to support their families that are under extreme famine. Some of the children are orphans who cannot live without money. Several deaths have also been reported from frequent accidents that occur in the mines.
Some of the rare minerals mined in Congo can be used for beneficial health purposes for instance coltan can be used in pacemakers. However, most of the minerals are demanded and used in products that people can live without, for example, electronic gadgets and jewelry.
Works Cited
Delawala, Imtiyaz. "What is coltan." ABC News. http://abcnews. go. com/Nightline/story (2012).
Smith, James H. "Tantalus in the Digital Age: Coltan ore, temporal dispossession, and movement in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo." American Ethnologist 38.1 (2011): 17-35.
Sutherland, Ewan. "Coltan, the Congo and your cell phone." (2011).
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