Bloody mobiles!

With the much hyped release of Apple's i-Phone 5 perhaps it is timely to remember that "It’s possible that two children died so that you could have that mobile phone,” according to Jean-Bertin, a 34-year-old Congolese activist.

 The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has at least 64 percent of worldwide reserves of coltan, the colloquial African name for a dull black ore composed of two minerals, columbite and tantalite. Tantalum, the metal extracted from this ore, is a rare, hard, blue-gray, lustrous transition metal that is highly corrosion resistant. It is used in the production of capacitors for electronic equipment such as mobile phones, computers and tablets. The extraction of coltan contributes to maintaining one of the bloodiest armed conflicts in Africa, which has led to more than five million deaths, massive displacements of the population, and the rape of 300,000 women in the last 15 years, according to human rights organisations.

 “There are many economic interests around the coltan business,” stressed Jean-Bertin. In the meantime, in the DRC, “the killings are real. The blood is everywhere.”