THE COPPERBELT UNIVERSITY

School of Mines and Mineral Sciences.

NAME: NATHAN MBAMBIKO
SIN: 18121993
COURSE CODE: M.I 213
LECTURER: PROF. CHILESHE
TASK: ASSIGNMENT 3
QUESTION: COLTAN WARS
PROGRAM: METALLURGICAL ENGINEERING 2
DUE DATE: 21ST APRIL, 2020
 TABLE OF CONTENT
1. Production and supply.
2. Use and demand.
3. Ethics of mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
4. Environmental concerns.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Upon completion of this topic, it is expected that students will be
able to:
• How it financed wars in the Democratic republic of
Congo.
• Uses of Tantalite.
• Ethics of mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
• Environmental concerns.
• Production and supply.
 INTRODUCTION

Coltan (short for columbite–tantalites and known industrially

as tantalite) is a dull black metallic ore from which are
extracted the elements niobium and tantalum. Tantalum
from coltan is used to manufacture tantalum capacitors
which are used for portable telephones, personal
computers, automotive electronics, and cameras . Coltan
mining has financed serious conflict in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, including the Ituri conflict and the Second
Congo War.
 1. PRODUCTION AND SUPPLY
Approximately 71% of global tantalum supply in 2008 was newly mined, 20% was
from recycling, and the remainder was from tin slag and inventory. Tantalum
minerals are mined in Colombia, Australia, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, and Mozambique.
Tantalum is also produced in Thailand and Malaysia as a by-product of tin mining
and smelting. Potential future mines, in descending order of magnitude, are being
explored in Egypt, Greenland, China, Australia, Finland, Canada, Nigeria and Brazil.
In 2016 Rwanda accounted for 50% of global tantalum production. In 2016, Rwanda
announced that AB Minerals Corporation would open a coltan separation plant in
Rwanda by mid-2017, the first to operate on the African continent. Uganda and
Rwanda both exported coltan in the early 2000s after they invaded the DRC, but the
coltan came from mines in the DRC, according to the final report of the UN Panel of
Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth
in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Reserves have been identified
in Afghanistan ,but the ongoing war there precludes either general exploration or
exploring specifically for coltan for the foreseeable future. The United States does
not produce tantalum due to the poor quality of its reserves. Tantalum is also found
in Canada, Columbia, Mozambique, Chile and Australia.
• The United States responded to conflict minerals with section
1501 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which required that companies
who might have conflict minerals in their supply chain to
register with the US Securities and Exchange Commission
disclose their suppliers. Reaction to this legislation was mixed.
Based on extensive qualitative fieldwork conducted from
2014 to 2016 with coltan buyers operating in  one researcher
suggested that conflict mineral reforms resulted in better
oversight and organization of supply chains, but that inaction
by the Congolese government had led to locally negotiated
solutions and territorialisation which obscure access criteria.
 2.0 Use and Demand
Coltan is used primarily for the production of tantalum capacitors, used in
many electronic devices. Coltan's importance in the production of mobile
phones, but tantalum capacitors are used in almost every kind of electronic
device. Niobium and tantalum have a wide range of uses, including refractive
lenses for glasses, cameras, phones and printers. They are also used in
semiconductor circuits, and capacitors for small electronic devices such as
hearing aids, pacemakers, and mp3 players, as well as in computer hard
drives, automobile electronics, and surface acoustic wave filters for mobile
phones.

Coltan is also used to make high-temperature alloys for jet engines and air-
and land-based turbines. More recently, the nickel-tantalum super alloys used
in jet engines account for 15% of tantalum consumption, but pending orders
for the Airbus and the 787 Dreamliner may increase this proportion, as well as
China's pending order for 62 787-8 airplanes.
.
 2.1 RESOURCE CURSE.
Certain countries rich in natural resources have been said to suffer from the apparently
paradoxical "resource curse" - showing worse economic development than countries
with fewer resources. In the case of the Congo, this can possibly be explained by historical and
modern invasion and colonization, which prevents the Congolese from implementing a
balanced and sustained development. Wealth of resources may also correspond to the
likelihood of weak democratic development, corruption, and civil war". High levels of
corruption lead to great political instability, because whoever controls the assets, in the case
of the Democratic Republic of the Congo can use them for their own benefit. The resources
generate wealth, which the leaders use to stay in power. either through legal means, or
coercive ones. The increased importance of coltan in electronics "occurred as warlords and
armies in the eastern Congo converted artisanal mining operations into slave labour regimes
to earn hard currency to finance their militias," as one anthropological study put it. When
much of eastern Congo came under the control of Rwandan  forces in the 1990s, Rwanda
suddenly became a major exporter of coltan, benefiting from the weakness of the Congolese
government, the soaring price "brought in as much as $20 million a month to rebel groups"
and other factions trading coltan mined in northeastern Congo
 2.2 Mining
For Congolese, mining is the readiest source of income, because the work is
consistently available, even if only for a dollar a day. The work can be laborious;
miners can walk for days into the forest to reach the ore, scratch it from the earth
with hand tools and pan it. About 90% of young men in Congo used do this. Research
found that many Congolese leave farming because they need money quickly and
cannot wait for crops to grow. Farming also presents its own obstacles. For example,
the lack of roads in the Congolese interior makes it extremely difficult to transport
produce to market and a harvest can be seized by militias or the military. With their
food gone, people resort to mining to survive. But organized mines may be run by
corrupt groups such as militias. The Congolese mine coltan with few tools, no safety
procedures, and often no mining experience. No government aid or intervention is
available in many unethical and abusive circumstances. Miners consider coltan
mining a way to provide for themselves in the face of widespread war and conflict
and a government that has no concern for their welfare.
 3.0 Ethics of Mining in the Democratic
Republic of Congo.
Conflicts, including the Rwandan occupation of the eastern Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC), have made it difficult for the DRC to exploit its coltan reserves.
Mining of coltan is mainly artisanal and small-scale and vulnerable to extortion and
human trafficking. Income from coltan smuggling likely financed the military
occupation of Congo, and prolonged the civil conflict afterwards. The UN report
accused the fighters of massively looting Congolese natural resources, and said
that the war persisted because the fighters were enriching themselves by mining
and smuggling out coltan, timber, gold, and diamonds. They also said that
smuggled minerals financed the fighting and provided money for weapons. A 2005
report on the Rwandan economy by the South African Institute found that Rwanda
official coltan production soared nearly tenfold between 1999 and 2001, from 147
tons to 1,300 tons, and for the first time provided more revenue than from the
country traditional primary exports, tea and coffee. Similarly, Uganda exported 2.5
tons of coltan exports a year before the conflict broke out in 1997. In 1999 its
export volume exploded to nearly 70 tons.
Estimates of Congo's coltan deposits range
upwards from 64% of global reserves. But
estimates at the high end of the range are difficult
to trace to reliable data. Professional bodies
 estimate that Central Africa as a whole has 9% of
global assets. Tantalum, the primary element
extracted from coltan, can also be obtained from
other sources, but Congolese coltan represented
around 10% of world production in 2008.
 4.0 Environmental Concerns
• Uncontrolled mining in the DRC caused soil erosion and pollutes lakes
and rivers, affecting the hydrology and ecology of the region.
• The eastern mountain gorilla's population has diminished as well.
Miners, far from food sources and often hungry, hunt gorillas. The
gorilla population in the DRC fell from 17,000 to 5,000 in the decade
prior to 2009, and Mountain Gorillas in the Great Lakes region
numbered only 700, UNEP said in 2009. Hunted for bush meat, a
prized delicacy in western Africa, and threatened by logging, slash-
and-burn agriculture and armed conflict, the gorilla population was
critically endangered, they said. The population of gorillas were
particularly threatened by changes in their environment, with a
population in January 2018 of only about 3,800
An estimated 3–5 million tons of bush meat is obtained by killing
animals, including gorillas, every year. Demand for bush meat comes
from urban dwellers who consider it a delicacy, as well as from remote
populations of artisanal miners. Environmentalists who interviewed
miners in and around Kahuzi-Biéga National Park and the Itombwe
Nature Reserve found that the miners did confirm that they had been
eating bush meat and that they did think that the practice had caused a
decline in primate numbers. Since the miners said they would cease the
practice if they had another food supply, the authors suggested that
efforts to stop the gorilla population decline should consider addressing
this issue to reduce the depredations of subsistence hunting. The mines
in these nature reserves were producing cassiterite, gold, coltan
and wolframite, and "most mines were controlled by armed groups.
 4.1 Prices increases and changes in demand.
The production and sale of coltan and niobium from African mines dropped
significantly after the dramatic price spike in 2000 from dot com frenzy, from $400 to
the current price level of around $100. Figures from the United States Geological
Survey partially confirm this. The Tantalum-Niobium International Study Centre
in Belgium, the country that colonized Congo, has encouraged international buyers to
avoid Congolese coltan on ethical grounds. In addition to environmental harm caused
by erosion, pollution and deforestation, agriculture and as a result food security
suffered in the DRC as a result of mining. A follow-up UN report in 2003 noted a sharp
increase in 1999 and 2000 in the global price of tantalum, which naturally increased
coltan productions. Some of the increased production came from eastern DC where
"rebel groups and unscrupulous business people" forcing farmers and their families
to leave land where the rebels wanted to mine, "forcing them to work in artisanal
mines...widespread destruction of agriculture and devastating social effects occurred,
which in a number of instances were akin to slavery.
 CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the significant explanation on coltan wars concludes
that coltan has played a role in instigating and facilitating wars in the
Democratic Republic of Congo. It has dangerously fused economic,
political and socio culture interests illustrated by military objectives
of the warring factions becoming increasingly realigned towards the
ownership of the mineral deposits. This has resulted into in some
dynamics within the war in Congo where collaboration and
economic alliances between different parties have transpired to
strengthen the resource exploitation capabilities. The vicious cycle of
war in the Congo has been instigated by the illegal extraction and
exploitation of natural resources, particularly coltan, which has
taken a conflict sustaining role.
 Reference
1. Bloodworth, Andrew (2015). "Mineralogy: Painful
extractions". Nature.
2. Mustapha, A. O.; Mbuzukongira, P.; Mangala, M. J. (2007).
"Occupational radiation exposures of artisans mining
columbite–tantalite in the eastern Democratic Republic of
Congo". 
3. Charlotte Spira; Andrew Kirkby; Deo Kujirakwinja; Andrew J.
Plumptre (11 April 2017). "The socio-economics of artisanal
mining and bushmeat hunting around protected areas: Kahuzi–
Biega National Park and Itombwe Nature Reserve, eastern
Democratic Republic of Congo“
4. Nest, Michael (2013). Coltan. New York: John Wiley & Sons