Congo Connection

September 2009

Making mobile phones uses minerals only available from Congo's war zone. Is our appetite for the latest electronic gadgets fuelling exploitation in the Congoeven threatening the survival of central Africas magnificent gorillas?
On the inside of many devices like mobile phones and laptops, the mineral, Coltan, has made our gadgets smaller and more complex. In the mineral-rich Congo, armed militia watch over the children digging it from the ground. The government only pretends to help us says one miner, who pays a government official just to work. The Congo is a shifting sands of various militia, the largest of which is the Congolese state itself explains an expert on blood minerals. Yet the miners depend on the little they get from mining to survive. Electronic giants like Apple now claim they will no longer use Coltan from this area but experts are convinced the militias will smuggle it onto the market regardless. For local miners, the move away from African minerals is just another way of penalising Africans. Coltan fuels a conflict, which has seen national parks become war zones, gorillas killed for meat and hundreds of houses set on fire in turf wars over mineral territory. Yet it also feeds 400,000 petty traders. Why did it take a mobile phone to make us appreciate the injustice in the Congo?

Produced by ABC Australia, distributed by Journeyman Pictures

Category:

• Documentary

Tags:

• congo
• minerals
• war
• famine
• technology
• mines
• journeyman
• pictures
• news
• documentary
• current affairs
• journeyman pictures

[antonpictures]

Coltan of Congo - War of Electronics

(The Film is available FREE @antonpictures Documentary Section)

a George Anton Documentary

paste this: /watch?v=wHqU6aSARZc

or just click below on

antonpictures

[Mata9639]

i would like to marry jason stearns, he is a dream man, highlighting what is really up,and wrong, knowing he could be killed at anytime.

[Janusha]

Its always "the white man" to blame isnt it. Like children, Africans are never responsible. Even when blacks are shooting blacks, its still the white mans fault. If they couldnt make phones and playstations out of this, they would make it out of something else. Our wealth and prosperity does NOT rely on Africa being poor. They do that all by themselves by lacking the organisational skills to manage resources. Africa recieved 600 billion dollars in international aid but will never civilize.

[teen4373]

Great site for dating # lushfmlk.info #

[visionimagify]

Elitist make me sick. They spawn this mess.

[onefreshjr187]

very overwhelming for those of us that still have a conscience. Thaks for the video.

[Allybeya]

Thank you for this video many people knows what happen in congo but they close eyes. We have to do something. Me and my wife we have opened a small school in Kinshasa. We have now 200 pupils if some one want to hepld this school grown up don't hesitate. Les petits amis du Québec is the name of this school. You can watch its video on youtube or on facebook. Thanks!

[EvilWizardMaltheore]

It just simply isn't practical. We should take steps toward this but I doubt the issue will be resolved anytime in the near future. Yeah, everyone will be on board for a while, that is until they find out that the price of all of their gadgets and electronics' prices will increase exponentially. We should try to fix their corrupt government first and kill all those fucking rebels, then maybe we can help those poor people.

[paratrooper6]

I wasn't just talking about famine. I was mainly talking about the generally abhorrant political and military situation throughout the Congo.

[MetalBassjunkie420]

The famine in congo is not do to just Western colonialism, it's also locusts invasions. Those insects invade in swarms and eat all the crops.