Coltan, Cobalt, and Child Labour: Congo's Mines Fund Militias While Powering iPhones

The boy is perhaps twelve years old. He will not say his name. He stands at the mouth of a mine shaft outside Rubaya, North Kivu province, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, holding a plastic sack of grey-black ore that weighs nearly as much as he does. His hands are scarred. He has been doing this work for two years. The ore is coltan — columbite-tantalite, the mineral refined into tantalum, without which no mobile phone, laptop, or gaming console can function. By the time you read this, the coltan in that sack will have passed through at least four intermediaries, crossed two borders, and entered a supply chain that leads to factories in China, components in Malaysia, and devices assembled for Apple, Samsung, and Sony.

He does not know this. He knows that he is paid 2,000 Congolese francs per sack — about seventy-five cents. He knows that the men with guns who control the mine take most of the money. He knows that if he does not work, his family does not eat.

This is how the global technology supply chain begins.

What the Ground Looks Like

Eastern DRC sits atop some of the richest mineral deposits on earth. Coltan. Cobalt. Cassiterite, the ore that yields tin. Wolframite, which produces tungsten. Gold. The territory is a geological lottery. It is also a war zone that has not known peace since 1996.

The mines around Rubaya, in Masisi territory, are controlled by the M23 rebel group — a predominantly Tutsi militia backed, according to eight consecutive United Nations Group of Experts reports between 2012 and 2024, by the Rwandan government. Rwanda denies this. The evidence is exhaustive: photographs of Rwandan Defence Force officers at M23 command posts, intercepted radio communications, testimony from defectors, and satellite imagery showing Rwandan military convoys crossing the border.

In other parts of North Kivu and neighbouring Ituri province, mines are controlled by other armed groups: the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu militia founded by génocidaires who fled Rwanda in 1994; the Coopérative pour le Développement du Congo (CODECO), an Ituri-based militia; and dozens of smaller Mai-Mai groups. The Congolese army, the FARDC, controls some sites. So do elements within the FARDC who operate as militias themselves, taxing miners and selling protection.

In the south, in Lualaba province, the cobalt economy looks different. Here the mines are industrial operations run by multinational corporations: Glencore, the Swiss commodities giant; China Molybdenum Corporation (CMOC); and Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt. The ore goes to smelters in China and from there into battery supply chains for Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, and BYD. Apple sources cobalt for iPhone batteries from these supply chains. So does Samsung.

But even in Lualaba, where the mines have fences and security guards and sustainability officers, the artisanal miners remain. They are called creuseurs — diggers. They work the edges of the industrial concessions, or they tunnel underneath them. Some are freelance. Many work for armed men who sell the ore on.

The Children in the Tunnels

Amnesty International and Afrewatch, a Congolese human rights organisation, documented in a 2016 joint investigation that children as young as seven were working in cobalt mines in southern DRC. They carried sacks of ore, sorted rocks, and washed minerals in toxic streams. The investigation traced the cobalt to a Chinese smelter, Huayou Cobalt, and from there to battery manufacturers supplying major technology and automotive brands.

In 2019, International Rights Advocates filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court on behalf of fourteen Congolese families whose children were killed or maimed in cobalt mine collapses. The defendants: Apple, Alphabet (Google's parent company), Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla. The case argued that the companies knowingly benefited from child labour. It was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds in 2021, then revived on appeal in 2023. As of April 2026, it remains in litigation.

In North Kivu, in the coltan mines, the situation is worse. Here there is no industrial oversight. No corporate presence. The mines are entirely artisanal, entirely controlled by armed groups. UNICEF estimated in 2022 that 40% of workers in North Kivu's coltan mines were under the age of eighteen. Many are far younger.

How Armed Groups Control the Trade

The mineral economy in eastern DRC operates on a taxation system. Armed groups control mine sites and charge fees to artisanal miners — per sack, per day, or per entry to the mine. The groups also control the roads. Transporters pay at checkpoints. Traders pay for safe passage to the border.

The United Nations Group of Experts on the DRC, in its December 2023 report, estimated that M23 earned at least $800,000 per month from taxation of coltan, gold, and other minerals in territory it controlled in North Kivu. That figure is conservative. Other estimates, from the Congo Research Group at New York University, put M23's monthly mineral revenue as high as $2 million.

From the mines, the coltan moves to trading centres: Goma, the capital of North Kivu, or across the border to Gisenyi in Rwanda. Once in Rwanda, the coltan is mixed with legally mined Rwandan coltan — of which there is very little; Rwanda has minimal tantalum reserves — and exported with Rwandan certificates of origin. From Kigali, it goes to smelters in China, Malaysia, and Thailand.

This is not a secret. It is documented in UN reports, investigated by NGOs, and reported by Reuters, the BBC, and The New York Times. Yet the trade continues.

What the Corporations Say

Apple states on its website that it is "committed to responsible sourcing of minerals" and that it requires "all smelters and refiners in our supply chain" to undergo independent third-party audits. The company publishes an annual list of smelters. In its 2025 Supplier List, Apple identified 41 tantalum smelters in its supply chain. Thirty-one of them are in China.

Tesla's 2024 Impact Report states that the company conducts "due diligence consistent with the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas." The OECD Guidance, published in 2016, is the international standard. It requires companies to trace minerals back to the mine of origin and to avoid sourcing from areas where armed groups benefit.

The problem is enforcement. The OECD Guidance is voluntary. The audits are conducted by industry-funded bodies such as the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), which relies on smelters to self-report their sources. If a smelter in China says its tantalum comes from Australia or Brazil, there is no mechanism to verify that claim by inspecting the mine.

Glencore, which operates the Kamoto and Mutanda cobalt mines in Lualaba, has faced repeated allegations of tolerating artisanal mining on its concessions and purchasing cobalt from traders who source from child labour. In 2022, Glencore settled a corruption case with the U.S. Department of Justice, admitting to bribing officials in the DRC between 2007 and 2018. The company paid $700 million in fines. It did not admit to knowingly sourcing cobalt produced by children, but it also did not deny that cobalt from artisanal miners — some of them children — entered its supply chain.

What the Law Requires

The United States passed the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, which included Section 1502 requiring companies to disclose whether their products contain "conflict minerals" — tin, tantalum, tungsten, or gold — from the DRC or adjoining countries. The law was weakened in 2017 when the Securities and Exchange Commission, under the Trump administration, suspended enforcement. It was partially reinstated in 2021, but compliance remains inconsistent.

The European Union adopted its own regulation in 2021, requiring importers of tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold to conduct supply chain due diligence. The regulation took full effect in January 2023. Early assessments suggest limited impact. A 2024 review by the European Commission found that fewer than half of registered importers had fully implemented traceability systems.

China, which refines the majority of the world's cobalt and tantalum, has no equivalent regulation. Chinese companies are not required to disclose the origin of their minerals. They are not required to audit their suppliers. They are not required to avoid conflict zones.

What Happens to the Boy

The twelve-year-old boy outside Rubaya does not appear in any corporate sustainability report. He is not counted in any audit. His labour is invisible to the system that profits from it.

This correspondent asked him what he would do if he could leave the mine. He said he would go to school. He said this quickly, as though he had thought about it many times. Then he picked up the sack of coltan and carried it to the road, where a trader was waiting.

The trader paid him. The coltan went into a truck. The truck went to Goma. From Goma, it will cross into Rwanda. From Rwanda, it will go to China. From China, it will become part of a capacitor, a circuit board, a battery. It will power something.

The boy will go back into the mine tomorrow. He has no choice.

What Is Not Being Done

There is no shortage of proposed solutions. The DRC government has attempted to formalise artisanal mining through cooperatives and licensing schemes. Most have failed, undermined by corruption, lack of funding, and the presence of armed groups who do not recognise state authority.

International organisations have promoted certification schemes — tags, blockchain tracking, GPS-enabled bags — to trace minerals from mine to market. The most prominent, the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region's (ICGLR) Regional Certification Mechanism, launched in 2011. A 2018 assessment by the OECD found it was "not fully operational" and suffered from "insufficient oversight and widespread fraud."

Technology companies have pledged to eliminate conflict minerals and child labour from their supply chains. Apple announced in 2020 that it would achieve a "fully traceable" cobalt supply chain by 2025. That deadline has passed. As of April 2026, Apple has not published evidence that it can trace cobalt in its batteries to specific mines in the DRC.

The fundamental obstacle is not technical. It is political and economic. Armed groups control the mines because they are profitable and because no one with the power to stop them has chosen to do so. The Rwandan government supports M23 because the minerals help fund its regional ambitions and because the international community has imposed no meaningful consequences. Western corporations tolerate opacity in their supply chains because transparency would require them to abandon suppliers, reduce profits, or admit complicity.

And the Congolese government, which should be the ultimate authority over its own territory, lacks the military capacity to control the east and the political will to confront the networks of complicity — military, commercial, and political — that benefit from the current system.

What Will Happen Next

The demand for cobalt and tantalum is rising, not falling. The global electric vehicle market is projected to grow by 20% annually through 2030. Every new Tesla, every new BYD, requires cobalt. The global market for consumer electronics — laptops, smartphones, tablets — remains vast. Every device requires tantalum.

Unless supply chains are severed from conflict zones, the minerals will continue to flow. The armed groups will continue to profit. The children will continue to work. The corporations will continue to claim they are doing all they can.

There is an alternative. Governments could enforce existing laws. The United States could make Section 1502 of Dodd-Frank mandatory and penalise non-compliance. The European Union could require full traceability for all mineral imports, not just self-reporting. China could adopt its own conflict minerals regulation. Technology companies could refuse to purchase from smelters that cannot prove their minerals are conflict-free.

None of this is happening. The boy in Rubaya is twelve. In ten years, if nothing changes, he will still be in the mine. Or he will be dead. Or he will have joined one of the armed groups, because there is no other way to eat.

This is not a tragedy. Tragedies are unavoidable. This is a policy choice, made every day by corporations, governments, and consumers who do not want to know where their phones come from.