Conflict Minerals: Descending into Conflict: Tech Minerals Finance War

Jul 25, 2017 | Richard Brown, Raconteur
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The next time you’re struck down with “power anxiety” over your mobile phone’s depleted battery, spare a thought for the mistreated children toiling away in deepest Africa who mine the cobalt essential for the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries, found in smartphones and laptops worldwide. Our minor first-world problem is their major third-world crisis. Children in the war-ravaged central African Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) dragooned into harsh, hazardous mines to extract the cobalt are just part of a callous trade in minerals essential to components for high-tech gadgets and gizmos citizens in developed countries have come to rely on as essential.