DRC: Picks, Pans and Bare Hands: How Miners in the Heart of Africa Toil in Terrible Conditions to Extract the Rare Minerals that Power Your iPhone

Oct 22, 2015 | Nick Fagge, Daily Mail
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Scraping through shovels-full of silt for the precious mineral with their bare hands, miners use these primitive methods to harvest coltan - the magical conductor that powers your iPhone, Samsung Galaxy or other smartphones. Covered head-to-foot in the ore-laden mud, hundreds of workers toil for 12 hours a day - in scenes reminiscent of a 19th century gold-rush. Wielding picks and shovels legions of strong men delve deep into the mountainside to retrieve the precious natural deposit, which enables our high-tech mobile world of emails, social media and the internet.