Mineral Trade Did Not Cause Conflict in the Congo

The surge in violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has some commentators blaming a familiar scapegoat: mineral trade and American technology companies whose products contain coltan and other “conflict minerals.” Eastern Congo is rich in these minerals, which are vital to the production of smartphones, computers, and gaming electronics. But mineral trade is not the underlying cause of violence. Policies that assume it is are common, but can do more harm than good.

Consider the lawsuit filed against Apple in December claiming the company bears responsibility for war crimes because it buys minerals from areas patrolled by armed groups. The suit comes after global protests, held outside Apple stores across the world, on the launch day of iPhone 16. Apple has reacted by ordering its suppliers to stop sourcing minerals from the DRC, which is the easiest way to appear “conflict-free” and to avoid reputational damage. Yet history suggests boycotts will make matters worse, not better.

The dismal record of the U.S. Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 is a case in point.  It includes a provision that Senator Barney Frank said would “cut off funding to people who kill people” and create a more secure and peaceful life in Congo. Billions of dollars have since been spent on compliance, which requires companies to disclose if their mineral supply chains might fund rebel groups.  Yet, according to a 2024 report from the US Government Accountability Office, “peace and security have not improved with the SEC disclosure rule.” This now is an understatement, given thousands have died in eastern DRC fighting since January.

Dodd-Frank’s conflict mineral provision was a response to well-intended advocacy groups who believed the war in Congo had a simple cause and solution. Like today’s protestors of Apple, they thought minerals for your smartphone were both the motivation and the fuel for violence. The solution was to go after warlord wallets by naming and shaming companies who couldn’t prove their supply chains didn’t finance guns. This policy, thought the advocates, would isolate the bad guys, cause them to wither, and reduce battles, looting, rape, and other violence against civilians.

They were wrong, unfortunately. Not only did the policy fail to improve security, but it also caused other serious harm to the Congolese people.

First, rather than risk the appearance of being socially irresponsible, many American companies simply stopped buying from the Congo. This caused a devastating boycott on the already impoverished eastern DRC, which had an informal mining sector of a million workers with spillovers from its economic activity benefiting millions more. Economic fallout cut access to health care, leading to a doubling of infant mortality near mining sites.

Dodd-Frank also disrupted tenuous security in the DRC. It gave non-state militias incentives to look elsewhere for revenue. Evidence suggests they did so by looting civilians more frequently and by fighting with competing militias for scarce revenue sources, leading to more armed conflict.

These hardships may have been worth it if the regulations eventually delivered improvements in security. Unfortunately, the GAO report finds no evidence of this from the passage of the law to the present, as current conditions highlight. Instead, it highlights reductions of employment at tantalum (coltan), tin, and tungsten mines – which are, along with gold, the conflict minerals under Dodd-Frank - and spreading violence noting “armed groups have increasingly fought for control of gold mines since it is more portable and less traceable than the other three minerals.”  “Conflict-free” mine certification under Dodd-Frank has simply pushed violence to new areas, rather than reducing it.

Lawsuits, boycotts, and mineral regulations have failed to improve security because minerals are not the primary driver of DRC conflict. As a letter from local experts in DRC explained, “the conflict minerals campaign… misunderstands the relationship between minerals and conflicts in the DRC.” Armed groups have other revenue sources such as charcoal, timber, and agriculture, and do not depend on smartphone sales to motivate or finance their fighting.

Moreover, as locals in the DRC understand better than Western human rights activists, there is a blurry line between militia exploitation and productive governance in remote mining communities. Militias can act as local governments providing security and infrastructure. Inadvertently defunding them – as the regulations and boycotts have done -  can cause insecurity by weakening their ability to defend against rebels from other regions, such as the M23 force now wreaking havoc in eastern Congo.

The failure of the Dodd-Frank Act must inform today’s policies, including the Trump administration’s choices on if and how to intervene. Though mineral trade can be associated with violence, it is not the underlying cause. And because mineral trade creates badly needed income, infrastructure, and health care in poor regions like the eastern DR Congo, actions that lead to boycotts or company withdrawals from mineral trade do more harm than good.