Coltan in Your Smartphone – How Control Systems Don’t Stop the Trade in Blood Minerals-They Legitimize It

by Michael Hollister
Exclusive published at Michael Hollister on July 26, 2026

4.809 words * 25 minutes readingtime

Briefing Format of the In-Depth Analysis – 10 minutes readintime:
Conflict Coltan: The Systems Are Not Failing – They Are Working Exactly as Designed

On January 28, 2026, a landslide at the Rubaya mines in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo buried more than 400 people – artisanal miners, female traders, and children playing beside the shafts. Al Jazeera reported on the later disaster, which occurred six weeks later, on March 4, 2026, when a second landslide at the same site killed another 200 people, according to a separate report, including at least 70 minors. In hand-dug tunnels without supports, safety standards, or supervision, more than 600 people died within a matter of weeks. Grace Barata, a survivor who was trapped underground for 21 hours, described his shaft to Al Jazeera as “a grave” – the others had “died before our eyes without saying a word.”

The mine where they died supplies roughly 15 percent of the world’s tantalum – a heat-resistant metal without which no smartphone, laptop, or electric vehicle would function. A typical mobile phone contains around 40 milligrams of it. Since April 2024, the Rubaya mines have been under the control of the M23 militia, an armed group that, according to multiple UN expert reports, is supported by the Rwandan army with 3,000 to 4,000 soldiers, heavy weapons, and GPS-jamming systems. Rwanda denies providing that support. The UN experts have documented it for years.

The UN Group of Experts documents summary executions, widespread sexual violence, torture, abductions, and the recruitment of child soldiers by M23. The mines are one of the main sources of funding for these operations. And the coltan from those very mines makes its way through Kigali to China, from there into capacitors, and from there into the supply chains of Microsoft, Sony, Amazon, Nvidia, and Toyota. An international traceability system designed to prevent exactly this makes it possible – not by stopping the smuggling, but by laundering it.

On June 10, 2026, the London-based investigative organization Global Witness published the report “Who Buys Rwanda’s Smuggled Coltan? – The Global Journey of Conflict Coltan From DRC to the World’s Electronics” after a year-long investigation – laying out the entire chain, from the mine to the end device. The investigation was based on interviews with coltan smugglers, analysis of customs data from multiple sources, UN expert reports, and more than 70 conversations with representatives of governments, the private sector, civil society, and academia. The finding is not merely shocking – it is systematic.

From Rubaya to Kigali – The Route of Conflict Coltan

The smuggling route begins in the hills around Rubaya, a town in North Kivu province roughly 31 miles northwest of the provincial capital, Goma. The mines in Masisi Territory contain some of the world’s richest coltan deposits – supplying around half of Congolese coltan production and approximately 15 percent of global tantalum supplies. Thousands of artisanal miners dig into narrow, unsecured shafts with pickaxes. The tunnels are excavated by hand, without geological assessments, supports, or minimum distances between shafts. Up to 500 miners work underground at the same time, often for a few dollars a day.

Since M23 took full control of the mines in April 2024, the militia has operated a parallel administration there. A “ministry” issues mining permits on letterhead bearing the name “Democratic Republic of the Congo – North Kivu Province.” M23-friendly traders are selected to organize exports, and according to UN reports, miners’ wages were doubled to prevent them from fleeing. Anyone who violates the militia’s rules is beaten or, according to Global Witness, imprisoned in Mushaki. The UN Group of Experts also reports that M23 imposed forced labor, known as “Salongo,” to expand the roads between Kibumba and Kabuhanga and between Rubaya and Kirolirwe for mineral transport.

M23 taxes the coltan trade at the equivalent of $4 per kilogram, generating at least $800,000 per month, according to the UN Group of Experts’ December 2024 estimate. The Rwandan side imposes an additional $3 per kilogram. Coltan is therefore one of the militia’s main sources of income – and a significant item in Rwanda’s state finances.

From Rubaya, the coltan travels by motorcycle and car toward Goma. At checkpoints along the route, traders must prove to M23 fighters that they have paid the required “taxes.” Global Witness traveled this route with a smuggler and documented the process. At Goma’s “Grande Barrière” border crossing, consignments have often passed in broad daylight under the eyes of Rwandan border officials since M23 took the city. The UN Group of Experts estimates that more than 120 tons of coltan have been smuggled from Rubaya into Rwanda every month since April 2024. In the final week of March 2025 alone, according to a UN report from July 2025, 195 tons of 3T minerals entered Rwanda through the main border crossings. During the first year of the M23 occupation, the smuggled volume totaled at least 1,400 tons – and probably considerably more.

Global Witness found no evidence that Rwandan authorities had seized even a single shipment of smuggled coltan during the previous two years. The organization even observed Rwandan officials registering incoming coltan deliveries from the Congo. A separate Global Witness investigation into Traxys had already pointed to the role of international traders in the same supply chain.

The Laundering Process – How Conflict Coltan Becomes “Rwandan”

Once it reaches Kigali, the conflict coltan is mixed with domestic production. Exporters attach the tags of the ITSCI traceability system – plaques with unique numbers that are supposed to certify that the mineral is free of conflict links. One smuggler explained the process to Global Witness investigators this way: The exporter in Kigali would arrive and personally attach the tags to coltan from Masisi – after that, it officially counted as Rwandan coltan. Another smuggler said he only had to call the Rwandan mining authorities, who would bring as many tags as he needed.

Four traders who sell smuggled coltan from Rubaya to ITSCI members confirmed to Global Witness that the coltan was tagged through the system. In 2025, ITSCI itself reported 70 incidents related to plausibility problems and tag abuse – but suspended only a handful of companies. ITSCI told Global Witness that its system was “active and functional.” The organization had already published a report in 2022 documenting that, since its introduction in 2010, ITSCI had been used by Rwandan exporters to launder smuggled minerals. Global Witness described the system as “The ITSCI Laundromat”.

The numbers confirm the pattern. Official Rwandan coltan exports increased more than 2.5-fold between 2021 and 2025. According to official data, Rwanda’s total mineral exports grew from $772 million in 2022 to $1.1 billion in 2023. Coltan is now Rwanda’s second-largest export after gold. ITSCI-tagged coltan exports rose between 2023 and 2024 almost exactly in line with total exports and accounted for nearly 100 percent of all Rwandan coltan exports. The tantalite share of ITSCI-tagged 3T minerals rose from 21 percent in 2020 to 31 percent in 2024 – an increase that is difficult to explain without the intensified smuggling of coltan from Rubaya. At the same time, coltan imports from Rwanda reported by other countries exceeded Rwanda’s official export figures – indicating that some of the coltan was smuggled past Rwanda’s export statistics altogether.

The discrepancy between production and exports is particularly revealing. A UN report from July 2025 states that Rwanda officially produced 350 tons of tantalum in 2024 but exported an estimated 715 tons – more than twice as much. The UN, mineral experts, and NGOs have pointed out for years that Rwanda’s export figures do not match its actual production, even before the latest export surge. Rwanda’s finance minister merely stated that the country had recorded economic growth of 8.1 percent in the third quarter of 2024.

Alongside ITSCI, an alternative traceability system called Better Mining expanded its market share in Rwanda in 2025. But Better Mining admitted at least two companies suspended by ITSCI – Space Mining and Philbert Trading Minerals – which, according to Global Witness sources, also sourced conflict coltan while they were members of Better Mining. A third company, Sunrise Metal Company, went through the admissions process. Better Mining denied tagging conflict coltan, but unlike ITSCI, it publishes neither the names of its members nor identified risks in supply chains. When an alternative system serves to admit companies excluded by ITSCI without enforcing stricter standards, it lowers the bar instead of raising it.

Rwanda also refuses to use analytical fingerprinting, a geochemical method developed by Germany that could identify a mineral’s geographic origin through its chemical signature. The method cost millions of dollars to develop and, according to a technical expert involved in the matter, was never used for its intended purpose. Rwanda also withholds mine-level production data that would allow independent verification of its export figures.

Five of Seven Buy Conflict Coltan

For the period from January 2023 through September 2025, Global Witness analyzed customs data and identified seven companies handling almost 85 percent of all Rwandan coltan exports. For at least five of them, the organization found direct evidence that they bought conflict coltan from the Rubaya mines: African Panther Resources, Sunrise Metal Company, Boss Mining Solution, Kanzamin, and Philbert Trading Minerals. The smaller exporters Space Mining and Rani Mining also demonstrably purchased conflict coltan from Rubaya. All of the exporters concerned were ITSCI members – some have since been suspended, while three were under review at the beginning of 2026.

From Kigali, the coltan travels by truck through the Rusumo border crossing into Tanzania and from there to the ports of Dar es Salaam and, occasionally, Mombasa. The international buyers taking possession of it are based in Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates, China, and Hong Kong. Seven of these buyers handled almost 80 percent of the coltan exported from Rwanda between January 2023 and September 2025.

The Luxembourg-based commodities trader Traxys, a multibillion-dollar company and one of the largest buyers, purchased 280 tons of coltan from Rwanda in 2024, according to customs data – mainly from African Panther Resources, whose export volume rose to unprecedented levels in 2024 and exceeded the combined total of the previous four years. Global Witness had previously documented Traxys’s role in the supply chain. This increase coincided with the escalation of the conflict in North Kivu and the intensified smuggling of conflict coltan from Rubaya. Traxys confirmed the purchase but denied that the coltan came from the Congo, pointing to its own mineralogical analyses, which it said showed that the composition of the coltan purchased differed from Congolese material. Traxys said it stopped sourcing tantalum from Rwanda in May 2025 and would respond “quickly” to problematic suppliers.

The trader Halcyon confirmed purchases from Kanzamin, denied the Rubaya origin, and referred to announced and unannounced site visits in the DRC and Rwanda in 2025, as well as geofingerprinting of coltan from North Kivu purchased in 2023. Halcyon said it had suspended Kanzamin as a supplier until evidence of strengthened due-diligence measures was provided and had permanently stopped sourcing from Philbert Trading Minerals. Novacore visited Boss Mining Solution in Kigali and stated that it had found “no anomalies” in the export volumes – the shipments came from Rwanda and complied with ITSCI requirements. The exporters Kanzamin, Boss Mining Solution, Sunrise Metal Company, Philbert Trading Minerals, Space Mining, and East Group Minerals did not respond to Global Witness inquiries.

Certified Despite Conflict Links – The Failure of the Audits

The coltan reaches eight smelters, mainly in China, with one in Kazakhstan: Jiujiang Tanbre, Jiujiang Jinxin Nonferrous Metals, Ningxia Orient Tantalum Industry (OTIC), Ximei Resources, Jiujiang Zhongao Tantalum & Niobium, Hengyang King Xing Lifeng New Materials, Ulba Metallurgical Plant in Kazakhstan, and – until the end of 2023 – Taniobis in Thailand. Through Rwandan supplies, China became the second-largest coltan importer after Nigeria: 1,571 tons in 2023 and 2,286 tons in 2024.

At the smelters, the coltan is processed into tantalum – and at that point, all traceability ends. The Responsible Minerals Assurance Process (RMAP), operated by the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), is supposed to intervene precisely here: It examines the smelters’ due-diligence processes. Between 2024 and 2025, all eight smelters were classified as “compliant,” according to the RMI list of conformant tantalum smelters. Every audit except the one at Hengyang covered at least part of the period during which M23 occupied the Rubaya mines. By then, the risks associated with sourcing from Rwanda were already publicly known – the UN had reported armed incursions into the mines in 2023, and ITSCI had stopped tagging in Rubaya in December 2023.

Global Witness and the UN Group of Experts found evidence that at least four smelters had probably processed conflict coltan from Rubaya: Jiujiang Tanbre through African Panther Resources and Traxys; Ningxia Orient through Sunrise Metal Company; Jiujiang Jinxin, potentially through Boss Mining Solution and Novacore; and Ulba through East Rise Corporation, which is under U.S. sanctions. RMI defended its audits and cited methodological limitations in the trade data presented by Global Witness, but acknowledged that at least one case involved material held in storage for more than 12 months. In October 2025, the EU recognized RMAP under its Conflict Minerals Regulation – since then, importers into the EU can consider their due-diligence obligations fulfilled if they rely on this system.

The structural problem runs deeper than individual audit failures. Auditors and processors generally do not know which other processors source from the same mines or in what quantities. A genuine plausibility check comparing all minerals sold by a mine with its estimated production does not take place. Without analytical fingerprinting and functioning traceability, RMAP simply cannot verify the origin of the minerals. If a smuggler in Goma declares that a shipment came from Rwanda rather than an M23-controlled mine, a blockchain-based traceability system records that declaration irreversibly – as an immutable, verified data record. The system does not guarantee that the information is true. It guarantees that no one can correct it afterward.

From the Capacitor to the End Device

After smelting, tantalum is processed mainly into capacitors – tiny components found in virtually every electronic device. The tantalum-capacitor market is dominated by around five manufacturers: Kemet, Kyocera AVX, Vishay, Panasonic, and Hongda Electronics. Global Witness found evidence of OTIC supplying Samsung subsidiaries and Panasonic’s facility in the Philippines, where both companies manufacture capacitors. According to the investigators’ findings, the tantalum used was probably conflict-affected.

At the end of the chain are the brands everyone knows. Amazon, Microsoft, Vodafone, Toyota, Sony, Nvidia, Honda, LG Display, and Ericsson report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that they have products in their supply chains from smelters that, according to the Global Witness investigation, sourced conflict coltan from Rubaya.

The conflict coltan ends up in everyday products – mobile phones, laptops, and cars.

The corporations’ responses follow a recognizable pattern. Toyota stated that the company did not tolerate human-rights violations, “aimed to source conflict-free minerals,” and referred to supplier due-diligence checks through which identified shortcomings would be addressed “promptly.” Sony pointed to its supply-chain code of conduct and corrective measures in cases of violations. Ericsson said it worked with RMI, that the smelters named were RMI-compliant, and that it would examine the specific cases. After a review, Samsung said it had found no concerns in its transactions with OTIC – and referred to OTIC’s RMI audit. Amazon did not respond to Global Witness but told The Guardian that it supported products made with respect for human rights and the environment. Vodafone likewise referred to RMI as its verification authority in comments to The Guardian. Nvidia, Microsoft, Panasonic, and LG Display did not respond to Global Witness.

Global Witness explicitly emphasizes that the report does not claim the brands knowingly purchased conflict minerals. The corporations stand at the end of a long chain in which every stage conducts its own due diligence – and every stage relies on the previous stage’s review. The problem is not individual malicious intent, but a system in which every participant trusts the others to conduct the controls, while no one controls the system as a whole.

Apple – Declining Transparency at Exactly the Wrong Time

Apple occupies a special position in this story. In its 2023 SEC report, the company listed Kazakhstan’s Ulba Metallurgical Plant as a processor in its supply chain. That year, according to the U.S. government, Ulba sourced coltan from East Rise Corporation – a company sanctioned over conflict-minerals trading. Apple told Global Witness that, in response to the escalating situation, it had instructed its suppliers in June 2024 to suspend sourcing 3T minerals and gold from the Congo and Rwanda, and had increased support for organizations assisting local communities.

In December 2024, the Congolese government filed criminal complaints in France and Belgium against Apple subsidiaries. The allegation: the use of illegally mined Congolese minerals that had been laundered into international supply chains through Rwanda. In November 2025, the U.S. organization International Rights Advocates filed a lawsuit in Washington, naming three Chinese smelters – Ningxia Orient, Jiujiang Jinxin, and Jiujiang Tanbre – as processors of smuggled Congolese coltan and alleging a connection to Apple’s supply chain. Al Jazeera reported on the lawsuit.

What intensifies the finding is this: Apple, once seen as a pioneer of responsible sourcing from conflict zones, stopped listing the names of its smelters and refiners in its SEC report in 2024. When Global Witness asked why, Apple did not respond. Apple also did not answer how it could avoid conflict coltan from the DRC and Rwanda, given the DRC’s importance as a coltan producer and the fact that smelters and refiners routinely mix minerals from different origins. Transparency is therefore declining precisely when, according to the UN, contamination of supply chains has reached “the greatest extent in a decade.” Apple’s own SEC report for fiscal year 2024 stated that there was “no reasonable basis” for concluding that smelters or refiners in its supply chain had financed armed groups in the Congo. The complaint filed by International Rights Advocates takes a different view.

Rwanda – The Model State No One Wants to Touch

The story of conflict coltan is not only a story about supply chains. It is a story about geopolitical interests that carry more weight than human rights – and about a state too useful to be held accountable.

In Western political thinking, Rwanda is considered an African success story: economic growth, digital infrastructure, and political stability after the 1994 genocide. Western donors finance nearly one-third of Rwanda’s state budget. The EU alone provided around €260 million in grants between 2021 and 2024. In February 2024 – while the UN was already documenting Rwanda’s military support for M23 – the EU and Rwanda signed a Memorandum of Understanding for a “strategic partnership on sustainable raw materials.” The document describes Rwanda as a “major player” in global tantalum production and establishes cooperation on “sustainable and responsible production.” The agreement was criticized as a possible green light for the plunder of the DRC. Then-EU Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen did call on Rwanda to withdraw its troops from the Congo – but the demand remained without consequences and, as Global Witness noted, proved ineffective.

In November 2024, the European Council approved a further €20 million from the European Peace Facility for Rwanda’s army – officially for operations against insurgents in Mozambique. In Kinshasa, the decision was perceived as funding for the army that was simultaneously attacking the Congo. For comparison: In 2012, during the first M23 crisis, the EU and several member states cut development aid to Rwanda. This time, there was no comparable response. Democracy in Africa described the decision as a politically damaging move.

The United States pursued a different but no less interest-driven approach. In June 2025, Washington mediated a peace agreement between the DRC and Rwanda – the so-called “Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity.” At the signing of the preparatory “Declaration of Principles” in April 2025, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that U.S. companies were “good corporate citizens” and would ensure “good governance and responsible, reliable supply chains.” President Trump called the agreement “a glorious triumph for the cause of peace” and announced bilateral agreements to purchase rare earths from both countries. Trump stated explicitly that the United States would receive “a lot of the mineral rights from the Congo as part of it,” adding: “Everybody is going to make a lot of money.” Al Jazeera reported on Trump’s praise for the agreement.

America First Global, a company led by Trump confidant and 2016 campaign co-financier Gentry Beach, is negotiating rights to the Rubaya mine together with the Swiss commodities group Mercuria, according to Congolese government officials – the very mine under M23 control from which the conflict coltan is smuggled. The agreement provides for Congolese tantalum to be processed and exported through Rwanda – a clause that, according to an analysis by the Oakland Institute, effectively normalizes the existing smuggling routes. On March 2, 2026, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Rwanda’s army and four commanders for violating the peace agreement – but little changed on the ground. M23 continued expanding its territory, and the mineral-smuggling routes remained operational.

The Oakland Institute documented in its analysis “Shafted: The Scramble for Critical Minerals in the DRC” that the “peace” deal primarily secured U.S. companies’ access to Congolese minerals. The agreement’s regional-integration clauses effectively normalized the existing smuggling routes through Rwanda – a state whose export statistics, according to UN data, report more tantalum than the country produces.

At the same time, the legal foundation for conflict-minerals due-diligence obligations is under pressure in the United States. Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act – the law requiring publicly traded U.S. companies to examine their supply chains for conflict minerals from the Congo – was never fully implemented during Trump’s first term. In April 2026, the National Association of Manufacturers called on the Trump administration to repeal the provision. In May 2025, the business law firm Ropes & Gray predicted that the conflict-minerals rule could soon come to an end. The control architecture that was supposed, at least on paper, to constrain the trade in blood minerals is therefore being weakened on both sides of the Atlantic – in Europe by recognition of a failed audit system, and in the United States by the possible elimination of the disclosure requirement. The National Association of Manufacturers publicly called for an end to the mandate. The U.S. State Department’s support for the UN experts’ report illustrates that the underlying allegations have long been part of the official record.

The Question Behind the Numbers

The Rubaya mines are not an abstract problem. People die there – in landslides, through forced labor, and through the violence of a militia equipped by a regular army. The UN Group of Experts documents summary executions, sexual violence, torture, abductions, and the recruitment of child soldiers by M23. The mines are one of the main sources of funding for these operations.

Between the mine in North Kivu and the smartphone on a desk lies a chain of companies, ports, smelters, capacitor manufacturers, and corporations. At every link in this chain sits a control system: ITSCI at the mine, RMAP at the smelter, the Dodd-Frank Act at the corporate level, and the EU Conflict Minerals Regulation at the point of import. Each of these systems was created to prevent the trade in conflict minerals. None of them has done so. Not because the systems have failed – but because they function exactly as all the participants need them to: as mechanisms that document due diligence without requiring it. The ITSCI tag is not a guarantee – it is a certificate of absolution.

Rwanda refuses geochemical fingerprinting. Smelters are certified “compliant” without anyone checking whether the quantities are plausible. Corporations refer to the smelters’ certification. The EU officially recognizes a failed audit system. And the United States negotiates mineral rights while dismantling the legal basis for due-diligence obligations.

What remains is a finding: The international community’s control architecture for conflict minerals does not protect the miners in the shafts of Rubaya. UN experts have warned that Congolese conflict minerals are slipping into global markets. The architecture protects supply chains from having to answer uncomfortable questions. And it protects the governments that need Rwanda as a partner from having to face the consequences of their own partnership.

Between the 600 people killed at Rubaya and the capacitor in a brand-new smartphone lie seven stages, each with a control mechanism – and each with an institution explaining why it is not responsible for the next step. The Congolese lawyer representing the lawsuit against Apple wrote in a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook that the company’s products were “tainted by the blood of the Congolese people.” That may be difficult to prove legally. The coltan traveling this route is documented – from the mine to the port, from the smelter to the capacitor. What is missing is not information. What is missing is the political will to draw consequences from it.

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About the Author

Michael Hollister
is a geopolitical analyst and investigative journalist. He served six years in the German military, including peacekeeping deployments in the Balkans (SFOR, KFOR), followed by 14 years in IT security management. His analysis draws on primary sources to examine European militarization, Western intervention policy, and shifting power dynamics across Asia. A particular focus of his work lies in Southeast Asia, where he investigates strategic dependencies, spheres of influence, and security architectures. Hollister combines operational insider perspective with uncompromising systemic critique – beyond opinion journalism. His work appears on his bilingual website (German/English) www.michael-hollister.com and in investigative outlets across the German-speaking world and the Anglosphere.

If you regularly read my updates and analyses, I would be grateful for your ongoing support.

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