# Conflict Minerals Ecosystem The chain runs from a hand-dug pit in North Kivu to a capacitor in a phone, and every step of it has a name. This map lays out who occupies each step. The companion chronology is [[Conflict Minerals Timeline]]; the parent is [[Conflict Minerals Hub]]. The single structural fact to hold: **ore from many small mines is aggregated, smelted and refined into commodity metal that is chemically indistinguishable regardless of origin.** By the time tantalum reaches a manufacturer, its provenance has been laundered by the supply chain itself. That is why every regulatory design since 2010 has targeted **smelters and refiners** — the chokepoint where many mines' output converges — rather than trying to follow individual ore shipments. --- ## Tier 1 — Who controls the ground | Actor | Position | Note | |---|---|---| | [[M23]] | Holds Goma, Bukavu, Masisi incl. [[Rubaya Coltan Mine]] | ~27,000 combatants as of March 2026, a fivefold rise since early 2025; collects roughly $800,000/month taxing Rubaya | | [[FDLR]] | North Kivu, dispersed | Genocidal remnant from 1994; Kigali's stated reason for intervening; finances via cassiterite, gold and roadblocks | | **FARDC** (Congolese army) | Nationwide | IPIS field data: interferes with **37% of surveyed artisanal mines** versus **29% for all non-state groups combined**; operates close to half the mapped Kivu roadblocks | | **Wazalendo / VDP** | Kivus, anti-M23 | Explicitly *unpaid* — designated volunteers expected to generate their own income. Predation is structural, not incidental | | **Rwanda Defence Force** | Cross-border | UN Group of Experts: "de facto control and direction over M23 operations." OFAC designated the RDF as an institution on 2 March 2026 | | [[Erik Prince]] / Vectus Global | Contracted by Kinshasa | Reported ~$700M/5yr; scope drifted from mineral tax enforcement to frontline support by January 2026 | ## Tier 2 — Extraction **Industrial.** [[Glencore]] (Kamoto Copper Company, Mutanda), [[CMOC]] (Tenke Fungurume, Kisanfu — both bought from Freeport-McMoRan), Eurasian Resources Group, Ivanhoe/Zijin (Kamoa-Kakula), Alphamin (Bisie tin, now UAE-controlled), Zijin (Manono lithium). [[Gécamines]] is the state holding company and minority partner throughout. **Artisanal.** Roughly 255,000 people mine cobalt by hand, and IPIS has mapped over 2,800 artisanal sites since 2009. See [[Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining]] — including the corrective that artisanal cobalt fell to roughly 2% of DRC output by 2024, from over 20% at the 2018 price peak. ## Tier 3 — Transit and laundering This is where the story is actually decided. **Rwanda's mineral export revenue rose from $373 million in 2017 to $1.75 billion in 2024** — roughly 500% — against geology that cannot plausibly support it. Rwanda does have tantalum-bearing pegmatites in the Gatumba district; the accurate claim is not "Rwanda has no coltan" but that **Rwanda's exports vastly exceed any credible domestic output.** A senior figure in the [[ITSCI]] scheme estimated only about 10% of what the country exported was actually extracted there. Mechanics documented by the UN Group of Experts: traders pay **$4/kg to M23 at source, then $3/kg again** once material crosses into Rwanda. Gold is worse than 3T — portable, fungible, effectively outside every regime. Uganda exported $2.25bn of gold in 2020–21 and Rwanda $654m in 2022, neither from meaningful domestic deposits. Named intermediaries: Gasabo Gold Refinery (OFAC-designated 25 June 2026), Minerals Supply Africa, Traxys, Trafigura, African Panther Resources. ## Tier 4 — The processing chokepoint Smelters and refiners are where compliance actually happens. The **Responsible Minerals Initiative**'s RMAP audit programme is the de facto global gate; in October 2025 it became the first scheme formally recognised under the EU Conflict Minerals Regulation. [[ITSCI]] was the dominant upstream bag-and-tag system until [[Global Witness]] published *The ITSCI Laundromat* in 2022; RMI let its recognition lapse in 2023. China dominates downstream refining across the critical-minerals complex generally — see [[Critical Minerals]] — and Chinese firms own more than half of DRC cobalt production. ## Tier 5 — Downstream buyers Apple, Intel, Samsung, Sony, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, LG Display, Ericsson, Toyota, Vodafone, and the auto and defence sectors more broadly. Global Witness's June 2026 investigation identified over 2,000 tonnes of smuggled coltan reaching global chains — "the largest contamination of mineral supply chains in the region in a decade." ## Tier 6 — Governance, and the actors trying to change it **Regulators and regimes:** [[Dodd-Frank Section 1502]], the [[Kimberley Process Certification Scheme]], the [[OECD Due Diligence Guidance]], the EU Conflict Minerals Regulation, ARECOMS (the Congolese cobalt quota authority). **Watchdogs and researchers:** [[Global Witness]], IPIS, the Oakland Institute, Public Citizen, RAID, Amnesty International, the [[UN Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources in the DRC]] and its successor Group of Experts. **The 2025–26 state layer:** [[Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity]], [[US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement]], the Regional Economic Integration Framework, and the DFC taking equity positions in Congolese cobalt. [[Massad Boulos]] is the connective tissue on the US side; [[Félix Tshisekedi]] and [[Paul Kagame]] are the principals; [[Corneille Nangaa]] fronts M23's political wing. --- ## The three collisions **Human rights versus supply security.** These pull opposite directions and the second is winning. See the trail-5 section of [[Conflict Minerals Hub]]. **Traceability versus laundering.** Every downstream "conflict-free" claim resting on ITSCI or RMI certification should be treated as unverified until the Rwanda border problem is solved. It has not been. **Deposits versus circulation.** IPIS and DIIS mapped 1,082 roadblocks in the Kivus and CAR. Peer Schouten's argument in *Roadblock Politics* is that taxing movement is more reliable revenue than holding mines — which means conflict-minerals policy aimed at deposits addresses only part of the war economy. [[Rubaya Coltan Mine]] is exceptional precisely because it is a very-high-value point source; most of the war economy is not like Rubaya. ## Beyond the Congo This map is Congo-shaped because the Congo is where the regimes were built. For the same six-tier structure applied to blood diamonds, Myanmar jade and rare earths, Indonesian nickel, the lithium triangle and the deep seabed — and for what varies between them — see [[Conflict Resources Atlas]]. ## See also [[Conflict Minerals Hub]] · [[Conflict Minerals Timeline]] · [[Congolese History Hub]] · [[Conflict Resources Atlas]] · [[Minerals Diplomacy]] · [[Critical Minerals]] · [[Democratic Republic of the Congo]] · [[Rwanda]]