174 Scarcity and Surfeit
supplied to miners. Access to coltan mining areas and neighbouring com-
munities in rebel-held territory has become a problem. Rural communities
are isolated and desperately in need of humanitarian assistance and educa-
tion programmes on better use of the environment. Many local and inter-
national NGOs involved in nature conservation have failed to implement
planned activities.
The Rwandan army controls South Kivu and part of North Kivu Province
and the Ugandan army controls the rest of North Kivu and other parts of the
DRC (at the time of its announced withdrawal from the DRC in mid-2002).
Both countries are backing rebels of the Congolese Rally for Democracy
(RCD) and the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC).
Coltan is not the sole source of conflict, nor is it at the root of the
Congolese crisis. It has nonetheless become an important conflict-sustaining
factor, insofar as it has contributed to:
exacerbating conflict (i.e. generating, along with other mineral and non-
mineral resources, income for rebels and their supporters); and
generating new dimensions in the already existing intercommunity con-
flicts (over land ownership and land use) while intensifying and acceler-
ating the environmental degradation.
In the absence of strong state apparatus and legitimate government, coupled
with the strong need for high-technology development materials on interna-
tional markets, multinational corporations and local entrepreneurs have
allied themselves with specific African countries to access these minerals in
the DRC. It has become increasingly apparent that "changing patterns of
international resource demand have led to a decrease in mineral self-suffi-
ciency, and increased import dependence on many minerals, making more
minerals strategic, and more of these, critically so."20
The Coltan Exploitation Cycle
The coltan exploitation cycle in the eastern DRC could be summarised into
the following stages:
Stage 1: Exploration
Stage 2: Detection
Stage 3: Extraction
Stage 4: Transportation
Stage 5: Treatment (transformation-commercialisation)Multinational companies involved in illicit access to DRC resources provide
instruments at Stages 1, 2 and 5 of the exploitation cycle. For instance, they
provide devices to detect the availability and test the quality of coltan.