look at your mobile phone for a second
if you opened it up you would see
something similar
to this lots of microchips
small semiconductors and circuits to
manufacture all of this you need a very
special element
tantalum so where does this tantalum
come from well it mainly comes
from one country the democratic republic
of congo this is one of the world's
poorest countries
it's impossible to estimate how many
people have died in order to manufacture
the phone
that you have in your hands right now
tantalum is one of the most highly
demanded materials on the planet
and congo has the largest reserves it
could be
an enormous source of wealth to them
congo is actually a country that has a
lot of natural resources
nonetheless it remains one of the
poorest and most violent countries on
earth and believe me
the history is much more complex than
those click bait articles you found on
your twitter feed
so why is congo so poor well
in this video we're going to tell you
that story
congo was featured in the movie gorillas
in the mist it's funny because we don't
really know
anything about this country despite how
often pop culture references it
[Music]
we're talking about one of the biggest
countries on the planet it has more than
80 million inhabitants living within a
territory the size
of western europe and believe me they
have a fortune under their feet
cobalt gold and of course coltan coltan
is in fact the oar that tantalum is
taken from
so we all have products that are
technically imported from congo
in our home
now many of you might say well wow
that's really lucky i mean
having so many natural resources that's
got to be great right but the reality is
the opposite is true all of this gold
cobalt and especially coltan
is actually a curse for congo yes dear
viewers
congo is one of the poorest countries on
the planet and we're talking about
what's called the absolute poverty line
most of the population lives on less
than one dollar
a day
starvation is fairly common and
guerrilla warfare
is so common in the country that it's no
longer newsworthy
but you already know this the question
is why
and the answer is a combination of all
of the bad things we usually mention
here on visualpolitik wars
bad governance corruption and of course
colonialism
imagine all of this on a massive scale
and you have a good high level picture
of the congo okay so maybe that's where
we could end today's video and i could
thank you all for watching and
ask you to subscribe i mean that's why
congo is so poor
right and a story but you probably
looked at that little red bar below this
video and realized that we're not done
quite yet
because the case of the congo is unique
in history we can't even compare it with
other african nations
so if you are a regular viewer of this
channel you know they're going to cover
all of the details about this country
including the result of their latest
elections so the question now is well
why is congo
so poor why do we say that the natural
resources are in fact
a curse and the most important question
of all
can their brand new president lift this
curse well today we're going to answer
all of these questions but before we do
let's take a look back at the history
[Music]
how to privatize a country in the year
1877 king leopold ii of belgium bought
the congo
and yes you heard that right usually
when we talk about colonization we mean
a country
conquering another one and this is where
there's the first unique thing about our
story today what we know today as the
congo was a land with many tribes and a
land with
a huge potential to grow rubber at this
time in history
rubber was in high demand king leopold
ii he
looked at this opportunity with dollar
signs in his eyes and said
why conquer a country when you can buy
it
you see this was a different time and
back then european powers thought they
could do
pretty much anything they wanted in
africa on the one hand it was a source
of wealth to be exploited and on the
other they thought
colonization was kind of a matter of
charity they wanted to export european
values and civilization to
a land of barbarity this is why leopold
ii created the international african
association an organization led
by him that allowed him to go to congo
and create his own factories and
plantations
since the congolese people had no
private property leopold ii
could take over the land without any
kind of contract of course in order to
legitimize this looting
leopold ii the king of a respectable
country like
belgium claimed he would turn this free
state of congo into a civilized place
the congo free state is unique in its
kind it has nothing to hide and no
secrets and is not beholden to anyone
except its founder leopold ii king of
belgium
reality though was way different leopold
ii wanted to get as much
rubber as possible so he enslaved the
population and forced them
to reach production quotas if they
didn't he would chop off one of their
hands
this is how one of the worst genocides
in all of history started
it's comparable in relative terms to
mao's cultural revolution
the massacre was so terrible even other
colonial powers such as the united
kingdom denounced leopold for his
atrocities
and if you want to know more about this
i've got a video about king leopold ii
on my other channel
biographics i'm going to link to that
below but let's move on with today's
story
after leopold ii died he passed his
property over to the state of belgium
this is how congo became a colony in its
own right belgium's government was
a little more compassionate than the
king but still the congolese they were
kept in
slave-like conditions you see
colonialism is one of the most
despicable practices
in history but if there is one colonial
power that was big
on brutality it would be belgium and if
you want to be even more angry let me
tell you that to this day there are
monuments
buildings and streets in brussels
dedicated
to leopold the second
[Music]
but the truth is in 1960 congo got its
independent this doesn't mean
things got better for them though their
first president patrice lumumba was
no big fan of his former colonizers this
is why both france and belgium helped
other groups to
overthrow and execute him which is how
mabuto cessasecco's dictatorship
started and the country changed its name
to zaire mobutu is known as being one of
the bloodiest dictators in history but
as we often say at visualpolitik mobutu
may have been a son of a [ __ ] but at
least he was our son
you know it was the cold war and congo
was an ally of the west so there was
always money to finance his army but
things that changed in the 1990s without
the ussr to be afraid of america stopped
supporting mabutu
and all of those groups that he was
oppressing they rebelled against him
this is how the first congolese civil
war started and
the country got back its current name
this was a civil war that led to a
second civil war for a better
understanding of just how devastating
this conflict was
the second congolese civil war is
considered to be the deadliest conflict
after world war ii with over 5 million
deaths and countless acts of torture
mutilation and other atrocities
but here's the worst thing the violence
it hasn't stopped in 2003 the war ended
since then joseph kabila has tried to be
a dictator who rules over the country
with an iron fist but let's be honest as
authoritarian and corrupt as he is he
can't control the country there are
guerrillas and
looting from neighboring countries all
the time so now you might be wondering
why is there so much guerrilla warfare
how can one country have so many armed
groups i mean how do they pay for the
guns
well let's have a look shall we
coltan rush do you know the nokia 6110
this was a phone that was launched at
the end of the 90s and it was one of the
first cell phones to reach a massive
audience
it's the smallest nokia phone ever made
weighing just 137 grams
it's the perfect size for your hand and
your pocket suddenly
everybody had a mobile phone and this
meant more and more tantalum was
required to produce these phones
until that moment the main tantalum
producer had been australia the problem
well getting that material was more
expensive than you might imagine
you see it's almost impossible to find
pure chemical elements in nature
[Music]
in this case australia had mines where
you could find some more
and after a complex chemical process
you'd get a bit of tantalum out of it
but there is an
easier way to obtain it and i'm talking
about coltan
coltan is a rock that contains a lot of
tantalum and
it's very cheap to refine guess where
you can find the biggest coltan reserves
on the planet well yep they are in the
congo basically congo is the
saudi arabia of coltan
there's plenty of it it's easy to
extract and it's even easier to refine
in fact you don't even need technology
to get colton you just pick up a shovel
and
there you go this is why thousands of
congolese joined the coltan hunt and
despite the high demand tantalum became
cheaper and cheaper but wait just a
second because this is just the
beginning remember the financial crisis
of 2008
well it also had some consequences in
australia
[Music]
gam closes wardina tantalum mine
this mine was the world's main tantalum
producer its closure meant that tantalum
prices skyrocketed
it's hard to estimate the market price
for this material because unlike oil
there are no public indexes but
according to some consultancy firms
tantalum prices almost
doubled from one year to the next and
what was the consequence for the congo
well yeah there was the coltan rush all
of a sudden everybody was willing to
sacrifice their lives
for a fistful of rocks and this is where
warlords entered the picture most of the
gorillas were financed by
selling coltan and the more they sold
the more violent they became
we're talking about such a huge massacre
that even america had to pass a law for
it
dodd-frank act becomes law basically the
dodd-frank law was meant to protect
consumers one of its sections referred
to so-called conflict minerals
one of these was tantalum according to
this law companies buying tantalum
should know where it comes from the
problem
in a country like congo it's almost
impossible to control the traceability
of a mineral especially given that there
are
almost no mining companies yep you heard
that right it's mostly just
common people going to the countryside
to extract rocks and
sell them to a man who will sell them to
another man and finally it ends up
inside of your mobile phone
[Music]
in many cases rondon miners cross the
border exploit the mines and
go back to rwanda to process it as you
know rwanda is a country that's
growing really fast and offers much more
security
in legal political and physical terms
compared to congo and if you didn't
already know this here's another video
we made a long time ago
telling that story in fact if you want
to know more about these kinds of things
you really should subscribe to this
channel and you know hit that bell
button so you don't miss any posts but
let's go back to our story many of you
might wonder since it's so profitable
why aren't any big companies mining it i
mean surely there must be incentives to
create companies that can mass produce
coltan and the answer that is while
there aren't
so why well here's an example
biggest congo coltan miner resumes
buying after
output halt in this case basunzu is one
of the few congolese mining companies it
was founded by a congolese senator that
wanted to industrialize
mining instead of risking lies to get
coltan the sun tzu wants to use
machines that way they can offer better
security for the workers and extract a
lot more minerals
so well what's the problem then first of
all this machinery is
expensive and money is seldom abundant
in the congo
secondly nobody's going to invest in a
place where corrupt politicians are
going to make your life
impossible and if politicians don't do
it then some gorilla will
[Music]
so well what happens then well nobody
invests in this industry and
those who do like basunzu have to stop
their production all the time
because of smugglers and warlords and
this is how we can understand the
vicious cycle of coltan the more demand
there is the more incentives there are
for warlords to exploit it and the more
warlords we have exploiting coltan the
less incentives there are to create
an industry that would provide quality
jobs and create real wealth
this is why despite the fact that half
of the tantalum on the planet comes from
this area
congo doesn't grow any faster so now you
might be wondering well is anyone going
to
challenge this well maybe maybe not
you're going to understand that in a
second
the big fraud remember joseph kabila the
congolese dictator well in the year 2018
he had to resign and call for elections
in fact according to the congolese
constitution he should have done it
before but do you know
dictator's gonna dictate as you might
imagine 2018 could not have been
more rigged if it tried kabila's
opponents only had
one or two electoral cabins citizens
also had to vote with tablets that
nobody knew how to use
and as you might imagine no
international observer accepted this
process
congo to eu mind your own business
an election that's been delayed for two
years is about to be held
and the country has booted out the eu
ambassador all right so in this election
we had three main candidates ramazzoni
who was kabila's successor faiulu his
biggest opponent
and cheek sadie the one with the lowest
chance of winning so guess who won
no it wasn't ramazoni the winner was
totally triskady
and here's where the debate starts
according to all the organizations
observing this process
including the catholic church the
process couldn't have been dirtier
[Music]
many analysts say that kabila knew
nobody would accept his successor so
he let a moderate enemy win somebody who
at the least would let kapila keep his
fortune
because make no mistake despite congo's
poverty kabila is a millionaire
then again donald trump has supported
cesar cady even if it's only to
guarantee some kind of stable government
for the congo so now the question is
can this brand new president actually
change things well the truth is
that he does have opportunities
[Music]
lithium and tantalum new australian
production from pilbara
basically the australians have found a
new way to extract tantalum more cheaply
so they've
reopened their mind so what does this
mean well less of a coltan rush
less money for the warlords and more
incentives to create an
ethical and sustainable industry on the
other hand rwanda congo's neighboring
country has been developing its own
coltan processing industry in 2018 they
created a big factory to produce
tantalum and they've even begun
experimenting with blockchain technology
to guarantee the traceability of the
tantalum
this means it will now be easier to know
where our tantalum comes from so now
this new congolese government can
partner with rwanda to create a coltan
industry that
generates jobs and growth
but here's a question for you do you
think the congolese government
will be willing to do so is this brand
new president going to
end the rampant corruption in order to
help his country escape poverty or
or will we continue to see congo as poor
as always despite its enormous natural
wealth
well please leave your answer in the
comments section below and before
finishing i'd like to thank suzanne from
roskill for helping us with the research
on this one roskill is one of the
leading mining consultancy companies
and they were very kind answering all
our questions and giving us a lot of
information that is not
easy to access so a big thank you to
them also don't forget to visit our
friends from reconsider media podcast
they provided the
vocals in this episode that were not
mine and as always i'll see you next
time and if you want to learn more about
politics and hear
even more of my lovely voice you can
join us at reconsider media we have a
podcast at reconsider media.com
podcast see you there