🇨🇩 Is our hunger for technology dooming DR Congo? | The Stream

More than six billion smartphones are estimated to be in use worldwide, with their pocket-sized power reliant on rare earths and precious metals. Most of us give little thought to the origin of the materials that drive our devices. But ‘Seven Grams’, an app that recently featured in the New Frontier category at Sundance Film Festival, aims to change that. The app blends journalism, augmented reality, and animation to show how global demand for ever-faster smartphones is harming people in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where minerals and metals essential for smartphones and other electronic devices are mined. It’s thought that about 70 percent of the world’s cobalt is produced in DR Congo, much of it in the south and east. While multinational mining companies extract most of this heavy metal, a substantial amount is mined by artisans who endure dangerous working conditions. Child labour is commonplace, while women often help prepare freshly-mined material. Medical researchers have drawn a link between workers’ exposure to toxic trace elements and birth defects in children. The dangers don’t end at the rock face. With DR Congo still holding an estimated $24 trillion in untapped mineral deposits, some illegal armed groups rely on revenue from illicit mining to fund their continued operations. Human rights groups have documented that those same groups have brutalised civilians. In this episode of The Stream we’ll take look at how Seven Grams highlights the human toll of mineral mining in DR Congo that is driven by the global hunger for the latest electronic devices. Join the conversation: TWITTER: https://twitter.com/AJStream FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/AJStream Subscribe to our channel http://bit.ly/AJSubscribe #aljazeeraenglish
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