The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the poorest countries in the world and one of the least reported, thanks to an incredibly complex mix of politics, armed conflict and corruption.
It’s also home to an unassuming black rock called coltan… an essential ingredient in nearly every cell phone and computer on Earth.
Without coltan, our technology-driven lives would come to a screeching halt, and the Congo holds 80% of the world’s supply.
Since the mid-1990s, armed groups have used these minerals to finance a series of extremely complex and horribly violent wars.
Co-Founder Suroosh Alvi traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo on one of the toughest hikes of his life to see firsthand the source of this so-called conflict mineral and meet some of the projects involved in the seemingly never-ending conflict in eastern Congo .
