Congo mine deploys digital weapons in fight against conflict minerals
A miner works at the entrance of a shaft at the SMB coltan mine near the town of Rubaya in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, on August 16, 2019. PHOTO | REUTERS
In a small shack overlooking muddy pits hewn out of eastern Congo’s rolling green hills, a government official puts a barcoded tag on a sack of ore rich in tantalum, a rare metal widely used in smartphones.
With a handheld device linked to a server in the cloud, the agent scans the barcode, uploading data including the sealed bag’s weight, when it was tagged, and by whom.
