Regulating the old game of smuggling? Coltan mining, trade and reforms in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Abstract

This article examines the smuggling of coltan into and out of artisanal mining areas in northern Katanga where the ITRI Tin Supply Chain Initiative (iTSCi), a policy on conflict minerals, tries to improve transparency in trading tin, tantalum (coltan) and tungsten. The article approaches smuggling from a sociology of economic life perspective, closely examining how and why artisanal miners and mine-based middlemen (négociants) helped smugglers (hiboux) in the trafficking of coltan. The findings indicate that the social networks in which miners and mine-basednégociantsare embedded allow the miners,négociantsand smugglers to maintain close relationships and to breach official regulations, but miners and mine-basednégociantsalso rely on the same networks to cheat in their dealings with the smugglers. This article concludes that, rather than considering coltan mining areas to be ‘enclaves of regulations’, understanding and addressing smuggling at both local and broader contexts call for a comprehensive, more contextualised approach.

Data Evaluation for Cassiterite and Coltan Fingerprinting

“…Within due diligence concepts for raw material supply chains the traceability of a shipment is one of the issues that have to be taken into account [6]. The usual "bag and tag" traceability systems depend on document-based, therefore artificial, information on the origin of a shipment [7,8] and thus are highly susceptible to fraud attempts. However, the credibility of those traceability systems is enhanced significantly if an independent tool based on the analysis of intrinsic properties of the minerals would verify the declared origin and therefore strengthen the plausibility of the documentation of the respective shipment.…”