Thirst For Coltan Fueling African Conflict

MetaPhyzx writes "According to an article put forth by the Toward Freedom website, the metallic ore known as columbite-tantalite or coltan for short is fueling conflict in central Africa. The relevance to us who read news for geeks: Coltan is in quite a few consumer electronics; the article references the Sony Playstation series." As reader fahrvergnugen points out in the comments below, there's reason to more than doubt the currency of the claims in the above-linked article, as outlined in a post at Joystiq.

Comments

Re:Sorry to say but...

[the4thdimension]

The movie "Blood Diamond" had it right when they showed the G8 conference and one of the reps said something like:

"Anytime a material of value is found in Africa, the locals die in pain and in great number."

Unfortunately for Africans, this is one of those movie parts we wish was just in a movie. It's much too bad that its actually true.

Not quite so much

[Ancient_Hacker]

Tantalum is used in small quantities to make high-performance and compact electrolytic capacitors.

Typically a tantalum cap will have lower leakage current and be about 1/4 the size of a aluminum electrolytic, at about twice the cost.

As an electronics repair guy, I just *love* tantalum caps, as they quite often short out given an opportunity. Most repair places won't even try to do component-level repairs anymore, so that leaves lots of nice equipments for me to fix.

Re:Not quite so much

[pz]

Tantalums have a bad reputation for unreliability. They are less forgiving to overvoltage than electrolytics. My father, who designs some of the most reliable instrumentation I've seen anywhere (he estimates a 30-year lifetime for his devices, and that's with 100% duty cycle, continuous use), derates tantalum capacitors by a factor of 2 and has no problems with them failing. (Eg, if you have a max expected voltage of 5 V, use a tantalum that's rated at for at least 10 V.) Electrolytics, on the other hand, have well-known lifetime issues, even when run conservatively, because the electrolytic chemistry is inherently corrosive.

Re:In other news....

[Bombula]

True enough. Interesting how being willing to pay for something without asking any questions about where it came from hasn a way of creating problems, isn't it? Clothes sold everywhere from Wal-Mart and the Disney Store to Oscar De Larente boutiques are made in sweatshops by 'sub-contractors' so the buyers can retain plausible deniability. Same goes for electronics parts - like the iPod and the iPhone. More personally, say your child needed a kidney, for example. It'd be easy to not ask where a donor organ came from.

So the question is, who draws the line - and where - when it comes to the supply of goods or services whose origins are mired in strife? We regulate the donor organ market pretty heavily. We consumer products like apparel and electronics moderately. And we don't regulate diamonds or oil at all.

I don't have any answers, mind you. (Well, maybe I do - but the cat will stay snug in the bag until after I'm published). For now, I'm just saying there are important questions here that have gone unasked and unanswered for too long.

Re:Sorry to say but...

[LWATCDR]

Sorry but I am working with project in Nigeria right now. To say that things can not change is just wrong.
My family is from Northern Ireland. I visited there during the worst of the troubles and I learned some important facts that I wish everybody would learn.
1. Most people just want a future for themselves and their children.
2. Most the problems in the world are caused by a few heavily armed idiots.
3. It is a lot easier to be a hard core supporter outside of the war zone.

Things in Northern Ireland have improved a lot. People have jobs and a future so they are not killing each other and they are not putting up with people killing each other.

Oh the other lesson I learned was. When the IRA blows up a police station and you are a young man. RUN. The the British Army will not ask you for your passport before they knock you to the ground.