Why Congo Is Suing Apple

The world’s most valuable company, Apple, is being sued by the Democratic Republic of the Congo amid major advances by M23 rebels in the east of the country.

Congo filed criminal complaints against Apple subsidiaries in France and Belgium in December and alleges that the U.S. tech giant used “laundered” minerals that were smuggled into Rwanda from conflict areas.

At least 8,500 people have been killed since fighting escalated in January between Rwanda-backed M23 rebels and the Congolese army. Rwanda is a mineral-poor country yet exports vast amounts of coltan—much of which the United Nations says has been illegally smuggled from mines such as Rubaya, which was seized by the M23 last April.

Congo is a major source of tin and tungsten, alongside tantalum (made from coltan)—the so-called three Ts—are extracted and used in the world’s laptops and smartphones.

“The world’s eyes are wide shut: Rwanda’s production of key 3T minerals is near zero, and yet big tech companies say their minerals are sourced in Rwanda,” Kinshasa’s Washington-based lawyers, Amsterdam & Partners, said in a release published in April 2024.

While French prosecutors dismissed the case last month, Belgium began its own criminal probe into the allegations in January.

Congo’s lawyers claim that Apple has deployed “deceptive commercial practices to assure consumers that the tech giant’s supply chains are clean.”

Apple denies the allegations. The company said that as conflict escalated in the eastern Congo in 2024, “we notified our suppliers that their smelters and refiners must suspend sourcing tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold from the DRC and Rwanda.”

A U.N. report published in December accused M23 of smuggling minerals to Rwanda and obscuring the shipments by mixing them with minerals from Rwandan production. The report also suggested that Congolese minerals may have been illegally siphoned into Uganda. More than 100 armed groups operate in Congo, largely financed through trade in smuggled minerals and gold.

In March 2024, a U.S. court dismissed a lawsuit filed by a group of former child miners and their families against Apple, Tesla, Google, Microsoft, and Dell over alleged use of forced child labor in Congo’s cobalt mining operations. Purchasing through the global supply chain “is not ‘participation in a venture,’” the court ruled, although it noted that “the cobalt suppliers and their subsidiaries actively solicit and force children to work in order to meet the Tech Companies’ growing demand for cobalt.”

In a letter sent to Apple chief executive Tim Cook dated April 22, 2024, lawyers for Congo claimed that Apple’s products are “tainted by the blood of the Congolese people.”

Congo has also said that the European Union is complicit. Amid heightened attacks by the M23 rebels in recent years, the EU agreed in February 2024 to a deal aimed at sustainably sourcing critical minerals from Rwanda; it now faces pressure from EU lawmakers to rescind the deal.

A 2022 report by advocacy group Global Witness found that ITSCI, a metals industry-funded traceability scheme in the region, was complicit in tagging minerals from conflict zones as responsibly sourced.

The Responsible Minerals Initiative— of which Apple is a member—removed ITSCI from its list of recognized traceability schemes in 2022, and it recently prolonged the suspension until 2026. Congo alleged in its lawsuits in France and Belgium that Apple still uses ITSCI.

Alex Kopp, a senior policy advisor at Global Witness, told Foreign Policy, “Our research suggests that a lot of minerals which are entering this traceability system, which is basically meant to be conflict free, are from mines which are connected to armed groups where children are working. And in some areas, it was up to 90 percent of the minerals which came from illicit mines that entered the system.”

“Western advocacy led to policies focused on derisking supply chains and virtue signaling to consumers, rather than improving artisanal miners’ living conditions or addressing the conflict’s root causes,” Mélanie Gouby wrote in Foreign Policy in May 2024. “In a cruel twist, the cost of the due diligence program has been shouldered by Congolese miners themselves, effectively asking the world’s poorest workers to pay for the right to sell their own resources to Western companies.”

Some security experts argue that Congo’s long and deadly armed conflicts can only be resolved through improved transparency. But others contend that the solution is far more complex.

After all, the traceability program relies on the incorruptibility of the poorly paid Congolese officials charged with tagging the minerals. There’s also a conflict of interest at the heart of the system, Kopp added, because it is run by mineral associations whose members are the companies purchasing the minerals.

Congo has lobbied for an urgent meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss a direct deal on its critical minerals that would exclude Rwanda. In a letter sent last month to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Congo offered U.S. companies “exclusive” mineral extraction rights in exchange for weapons and U.S. access to military bases, which it says would be used “to protect strategic resources” from “foreign-backed militant groups.”

South Sudan instability. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan has warned about an “alarming regression” in the country following politically motivated clashes in the country’s northeastern Upper Nile state. A 2018 power-sharing agreement between President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar has been threatened by clashes between security forces overseen by Kiir and an armed youth group called the White Army, which is largely made up of members from the same ethnic Nuer community as Machar and fought alongside his forces in the civil war between 2013 and 2018. Uganda said on Tuesday it had deployed troops at the request of President Kiir.

Analysts have long warned that instability in Sudan could spark tensions in South Sudan. Importantly, Sudanese Minerals Minister Mohamed Bashir Abunommo wrote a Facebook post on Saturday in which he accused South Sudan of allowing the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to establish an “aggression base” under the guise of a field hospital in Eastern Aweil, which borders the Sudanese state of East Darfur.

“The main undeclared purpose is to stockpile the militia with military equipment under the cover of the UAE Red Crescent operations,” Abunommo said.

However, the “Sudanese military has a decades-long history of exploiting ethno-political fissures in South Sudanese society to fuel conflict and many South Sudanese and diplomats suspect the Sudanese army has reactivated its old ties to Nuer militias and has sent military supplies south, which would explain the sudden eruption of large-scale violence,” Daniel Akech, a South Sudan-focused senior analyst at Crisis Group told FP in an email. “Some in Juba fear that the ethnic Nuer militias linked to Machar will try to take Malakal, the state capital and one of South Sudan’s three main cities.”

Sudan’s army files ICJ case. Sudan filed a case against the United Arab Emirates at the International Court of Justice last Wednesday, accusing the Gulf state of being “complicit in the genocide” committed by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Darfur. Since the war began in April 2023, both the RSF and the Sudanese army have been accused of committing atrocities backed by Gulf nations and Russia. A January 2024 report by U.N. experts indicated that there is credible evidence that the UAE has smuggled weapons to the RSF through Chad. The UAE has denounced the ICJ filing as a “cynical publicity stunt.”

Kigali demands payment. Rwanda has demanded the remaining $64 million payment that it waived last year when the United Kingdom scrapped plans to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda. Kigali has accused the U.K. of breaching trust by suspending some aid to the country. The U.K. government cut foreign aid except for “support to the poorest and most vulnerable” in response to Rwanda backing the M23 rebel group in eastern Congo.

The aid cuts have amounted to “unjustified punitive measures to coerce Rwanda into compromising our national security,” Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo said. Kigali received 270 million pounds (about $340 million) in aid from the U.K. government as part of the aborted refugee deportation plan. The U.K. has said that it will make no further payments.

South Africa rejects Trump claims. The South African government said on Friday that it would not engage in “counterproductive megaphone diplomacy” following social media posts by U.S President Donald Trump repeating claims that Pretoria was confiscating farmland. Trump said that all South African farmers—not just Afrikaners, as he has previously stated—would be offered fast-tracked citizenship in the United States.

On the same day, the South African government rejected claims made by Trump’s billionaire advisor Elon Musk that his company faced discrimination. Musk wrote on X, the social media platform that he owns: “Starlink is not allowed to operate in South Africa, because I’m not black.” Musk has faced difficulty getting regulatory approval to expand his satellite internet provider Starlink into South Africa, since the country requires at least 30 percent local ownership under its Black empowerment law.

Nigeria’s #MeToo moment? Nigeria’s Senate ethics committee suspended Sen. Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan for six months after she accused Senate President Godswill Akpabio of sexual harassment. She alleged that Akpabio blocked her motions from being heard on the Senate floor because she rejected his advances.

“You know when a student keeps failing because they refuse to sleep with a lecturer? That is exactly what I have been facing, in simple terms,” she told regional broadcaster Arise Television.

Akpabio has denied the allegations. Nigeria has one of the lowest rates of women in high office in Africa. Akpoti-Uduaghan is one of only four women in Nigeria’s 109-seat upper chamber. Less than 4 percent of the Nigerian parliament’s members are women, compared with a little less than 30 percent in the Untied States and more than 41 percent in Senegal.