Big Tech’s Reliance on Conflict Minerals

By Florian Zandt – Statista

According to its conflict minerals report (CMR) for 2023, Amazon cannot rule out having sourced minerals from nine of ten African countries where human rights-violating militias finance themselves through mining. These countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia and Angola. The other four members of GAMAM, a group synonymous with the moniker Big Tech, also potentially source some of the raw materials processed in contracted smelters from these regions.

Both Apple and Google’s parent company Alphabet reported that smelters integrated into their supply chains potentially processed minerals from six of the ten countries on the African continent mentioned above. Meta lists five of these countries in its report, while Microsoft claims to have reason to believe that minerals from two of the ten countries listed might end up in their products. However, the country list provided by Alphabet was last updated in 2021 and has been absent from their annual CMR since 2022. Additionally, Microsoft doesn’t clarify if the countries listed in its report are merely those where smelters are located or if they are the source countries for potential conflict materials.