It’s called Coltan, and it’s a precious mineral used to make electronics and computers. Essential to build smartphone capacitors and batteries, mostly extracted in Africa. In the last year and a half, the map of central Africa itself has been riddled by violent state coups. This map of political unrest is almost identical to that of the mines where coveted materials such as Coltan are extracted. It’s a map of wild exploitation, violence and wars for the control of resources, in the name of Europe, the USA, Russia and China. It’s the map of pain for millions of human beings.