There are grounds for optimism that the Dodd Frank Act will contribute to the Congressional objective of promoting peace and security in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Section 1502 of the 2010 US Dodd-Frank Act is lauded by its advocates as a progressive regulatory framework which will help prevent company complicity in a vicious cycle of mineral-fuelled conflict in eastern DRC. Critics have derided Section 1502 as an unworkable burden on business and claimed that it will harm local livelihoods in one of the world's most underdeveloped regions. Whatever the intended - and unintended - consequences of the groundbreaking legislation, Section 1502 will introduce significant additional compliance costs. Given that the minerals covered under the Act feed into a wide array of consumer goods from mobile phones, to jewellery and to coffee machines, the legislation is important to consumers as well.

There are concerns that Section 1502 will not be effective in stemming the flow of mineral revenues to armed groups, given widespread cross-border smuggling into states with a weak regulatory framework (such as Rwanda and Burundi) and into countries not covered by the legislation (such as Kenya). The prevalence of endemic corruption in the region and the massive technical challenge of ensuring effective traceability policies may also mean mineral revenues continue to perpetuate conflict.

In addition, the brief November 2012 capture of Goma (the capital of North Kivu and a regional trade hub) by the M23 rebel group, and the continuing presence of the insurgents in the region, will make it even more difficult for companies to source minerals from eastern DRC. With the M23 rebels threatening to expand their campaign and even march on Kinshasa, the extremely uncertain outlook could make responsible mineral sourcing from large parts of North Kivu unviable for the foreseeable future.

Although the Dodd-Frank Act was passed in 2010, it took the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) until August 2012 to publish its controversial final rules implementing the legislation. With the Act due to come into force from January 1 2013, an estimated 6,000 companies listed with the SEC will need to be transparent about the source of columbite-tantalite (or 'coltan'), cassiterite, wolframite, gold and their derivatives (namely tantalum, tin and tungsten) used in their products and manufacturing processes.

While it will not become illegal for the affected companies to use minerals which perpetuate conflict in DRC, the reputational damage of making such a disclosure in annual reports due from May 31, 2014, should act as a significant deterrent. As a result, the transparency requirements will cascade down supply chains from US-listed companies to suppliers across the world.

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Arthur R. Segal, age 101, passed away at 9:50 a.m. Saturday (January 12, 2013) in Memorial Hospital & Health Care Center in Jasper.

He was born June 30, 1911 at Kansas City, Missouri to Henry and Ada (Bennett) Segal. He married Mildred “Millie” Hebrank October 25, 1935 in the Evangelical Church in Highland, Illinois. She preceded him in death March 14, 2011.

After high school, Arthur served his apprenticeship training at the United States Radiator Corporation and then as an engineering draftsman at the Laclede Steel Company at Alton, IL. He saved most of his earning so that he could attend college.

In 1942, Arthur started his own company, North American Products Corporation, designing and manufacturing the first mechanically held, solid carbide blades for the high-speed machining of metals. At the time, the development of the new cutting tool metal known as Tungsten Carbide, was at the leading edge of industrial technology and was of high importance for the nation’s war effort. Arthur worked closely with Phillip McKenna, who had been an associate at Kearney and Trecker, and who later founded the Kennametal Corporation.

After the war, Arthur began experimenting with the design and manufacturing of tools for machining materials other than metals. This resulted in the development of the first Tungsten Carbide circular saw blade, a product which would rapidly replace the use of solid steel blades due to their long production life and increased accuracy. Mr. Segal developed the first carbide tipped saw blades for cutting wood, hard plastics and plastic laminates and he held patents on many of the basic carbide tipped tool designs now commonly used in industrial production.

While the company initially grew on the basis of its innovative tooling designs, North American Products began opening carbide tool sharpening and sales divisions in many stated and eventually, in foreign countries. The company’s first tool sharpening division was located in Jasper, IN in 1957, and the company moved its headquarters and manufacturing facilities to Jasper in 1959.

Along with growing and operating the business, Arthur wrote technical articles for various industrial and scientific publications. He also presented papers and seminars at numerous universities regarding the design, machining and manufacturing of Tungsten Carbide cutting tools.

He served as a director of the Wood Machinery Manufacturing Associations (WMMA), and also as a director for the associations industrial Fair Board. He directed the association’s noise control research program in coordination with Wylie Research Laboratories in Huntsville, AL. Arthur also represented the association in regard to product liability legislation in Washington D.C. In 1966, he was a U.S. representative to the United Nations Technical Industrial Production Conference in Vienna, Austria.

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M23 rebels in DR Congo have threatened to march to the capital and depose the government. UN reports confirm that rebels receive support from key US allies in the region, and Washington's role in the conflict has become difficult to ignore.

Instability, lawlessness and violence are nothing new to those who live in the troubled eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. An estimated 6.9 million Congolese have perished since 1996 in a spate of ceaseless military conflicts that have long gripped this severely-overlooked and underreported region. In late November 2012, members of the M23 rebel group invaded and took control of Goma, a strategic provincial capital in North Kivu state with a population of 1 million people, with the declared purpose of marching to the nation’s capital, Kinshasa, to depose the ruling government.

M23's president, Jean Marie Runiga, later agreed to withdraw only if the ruling President Joseph Kabila listened to the group's grievances and adhered to their demands. Rebel leaders have threatened to abandon peace talks unless Kinshasa signs an official ceasefire, a demand the government dismissed as unnecessary.

Kinshasa called on M23 to respect previous agreements to withdraw 20km outside of Goma in a move to prevent the region falling back into war after two decades of conflict, fought largely over the DRC’s vast wealth of tungsten,copper, cobalt diamonds, gold and coltan.

The United Nation’s peacekeeping mission in DR Congo has come under fire for allowing M23 to take Goma without firing a single shot, despite the presence of 19,000 UN troops in the country. The UN’s Congo mission is its largest and most expensive peacekeeping operation, costing over US$1 billion a year. UN forces recently announced they would introduce the use of surveillance drones over the DRC, in addition to imposing a travel ban and asset freeze on M23 leader Jean-Marie Runiga and Lt. Col. Eric Badege.

A confidential 44-page report issued by a United Nations panel accused the governments of neighboring Rwanda and Uganda of supporting M23 with weapons, ammunition and Rwandan military personnel. Despite both nations denying these accusations, the governments of the United States, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands have publicly suspended military aid and developmental assistance to Rwanda. The governments of both Rwanda and Uganda, led by President Paul Kagame and President Yoweri Museveni respectively, have long been staunch American allies and the recipients of millions in military aid.

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As Asian and Western countries make giant strides in mobile technology, there are a number of African techpreneurs who feel the continent has the potential to make its own original devices. Given the dominance of imported gadgets, the challenges for home-grown devices are real yet innovators still have hope.

Let us ponder this scenario: Apple is a big brand in America, while Samsung and Huawei are highly recognised in their respective continents. In Africa, we are yet to stand tall with devices engineered here for now. But one notable observation is that Africa is a main source of some rare precious minerals that are important in the manufacture of the devices.

The Democratic Republic of Congo alone supplies almost 70 per cent of the world’s tantalum metal which is an ingredient in all phones. The country has substantial reserves of columbite-tantalite or coltan, cassiterite, wolframite and gold. Coltan is the ore from which tantalum is extracted, while cassiterite produces tin.

Tantalum is a vital metal in the manufacture of compact and high performance capacitors found in electronic gadgets like mobile phones, laptops, tablets and gaming consoles.

Wolframite is the metal ore for tungsten used in vibration circuits of mobile phones.

Tin is a major ingredient in solder which is commonly used on electronic circuit boards. Gold is also present in some electronic products.

It is in the DRC that we find one of the up-coming techpreneur with ambitions of putting African home-grown devices on the tech-map. Verone Mankou, a Congolese entrepreneur has smartphones and tablets engineered in Congo. His tech-startup, VMK, boasts of a flagship tablet called Way-C and a smartphone called elikia.

VMK is derived from Vumbuka which is a word in Congo that captures the phrase ‘wake up’. Could it be a wake-up call for Africa to come up with home-grown mobile devices?

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