If you who follow me on social media, you already know I post quite a bit about major injustices happening around the world, and lately what's happening to a core group of countries this year, and one of them I wanted to musically highlight first is the Democratic Republic of Congo, who have had a long history of atrocities they've endured since the late 1800s and who are now experiencing an ongoing and worsening genocide and exploitation (essentially neocolonialism and enslavement) for their vast mineral wealth in the Eastern mining district of the country.

I wanted to make a rhythmically-infectious Afrohouse/Afrobeats track to get people's attention and moving bodies on the dancefloor but to also share important information that hopefully people will also listen to and learn from to really become aware of what is happening over there, especially since it truly affects ALL of us directly, globally, so long as you use any electronic gadget like a smartphone, laptop, tablet, electric vehicle…pretty much anything that requires a rechargeable battery. As I mentioned in the previous email, the vast majority of the world's supply of cobalt (which is the mineral crucially needed and used in all these devices) comes directly from D.R. Congo and without their supply, there isn't enough supply of it from all other other countries combined who have it to meet the world's increasing demand of it…but it comes at a very high cost of the precious lives of Congolese people being physically-abused, the rampant sexual abuse of women, the artificially-created poverty and displacement because of destroyed farmland and housing due to mine expansion, huge child labor populations, miners being massacred by neighboring country militias forcing more output to steal from them to enrich themselves, and all major tech companies avoiding lawsuits and turning a blind eye to reach their bottomline profit margins…and all just so we can have the ease of life that we have with these devices, like me even typing and sending this message to all of you.

There are ethical ways to do this and to where the people of the Congo can be the ones to profit from their own mineral riches instead of foreign countries stealing from and impoverishing them and other African countries in this centuries-old issue that needs to come to a definitive end! But in the meantime, imagine if more people bought refurbished devices to cause the tech industry to lose profits from their constant updates of new devices they release every few months, to drive down demand to send a message that the world actually cares more about the lives–the African lives–of the people who risk theirs mining toxic cobalt by hand just to earn and survive off of less than $3 USD a day! This is me not just talking about it but using my small platform, my music as a weapon of change to fight back in some small but hopefully significant way. I hope it can be a spark of enlightenment that keeps spreading so that significant positive change occurs.

Ahmed
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CREDITS

All music, editing, mixing and mastering: Ahmed Sirour

Soundbite quotes: interviews and documentaries from activists Siddharth Kara, Gloria Steinem, Isobel Yeung, Maurice Carney, and part of the independence day speech by the late great first prime minister of the DRC, Patrice Lumumba.

100% of proceeds from this track will be donated to https://friendsofthecongo.org/ as well as any other vetted charities dedicated to helping those in need in Eastern Congo who have been displaced, abused, and adversely affected in any way by the exploitation of miners and assaults by militias.