ABC TV Foreign Correspondent’s Eric Campbell’s journeys to the heart of the warzone in the Congo to investigate the link between the demand for gadgets and a seemingly endless - and certainly brutal - African war.

He visits mines where gunmen demand half the money earned by miners - many of them children - with no other way to make a living. Foreign Correspondent also shines a light on the conflict’s other victims … the Congo’s endangered gorillas

Mr Campbell reports:

Are minerals like coltan helping fund this war? Absolutely. Has coltan or tantalum as it’s also known from the Congo wound up in your mobile or laptop?

Well it’s impossible to know. And if the world stopped buying these minerals would it end the war? Well all that’s certain is it would put hundreds of thousands of people out of work.

Perhaps the real question is why we need a connection with mobile phones to care about what happens here.

So let’s end this story where we began. It says much about our Western sensibilities that the plight of gorillas has done more to raise awareness of the war than the plight of people.

Zoos have begun asking consumers to recycle their mobile phones to help save the Great Apes. And it is all connected. People won’t be safe until these animals are too. All are in danger from the same militias.

But the suffering will only end when the government makes peace with the warring parties. And that will only happen when a world connected by gadgets, remembers the most important connection of all.

To view the program: http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/