Filed under: africa | Tags: Kenya, Rwanda, drc, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, William Easterly, Blood Diamonds, Djimon Hounsou, Leonardo DiCaprio, Maasai, Millenium Villages
The BBC reports that the Kimberley process, designed to rid the global diamond market of blood diamonds, is failing. This is largely because of second country exporters of diamond like the Ivory Coast. Made famous by the movie Blood Diamond which included among others the Beninois Djimon Hounsou and Leonardo DiCaprio, the attempts to stop the illicit trade in diamonds that was fueling wars across the Continent had so far been seen by many as a success. Many had hoped that the same success could be replicated in other commodities, especially in the DRC where mineral wealth in the eastern part of the country has been funding wars since the mid 1990s.
And in other news, William Easterly wrote a rather pointed critique of the Millenium Villages project and the tourism business surrounding it. This piece reminded me of the plight of the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania whose lifestyle has long been “preserved” by the two governments as tourist attractions reserves – even as thousands of Maasai children remain out of school and without proper healthcare or diet because of the incompatibility of the centuries old traditional Maasai way of life with 21st century living (and this is not exclusive to the Maasai). I think it is about time governments and development experts got honest with themselves. Development means having a good education system, having access to healthcare so that people do not die of treatable illnesses, having a diet of at least 2500 calories a day, being well clothed and housed, among other things. If a lifestyle, however cherished, denies the people practising it these essentials for a comfortable human existent it belongs in the rubbish bin of history, regardless of whether such a lifestyle is considered authentic African or not.
Filed under: Central Africa, Crises, East Africa, Rwanda, The DRC, africa | Tags: drc, FDLR, Rwanda
The BBC is reporting that the FDLR, a group suspected to include genocidaires from Rwanda’s 1994 disaster, has retaken positions it ceded a month ago to Rwandan troops. Earlier this year Rwandan troops had moved into Eastern DRC with a mission to take out FDLR positions. However, it is now emerging that as soon as Rwanda left, the FDLR moved back and retook their old bases.
These new developments just serve to illustrate how intractable the mess in Eastern Congo is. For years now Uganda, Rwanda and the weak Kinshasa governments of Kabila I and II have tried to restore order in this part of the vast central African country without success. It seems like the more the government tries to end the war the more rebel movements emerge. Which begs the question, exactly who is funding this war?
That foreign companies are accomplices in the Congo war is not a secret. The control of mines and trading centres (for tax purposes) seem to be the main motivations for the emergence of the numerous rebel groups. Someone is buying the minerals that come from these mines and someone is supplying the rag tag bandits with guns and ammunition. I am sure it is within the means of the UN and the many involved parties – if they mean well in their involvement – to expose the companies that are involved in this messy war, either as arms dealers or purchasers of minerals.
Just like it was in Sierra Leone with blood diamonds, the international community can shame the companies involved in this war to come clean and end the economic incentives for the proliferation of rebel groups and gangs in eastern Congo.
The following are some American-owned companies that were implicated in a 2002 UN report on the Congo war profiteers: Cabot Corporation, Eagle Wings Resources International, Trinitech International, Kemet Electronics Corporation, OM Group and Visgay Sprague …… and there are others.
The Congo war is a resource war and the sooner those trying to stop it acknowledge this fact and deal with it, the easier it is going to be to come up with modalities of how to end it.
Filed under: Central Africa, Crises, africa | Tags: drc, Kivu, Laurent Nkunda, Rwanda
Laurent Nkunda, the leader of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD), a rebel group in eastern DRC, was arrested Thursday as he tried to flee into Rwanda. Recently Rwanda sent in a few thousand troops into eastern DRC to disarm members of the Forces démocratique pour la libération du Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu rebel group that still entertains dreams of invading Rwanda to topple the Kagame regime. Nkunda, sensing that the dragnet might have been wide enough to catch him, decided to flee into Rwanda to avoid confrontation with the Rwandan troops.
Although Nkunda’s arrest may not significantly change the situation in eastern DRC – there are several distinct rebel groups in this part of the country – it sends a message that the leaders of murderous groups like Nkunda’s will not go unpunished. Nkunda should be tried for war crimes and general thuggery and put in prison for the rest of his life.
And the DRC needs to get its act together. The failure of Kinshasa to control the eastern parts of the country is a sign of gross incompetence. If Kinshasa cannot effectively control the region it should be bold enough to let it go. Otherwise the war of attrition it is fighting in that part of the country will continue to generate more and more splinter rebel groups and get even more complicated. In the mean time more people continue to lose their lives – on top of the 4 million already dead since the mid-90s.
I also think that it is time the international community stopped treating the Congo war as yet another irrational African tribal conflict. IT IS NOT. Indeed, no war in Africa deserves to be labeled as such. The war in the Congo, like most conflicts in Africa and elsewhere in the world, is a resource war. Ethnicity is just a rallying call. If real peace is to be achieved in the wider great lakes region of Africa the real issues of resource allocation will have to be addressed honestly.
Filed under: Crises, East Africa, News Analysis, Politics, africa | Tags: drc, kabila, Kagame, kinshasa, Kivu, Nkunda, Rwanda
The pictures say it all. King Leopold’s ghost never left the vast central African country that is the DRC. In the East, a man by the name of Nkunda is waging a war against the Kinshasa government for God knows what reason. I don’t buy the story that he is protecting Tutsis from Hutus. If the rumors are true, Rwanda is in this for the minerals. Nkunda is an accomplice. Since when did an African warlord care about the people? This man thinks that the lives of Eastern Congolese people are expendable. He does not care about the people. I say he gets captured and taken through a public trial and then offered as an example to all future rebels.
In Kinshasa, Kabila is just as guilty. He is responsible for the power vacuum in the East that lets lunatics like Nkunda run around killing innocent women and children. His own soldiers, according to the NY Times, are killing people. Shooting the very civilians they are supposed to protect in the back.
It is time to stop pretending. Rwanda, if it supporting Nkunda should stop immediately. I am a fan of Kagame and I’d hate to see him tarnish his legacy this easily. Kagame, you saw it happen in your country, do not let the madness continue in the DRC. Kinshasa should be given an ultimatum: win the East or give it up. Fair and square. If Kabila’s forces cannot impose his will in the region, he should cede authority to the only force that currently seems to have the power to do so – that of the rebels led by Nkunda.
4 million human beings have died already. How many more can we let die before something gets done? I want to see people getting tried and punished for war crimes. I want to see Kabila out of power. I want to see Nkunda jailed or neutralised for his crimes. I want retribution. I want peace for the people of the DCR. If they can’t be a rational-legal state I want to see it split up. And my only reason is pure and simple: Enough is enough.
Filed under: Aids, World affairs | Tags: Benin, George Bush, Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda, tanzania
President George Bush will pay his final official visit to the continent this coming week. According to the White House website the president and his wife will visit Africa between Feb 15 and 21 to see firsthand the impact of America’s aid towards prevention and containment of HIV/AIDS and other tropical diseases.
President Bush’s itinerary will include stops in Tanzania, Benin, Ghana, Liberia and Rwanda. Although Bush is wildly unpopular at home and in many other parts of the world, many Africans still view the president in a good light because of the visible impact that his aid policies have had on the continent’s struggle with AIDS. Mr. Bush launched the $500m aids fund for Africa in 2002 in an attempt to help many of the African countries struggling with high infection rates and lack of ARVs. Since then many of the countries that received the aid have managed to reduce the spread of AIDS and deaths due to the virus through the provision of affordable ARVs.
AIDS remains one of Africa’s biggest challenges. The continent has the world’s highest average infection rates and is faced with a crisis as millions of children continue to be orphaned by the scourge. A few countries like Uganda have managed to stem the spread of the virus while others have chosen to treat it as less of a threat. Yet others have even gone comical – South Africa and the Gambia come to mind. In South Africa, Mbeki insists that HIV does not cause AIDs and his health minister thinks that herbs would cure the illness. The President of Gambia on the other hand insists that he can cure the disease, but only on Thursdays.The church in Africa in its reluctance to endorse the use of condoms among the faithful is also playing a role in the spread of the disease.
I hope that Bush’s visit will be a wake up call to African health officials. The continent’s health services are in dire need of modernization since most of them lack equipment and drugs and cannot deal with even the simplest of illnesses.
Filed under: Crises, East Africa, Kenya, News Analysis, World affairs, africa | Tags: Kenyan clashes, Rift Valley, Rwanda
I read with shock and disbelief reports in the Telegraph that Kenyan vernacular radio stations belonging to Kikuyus, Luos and kalenjins have started having call-ins with the kind of language that helped stoke the fires of the Rwandan genocide. The report talked of a radio station referring to members of another ethnic group as “weeds” that “must be uprooted.” This is most alarming, especially in the wake of the fresh retaliatory violence that has brought life in most of the major urban centres in the Rift Valley province to a standstill.
The government should concentrate its efforts on the gutter press to ensure that this bad habit does not become acceptable to anyone, regardless of their ethnicity. Indeed it is the gutter press, be they the funny looking ten shilling papers or vernacular stations that are more likely to cause chaos than the more respectable establishments like KTN and NTV. I feel like instead of focusing so much on the mainstream media and curtailing their rights to have live broadcasts, the government should have instead moved swiftly to stop any of the vernacular radio stations or newspapers from airing or publishing anything that might be inflammatory. Indeed if this goes on the government should suspend the licenses of all vernacular stations until things calm down. We saw the power of the radio in Rwanda and so we should not sit back and watch as Kenya goes down that same path.
Freedom of speech is important. But only when the freedom is exercised without infringing on other people’s rights. Radio stations that allow the airing of any inflammatory comments should be shut down and the editors be given a generous jail sentence because anyone who uses the mass media to encourage murder should share the responsibility with the murderers if indeed they manage to persuade Kenyans to go out and kill their fellow countrymen.
This new development is most alarming especially after the recent counter-attacks in Naivasha and Nakuru seemed to have been pre-planned and also as news emerged that the earlier attacks in the Rift Valley were pre-planned as well.
Filed under: African Economies, Crises, East Africa, Horn of Africa, Human Rights, Kenya, News Analysis, Politics, Somalia, Southern Africa, The DRC, Uganda, West Africa, World affairs, africa, south africa | Tags: africa, burundi, drc, Jacob Zuma, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, tanzania, Uganda
A few months ago, after the Nigerian election, I read a piece in a leading international newspaper that said that Africa had yet again failed at democracy. The article infuriated me because it was a blanket write off of the entire continent as being undemocratic. I thought about Kenya, Senegal and Botswana as viable democracies that were capable of holding free and fair elections and which had freedom of the press.
But then Kenya happened. A country that was largely peaceful and with prospects of becoming a middle income country in the next decade and a half suddenly imploded and descended into never-before seen chaos. An election was stolen by a man who was viewed as one of the better behaved presidents on a continent infested with autocrats and dictators.
How, after all this, can we convince the world that Nigeria, Zimbabwe, the CAF, Equatorial Guinea, Sudan, Somalia, Chad, the DCR and all the others are isolated incidents? How are we going to convince ourselves that we are capable of running peaceful and prosperous countries when all that exist around us are chaos and murderous wars? Total failure?
It is true that countries like Botswana and Senegal still remain stable and democratic and also headed towards economic prosperity. South Africa is also doing quite well, although I am holding my breath to see what a Zuma presidency has in store for us. But the rest of the countries either have wars, or some form of instability and those that are peaceful have poverty rates that are utterly inhuman, to put it mildly.
It is extremely vital for the continent not to let a working model like Kenya sink into the same pit that has the Somalias of the continent. This is because many countries in East Africa depend on Kenya for their own economic success. A failed Kenya would mean no hope for Somalia and serious problems for Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Southern Sudan, Eastern DCR and Northern Tanzania. A failed Kenya will also mean a serious blow to the spread of democracy on the continent and especially East Africa. Besides Tanzania, Kenya was the only other democracy in the region. Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi all have autocrats who would happily use Kenya as an excuse for them to stay in power.
Filed under: African Economies, Crises, East Africa, Kenya, News Analysis, Politics, Resources, Uganda, World affairs, africa | Tags: burundi, kenyan economy. east africa, Rwanda, Uganda
As parts of Kenya went up in flames over disputed elections and politicians engaged in political grandstanding and chest-thumping, nobody seemed to be thinking about the effect their actions would have on the economy. The market, on the other hand, was quick to react to the unrest. Estimates indicate that about 5% was wiped off the value of companies listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange. Commodity prices shot up – the New York Times reported cabbages being sold for almost 10 times the pre-election value.
The region’s economies also felt the pinch. Kenya’s ports and airports are transits for goods worth a quarter of the GDP of Uganda and Rwanda and one third of Burundi’s. It is no wonder that fuel prices shot up in these countries following the outbreak of violence that disrupted supplies through Kenyan roads. It is clear that when analyses are done the effect will be far worse than just the increase in fuel prices.
The long term effects may even be more damaging. A great amount of goodwill and confidence have been lost. Investor confidence will, understandably, plummet. Many had previously viewed Kenya to be above the kind of violence witnessed in the week following the Dec. 27 polls. Kenya’s near breakdown will definitely raise concerns over countries that have been deemed to be even less stable – countries like Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi – and this may result in these countries attracting less investment than they would have.
Kenyan leaders, and by extension the continent’s leaders, should realise that the rest of the world will not wait for them as they continue to epitomise poor governance and perpetual unrest. They should know that peace and stability are essential ingredients in the quest for economic and social development. If the trend continues – undemocratic governance, poor economic policies and morally bankrupt leadership – Africa will as sure as death continue to slip behind as other regions of the world continue to accelerate towards economic nirvana.
Filed under: Crises, East Africa, News Analysis, Politics, The DRC, World affairs | Tags: Congo, kabila, kinshasa, rebels, Rwanda, The DRC, Uganda, Zaire
Last week the government of the Democratic Rep. of Congo (DRC) belatedly announced that it had captured Mushake, a rebel held town in the Eastern fringes of Africa’s second largest country. This was seen by many as a sign of government commitment to winning the war (now that the rebels seem not to care about negotiations) and finally restoring peace to the region. It therefore came as a surprise when it emerged that the government had lost the town again to the rebels.
The DRC is a country that has never known peace; going back to the days when it was personal property of King Leopold of Belgium. Even after independence, the secessionist attempts by Katanga (South Eastern region), the assassination of Lumumba and Mobutu’s kleptocratic and murderous rule did not make things better. When Mobutu died there was hope that the elder Kabila would bring peace and a sense of nationhood. But this was not to be; Kabila was assassinated by his own men and succeeded by his son. The younger Kabila has tried to make peace, first with the Bemba led opposition and then with the Eastern rebels, but without much success.
The recent loss of Mushake is a sign of government ineptitude in fighting this war. It is clear that the rebels and their sponsors in Rwanda and Uganda do not want peace and will do anything to keep the embers burning because this way they will have unregulated, tax free access to the minerals in the Eastern region. The Kinshasa government cannot afford a war of attrition with the rebels as this will distract it from its main objectives of providing public goods for all its citizens, not to mention the long term effects such a war will have. The sooner Kabila gets his act together and wins this war, the better it is going to be not only for the Congolese but also for the entire great lakes region.
The African Union and other regional bodies should support the government in making sure that the rebels are defeated and punished for their criminal adventures. Although the Kinshasa government is not the best government the DRC could ever have, secessionist wars are not the best way to deal with this problem. The rebels should know that in this day and age there are better ways of expressing one’s grievances; ways that do not contribute to unwarranted human suffering and wastage of scarce resources.
