Dozens of people injured after heavy rain destroys houses and ruins roads in DRC’s capital
At least 100 people have been killed and dozens injured in widespread floods and landslides caused by heavy rain in the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kinshasa.
The prime minister, Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde, said officials were still searching for more bodies.
Continue reading...Conflict has displaced at least 400,000 people since March in a growing humanitarian crisis
In the camps on the flanks of the Nyiragongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they listen carefully. Not for warning of an eruption but to the dull thuds of distant mortar and artillery fire. Some days there are none, and hopes are raised. On other days, the sounds of war make clear to every one of the thousands of villagers huddled in their makeshift shelters that they will not be going anywhere very soon.
“We want to return home to cultivate our fields and keep our cows, sheep and goats because we are here and we are hungry. We are suffering a lot,” said Nsambimana Ashiwe, 64, at a displacement camp in Kanyaruchinya, a few miles south of the frontlines.
Continue reading...Raid on village of Kishishe in Democratic Republic of Congo blamed on M23 insurgents
About 300 people died in an attack on villagers blamed on the M23 rebel group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo last week, industry minister Julien Paluku has said.
The army had initially accused insurgents of killing at least 50 civilians in Kishishe village in eastern North Kivu province, before the government put the number of dead at more than 100.
Continue reading...Spurred by Lula’s election, the three countries, home to half of all tropical forests, will pledge stronger conservation efforts
The big three tropical rainforest nations – Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – are in talks to form a strategic alliance to coordinate on their conservation, nicknamed an “Opec for rainforests”, the Guardian understands.
The election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, has been followed by a flurry of activity to avoid the destruction of the Amazon, which scientists have warned is dangerously close to tipping point after years of deforestation under its far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro.
Continue reading...Exclusive: CT Group, co-owned by Lynton Crosby, planned secretive African campaign on behalf of Canadian mining giant
A lobbying firm with deep ties to the Conservative party planned a secretive campaign to influence elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in exchange for millions of pounds from a mining company.
Leaked documents suggest the influential firm co-owned by the veteran Tory strategist Sir Lynton Crosby agreed to help the mining company swing a presidential election in the central African country.
Continue reading...Calls by countries such as UK and US to halt auction for drilling permits in the world’s second-largest rainforest branded ‘galling’
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has criticised the west for pressuring it to halt oil and gas exploration in the Congo basin rainforest, while continuing to search for fossil fuels in their own countries.
The Congo basin, more than half of which is located in DRC, is the last rainforest on Earth that sucks in more carbon than it releases and is second only to the Amazon in size. The DRC announced in July that oil and gas permits in parts of the rainforest would be auctioned off. The blocks up for sale include areas in Virunga national park, as well as critically endangered gorilla habitats and the world’s largest tropical peatlands, which store the equivalent of three years of the world’s fossil fuel emissions.
Continue reading...His journalists have fled from M23 violence but Patrick Sugira is staying put, saying people depend on his broadcasts
Last Wednesday evening, Patrick Kiroha Sugira sent a text message to a friend via WhatsApp: “The security situation is very bad here. We have nowhere to go. I am at the radio.”
Within days, Sugira, the director of Horizon community radio station in Rutshuru, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was in hiding with his wife and children and other terrified citizens. The town was one of two overrun by armed rebels on Saturday, in a resurgence of violence in the area that is escalating tensions across the region.
Continue reading...Ministers rebuke ‘shameful’ failure to meet funding promises for poorer countries to cope with climate crisis ahead of Cop27 summit
Ministers and high-ranking officials of African nations have urged rich countries to do more to combat the climate crisis, and called the failure to meet a funding promise from 2009 “shameful”.
At a conference in Giza, Egypt, on Wednesday in the run-up to next month’s UN climate summit, Wael Aboulmagd, Egypt’s special representative for Cop27, attacked wealthier nations for not honouring an agreement to provide $100bn (£87.5bn) a year to developing countries by 2020.
Continue reading...Spectators shout in apparent glee as dignitaries struggle to get off crumpled structure during launch
Dignitaries gathered to inaugurate a footbridge in the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo only for the structure to collapse beneath their feet to the barely concealed delight of onlookers, a video shows.
Just as an organiser cut the ribbon at the ceremony in Mont-Ngafula district in Kinshasa, the bridge buckled, both its handrails broke off and the central section slumped into a stream a couple of metres below.
Continue reading...Aid projects in DRC and Zimbabwe encourage rural inhabitants to eat insects rich in vitamins and minerals
UK aid spending is encouraging hunger-stricken Africans to eat insects, with projects aiming to develop the practice in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zimbabwe.
Edible insects have long been touted as a resource-efficient source of protein, requiring less land and water than conventional livestock. However, taste and cultural resistance have proved to be stumbling blocks in extending the practice in many parts of the world.
Continue reading...US secretary of state on last stop of African tour has been clear about US misgivings related to Paul Rusesabagina’s conviction
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has raised US concerns about the trial of the jailed dissident Paul Rusesabagina with Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda, and other senior Rwandan officials during a visit to the capital Kigali.
Blinken is in Kigali on the last stop of a tour of sub-Saharan Africa that aims to regain the diplomatic initiative across a continent that received little attention under the Trump administration.
Continue reading...Antony Blinken announces formal working group during Kinshasa visit, while voicing concerns over auction of oil and gas permits
The US and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have agreed to form a working group to protect the enormous Congo basin rainforest and peatlands, which are threatened by oil and gas exploration.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, made the announcement in Kinshasa on Tuesday while expressing his concern over the sale of dozens of oil and gas permits in the DRC that included blocks in Virunga national park and the Cuvette Centrale tropical peatlands, part of an area described as “the worst place on the planet” to drill for oil and gas.
Continue reading...With elections due next year, analysts fear political motives could be driving the rising violence and tensions in the region
Fears of a new wave of violence in the restive east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are growing after weeks of deadly protests against UN peacekeepers and rising regional tensions.
Thirty-six people, including four UN peacekeepers, have died in the past two weeks as hundreds of protesters vandalised and set fire to UN buildings in several cities in eastern frontier provinces.
Continue reading...Protesters and United Nations personnel among dead after incidents that left about 50 injured
At least 15 people were killed and about 50 wounded during a second day of violent anti-United Nations protests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s eastern cities of Goma and Butembo, authorities have said.
The dead included demonstrators and UN personnel as UN sites were attacked by crowds.
Continue reading...Sale calls into question protection deal signed at Cop26 as expert warns Congo auction could be a catastrophe for wildlife, health and climate
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has announced it will auction oil and gas permits in critically endangered gorilla habitat and the world’s largest tropical peatlands next week. The sale raises concerns about the credibility of a forest protection deal signed with the country by Boris Johnson at Cop26.
On Monday, hydrocarbons minister Didier Budimbu said the DRC was expanding an auction of oil exploration blocks to include two sites that overlap with Virunga national park, a Unesco world heritage site home to Earth’s last remaining mountain gorillas.
Continue reading...Phenomenon at Lake Kivu happens when CO2 from volcanic activity leaks through cracks in the ground
The Swahili word mazuku means roughly “evil wind” and refers to a lethal phenomenon around Lake Kivu on the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda.
Carbon dioxide from volcanic activity leaks from cracks in the ground. The gas is heavier than air and collects in hollows, cellars, and low-lying areas, forming invisible and sometimes deadly pools, especially on windless nights. High concentrations of CO2 produce dizziness, nausea, confusion and weakness. Unwary victims who do not leave immediately tend to collapse then die in the high concentration of gas close to the ground.
Continue reading...Coffin containing tooth is buried in ceremony on 62nd anniversary of DRC’s independence
The family of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s murdered independence hero Patrice Lumumba buried his only known remains – a tooth – in the capital, Kinshasa, on Thursday, 61 years after his death at the hands of Belgian-backed secessionist rebels.
Hundreds gathered in a vast square for the occasion, waving flags and looking upon a large photo of Lumumba, with his trademark horn-rimmed glasses and side-swept hair, framed by white flowers.
Continue reading...EAC meeting convened to discuss sending personnel to eastern DRC where military has been fighting rebels
East African heads of state have gathered for a closed-doors meeting in Kenya to discuss the deteriorating security situation in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the DRC military has been fighting a resurgence of M23 rebels.
The rebels are a group of mainly Tutsi fighters that were defeated in 2013 by the Congolese army and UN peacekeepers. DRC accused Rwanda of backing the rebels – which Rwanda denies – sparking a diplomatic row between the neighbouring countries.
Continue reading...Congolese independence hero’s gold-capped tooth returned as ex-colonial power faces its bloody past
Belgian authorities have returned a tooth belonging to the murdered Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba, as the former colonial power continues to confront its bloody past and look toward reconciliation.
The restitution of the relic took place after Belgium’s King Philippe expressed his “deepest regrets” this month for his country’s abuses in its African former colony, Congo, 75 times the size of Belgium.
Continue reading...Relic of the murdered Republic of Congo leader will be returned to his family as Brussels confronts its bloody past in Africa
The Belgian government will return a tooth of Patrice Lumumba to his family this week, hoping to draw a line under one of the most brutal and shameful episodes in the country’s bloody exploitation of central Africa.
The relic is all that remains of Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, under its earlier name Republic of Congo, and an icon of the struggle against colonialism in Africa, who was murdered by separatists and Belgian mercenaries in 1961. His killers dissolved his remains in acid, though some kept teeth as macabre mementoes.
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