Category Archives: Democratic Republic of the Congo

The UK has been linked to Congo’s ‘conflict minerals’ – where are the criminal charges? | Vava Tampa

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Swiss court ruling is not the first time plunder of DRC’s mineral wealth has been linked to the killing of Congolese people. Without accountability, it won’t be the last

According to the Swiss federal criminal court last week, the corruption destroying the Democratic Republic of the Congo – where devastating conflicts over minerals used in our electronics have killed more than six million people – is inextricably linked to the UK, Gibraltar and Switzerland.

It was a significant moment exposing corruption that has fuelled not only grinding poverty, famine and unemployment in DRC but also the impunity and violence required to sustain it. Yet, unless there is accountability, it won’t change.

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Isis-linked groups open up new fronts across sub-Saharan Africa

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Military victories combined with new alliances and shifts in strategy reinforce militants’ position across much of continent

Islamic State’s affiliates in Africa are set for major expansion after a series of significant victories, new alliances and shifts in strategy reinforced their position across much of the continent.

Following recent gains in Nigeria, the Sahel, in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Isis propaganda published by the group’s leadership in its heartland in the Middle East is increasingly stressing sub-Saharan Africa as a new front which may compensate the group for significant setbacks elsewhere.

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‘Gamechanging’ £10m environmental DNA project to map life in world’s rivers

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eBioAtlas programme aims to identify fish, birds, amphibians and land animals in freshwater systems from the Ganges to the Mekong

Concealed by the turbid, swirling waters of the Amazon, the Mekong and the Congo, the biodiversity of the world’s great rivers has largely remained a mystery to scientists. But now a multimillion-pound project aims to describe and identify the web of life in major freshwater ecosystems around the world with “gamechanging” DNA technology.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and UK-based environmental DNA (eDNA) specialists NatureMetrics have launched a partnership to take thousands of water samples from freshwater river systems like the Ganges and the Niger delta to identify the fish, birds, amphibians and land animals that live in and around them.

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Delta variant of Covid spreading rapidly and detected in 74 countries

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Concerns over impact on poorer countries, while richer governments try different containment measures

The Delta variant of Covid-19, first identified in India, has been detected in 74 countries and continues to spread rapidly amid fears that it is poised to become the dominant strain worldwide.

With outbreaks of the main Delta strain and several of its sub-lineages confirmed in China, the US, Africa, Scandinavia and the Pacific, concern increasingly is focusing on how it appears to be more transmissible as well as causing more serious illness.

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Italy investigates UN officer over death of diplomat in DR Congo

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Prosecutors accuse suspect of failing to ensure protection of convoy that was attacked in February

Italian prosecutors have placed a UN officer under investigation in relation to the murder of Italy’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who was killed in February along with two other people in an attack in the restive east of the central African country.

Magistrates in Rome are investigating the role of a UN World Food Programme (WFP) officer in the DRC, whose name has not been disclosed, who is accused of allegedly omitting to take all the necessary security to ensure against a potential attack.

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‘Exponential’ rise in Covid cases in DRC capital, reports WHO

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City of Kinshasa, home to 15 million people, is amid third wave of infections, authorities confirm

The UN’s health agency said on Thursday that it detected a surge of coronavirus cases late last month in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

“An exponential rise in the spread of Sars-CoV-2 virus has been recorded in Kinshasa,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a weekly report.

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DRC volcano: thousands flee amid fears of further eruptions – video

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Thousands of people have fled the Congolese city of Goma, some picking their way across landscapes scarred with lava, after officials said a second volcanic eruption could happen at any time.

Thirty-one people were killed on Saturday evening when Mount Nyiragongo, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, sent a wall of orange lava downhill towards the city, destroying 17 villages on the way. The lava stopped just 300 metres short of Goma airport, the main hub for aid operations in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo


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At least 15 die in lava flows after volcano erupts in Democratic Republic of Congo

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More than 500 homes have been destroyed by the lava that has poured into villages, officials and survivors say

At least 15 people died when torrents of lava poured into villages after dark in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, destroying more than 500 homes, officials and survivors said on Sunday.

The eruption of Mount Nyiragongo on Saturday night sent about 5,000 people fleeing from the city of Goma across the nearby border into Rwanda, while another 25,000 others sought refuge to the north-west in Sake, the UN children’s agency said on Sunday.

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DR Congo volcano: thousands flee as Mount Nyiragongo lava flows destroy homes – video

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Thousands of residents abandoned their homes as the city of Goma, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was thrown into panic when a nearby volcano erupted. Lava from Mount Nyiragongo destroyed homes on the edge of Goma, which has a population of about 1 million people, but appeared to be slowing by midday on Sunday, giving hope that further damage could be avoided

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DRC orders evacuation of Goma after Nyiragongo volcano erupts

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Thousands of people head towards border with Rwanda as lava approaches outskirts of city

A river of flaming lava that poured out of the erupting Nyiragongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has reached the suburbs of Goma, an eastern city of nearly 2 million people.

Officials said on Sunday that the molten stream had reached the airport on the outskirts of the city, but witnesses said the flow appeared to have halted later in the morning.

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Gaza damage and Glasgow raids: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Peru

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Price of gold: DRC’s rich soil bears few riches for its miners – photo essay

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As the value of gold reached new heights last year, those mining it continued to face crippling deprivation and dangerous conditions

  • Produced as part of Congo In Conversation, with the support of the Carmignac photojournalism award. Text and photographs by Moses Sawasawa, a photographer based in Goma and co-founder of Collectif Goma Oeil

The muddy slopes surrounding the eastern Congolese gold-mining town of Kamituga hold vast wealth and crippling deprivation.

In South Kivu province near the borders of Rwanda and Burundi, Kamituga has mineral resources estimated to be worth $24tn (£17tn) in untapped deposits. Yet the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has one of the lowest levels of GDP per capita in the world and people work in dangerous conditions with little hope of scratching out anything more than a meagre existence from tough and dangerous work.

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Welcome to Semuliki: on the trail of the ADF’s Islamist militants | photo essay

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Photojournalist Hugh Kinsella Cunningham has been embedded with Congolese soldiers in the DRC’s ‘triangle of death’. The elusive insurgents they are hunting have pledged allegiance to Islamic State

At the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, in a vast territory that ranges from the lofty Rwenzori mountains to the lush rainforest of the Semliki valley, one of the world’s most active militant groups is responsible for the massacre of hundreds of civilians.

The ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) was originally an opposition rebel group from Uganda rooted in a radical agenda of religious militancy. Taking advantage of the regional power vacuum, the group fled to Beni territory in neighbouring DRC to find shelter from the Ugandan army.

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Refugees and the Armenian genocide: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China

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DRC aid agencies appeal to UK Foreign Office to suspend ‘disastrous’ cuts

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Fears of 60% reduction in budget for country where 27.3m said to be experiencing acute food insecurity

A consortium of 19 aid agencies operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo has issued a last-minute appeal to the UK Foreign Office to suspend planned aid cuts to the country, where a third of the population faces acute food insecurity.

The Foreign Office, the second largest provider of aid to the war-torn country, has told aid agencies that cuts are very likely. Although the size of them is not yet agreed, one report has suggested a 60% reduction in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office budget for the country. The FCDO’s aid programme for Congo was worth £180m in 2019.

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Leak reveals UK Foreign Office discussing aid cuts of more than 50%

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Internal reports show projected cuts including 59% in South Sudan, 60% in Somalia and 67% in Syria

Some of the poorest and most conflict-ridden countries in the world will have their UK aid programmes cut by more than half, according to a leaked report of discussions held in the last three weeks among Foreign Office officials.

The cuts include slashing the aid programme to Somalia by 60% and to South Sudan by 59%. The planned cut for Syria is reported at 67% and for Libya it is 63%. Nigeria’s aid programme would be cut by 58%.

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‘Falling off a cliff’: pandemic crippling world’s most fragile states, finds report

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The world’s poorest are becoming poorer as the impact of Covid compounds existing crises, says Disaster Emergency Comittee

Thousands could starve in the world’s most fragile states as the pandemic comes on top of existing crises, warns a new report today which found aid workers are deeply pessimistic about the coming year.

The survey of aid workers by the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) found that they believed humanitarian conditions were at their worst in a decade.

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What can we learn from Africa’s experience of Covid?

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Though a hundred thousand people have died, initial predictions were far worse, giving rise to many theories on ‘the African paradox’

As Africa emerges from its second wave of Covid-19, one thing is clear: having officially clocked up more than 3.8m cases and more than 100,000 deaths, it hasn’t been spared. But the death toll is still lower than experts predicted when the first cases were reported in Egypt just over a year ago. The relative youth of African populations compared with those in the global north – while a major contributing factor – may not entirely explain the discrepancy. So what is really going on in Africa, and what does that continent’s experience of Covid-19 teach us about the disease and ourselves?

“If anyone had told me one year ago that we would have 100,000 deaths from a new infection by now, I would not have believed them,” says John Nkengasong, the Cameroonian virologist who directs the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Incidentally, he deplores the shocking normalisation of death that this pandemic has driven: “One hundred thousand deaths is a lot of deaths,” he says.

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