Instead of a miracle, a suspicious fire destroyed voting materials and moved the December 23 election of a new president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to December 30. Provisional results of the delayed election showed the surprise victory by Felix Tshisekedi, son of a deceased opposition leader popular in Kinshasa. Nonetheless, controversy surrounds his victory over Martin Fayulu, who was seen as a greater threat to former president Joseph Kabila's history of corruption and disregard for the rule of law. An NGO that fielded 40,000 election observers said their results showed former oil executive, Fayulu, had won, just as a pre-election survey also predicted.
Russia quickly recognized Tshisekedi as the Congo's new president while Martin Fayulu rejected the final election results as a deal engineered between Tshisekedi and Kabila. Many feared protests and violent repression would frustrate the hoped for calm transition.
The former Belgian Congo, nearly three times the size of Nigeria, has almost one million fewer people. On the surface, the 105,000 electronic voting tablets ordered from South Korea for 84,000 polling places created the appearance of a modern election process for the country's 40 million eligible voters. Concern that the tablets could be hacked prevented them from being hooked up for fast transmission of election results. Also, there was concern that the population, especially spread out beyond the Kinshasa capital, had little experience with technology, and unpaved roads and remote areas, only accessible by boats, motorbikes, or helicopters, prevented easy access to voting places.
Voters also have to contend with 100 rebel groups that terrorize the country. From Beni south to Butembo on the eastern border with Uganda, for example, the machete wielding Allied Democratic Forces and Mai Mai militia, who prevent health workers from vaccinating people threatened by the spreading Ebola virus, are not likely to facilitate passage for voters. At the polls, voting also may be prevented by the lack of electricity and charged batteries needed to power voting tablets.
Nothing about the Congo's history suggests a new president offers King Leopold II's former private colony relief from nearly 150 years of suffering that began with harvesting rubber under slavery conditions. Only a year into independence, its first president, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered in 1961. Next, General Joseph Mobutu changed the country's name to Zaire and used the Congo's uranium to become a Cold War player who amassed a private fortune with funds from East and West.
With the flight of Tutsis escaping genocide by Hutus in neighboring Rwanda, fighting began spilling over into Zaire in 1994. Mobutu's opponent, General Laurent Kabila, seized the opportunity to recruit Tutsis and to lead rebels west toward Kinshasa. Mobutu fled into exile in 1997. Kabila seized control of the country, again named the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and ruled as a dictator until a bodyguard assassinated him in 2001.
Kabila's son, Joseph, took over the troubled country. In 2006, a new constitution limited a president's time in office to two, 5-year terms, and the UN oversaw a presidential election. In a runoff, Joseph Kabila, head of the People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), defeated a former Congolese vice president and rebel leader, Jean-Pierre Bemba. Benba was arrested for war crimes committed by his troops during fighting after the election. Kabila failed to step down as president when his term ended in 2016.
When the December 23, 2018 date finally was set for a new presidential election, Kabila's PPRD selected as its candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, a former interior minister and the party's permanent secretary. Shadary, who has no powerful military or other political base of his own, was viewed as Kabila's puppet. In June, 2018, Bemba's war crimes conviction was overturned. He returned to a hero's welcome in August only to be barred from running for president due to a second charge. Another potential presidential challenger, Moise Katumbi, the wealthy former governor of Katanga's southern cobalt and copper mining province, was sentenced for property fraud and also barred from running for election and from returning to the Congo from Belgium.
Joseph Kabila is adept at eliminating his opposition. When the Catholic Church, which counts at least 40% of the Congo's population as members, began holding parades in support of December's election, police killed 18 marchers. Gaining popularity for any reason is a danger. After the Congo's Dr. Denis Mukwege won a Nobel peace prize in 2018, he narrowly escaped assassination.
Observers, both inside and outside the Congo, suspected Kabila was counting on votes split among the weak slate of presidential candidates, the potential for polling machine irregularities, and protests by Bemba, Katumbi, and others to cause violence that would invalidate the election and leave him as president. The people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo deserve a better Christmas present: a president devoted to bringing them lasting peace and prosperity.
Showing posts with label Rwanda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rwanda. Show all posts
Monday, December 17, 2018
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Corrupt Government Turnaround in Angola?
In Angola, President Joao Lourenco attempts to join Muhammadu Buhari in Nigeria, Adama Barrow in The Gambia, and Emmerson Mnanggagwa in Zimbabwe, the new leaders trying to break with a tradition that allowed African rulers to put their own interests ahead of their countries'.
After unseating Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Angola's president for 38 years, Lourenco began a crackdown on corruption rampant among the country's elite. Starting with the former president's rich daughter and son, he removed Isabel as head of the country's national oil and gas company, Sonangol, which exported $640 billion since the end of Angola's civil war in 2002 and charged Jose Filomeno with fraud for attempting to transfer $500 million from the country's $5 billion wealth fund through a London account.
Although the price of crude oil has rebounded from its 2014 low, as Africa's second-largest oil producer after Nigeria, Angola was still left with public debt, mainly to China, hovering between 65% and 80% of GDP, and missing billions, when Lourenco took office. To revive the economy, the new president no longer requires foreign investors to have local partners and asked the International Monetary Fund for advice. Suggested next steps include: an independent audit to discover where revenue from oil and diamond exports went, especially to overseas accounts. Locals share information about the corruption crackdown in Brazil, another former Portuguese country, that has sent former high-level officials to jail.
Additional needed reforms include: elimination of excessive licenses and regulations that provide bribery opportunities for those issuing or waiving them; improving living and health care conditions to reduce the country's high child and maternal mortality rates; stripping courts of political influence; freedom of the press and media, especially to report on corruption; and Angola's first local elections in 2020.
Meanwhile, in Portugal's other former African possession, Mozambique, the continuing 3-year attacks by a group of radical Muslim jihadists resulted in new beheadings in May, 2018.
While African leaders like Rwanda's President Paul Kagame, who led the Tutsi rebels who overthrew the Hulu regime responsible for genocide, and President Pierre Nkurunziza in neighboring Burundi intimidate their opposition and dictate constitutional reforms that enable them to extend their presidential terms to 2034, every indication of a gradual shift to responsible government by the rule of law on the African continent is welcome.
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After unseating Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Angola's president for 38 years, Lourenco began a crackdown on corruption rampant among the country's elite. Starting with the former president's rich daughter and son, he removed Isabel as head of the country's national oil and gas company, Sonangol, which exported $640 billion since the end of Angola's civil war in 2002 and charged Jose Filomeno with fraud for attempting to transfer $500 million from the country's $5 billion wealth fund through a London account.
Although the price of crude oil has rebounded from its 2014 low, as Africa's second-largest oil producer after Nigeria, Angola was still left with public debt, mainly to China, hovering between 65% and 80% of GDP, and missing billions, when Lourenco took office. To revive the economy, the new president no longer requires foreign investors to have local partners and asked the International Monetary Fund for advice. Suggested next steps include: an independent audit to discover where revenue from oil and diamond exports went, especially to overseas accounts. Locals share information about the corruption crackdown in Brazil, another former Portuguese country, that has sent former high-level officials to jail.
Additional needed reforms include: elimination of excessive licenses and regulations that provide bribery opportunities for those issuing or waiving them; improving living and health care conditions to reduce the country's high child and maternal mortality rates; stripping courts of political influence; freedom of the press and media, especially to report on corruption; and Angola's first local elections in 2020.
Meanwhile, in Portugal's other former African possession, Mozambique, the continuing 3-year attacks by a group of radical Muslim jihadists resulted in new beheadings in May, 2018.
While African leaders like Rwanda's President Paul Kagame, who led the Tutsi rebels who overthrew the Hulu regime responsible for genocide, and President Pierre Nkurunziza in neighboring Burundi intimidate their opposition and dictate constitutional reforms that enable them to extend their presidential terms to 2034, every indication of a gradual shift to responsible government by the rule of law on the African continent is welcome.
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Monday, May 1, 2017
All Aboard for China's African Railroads
A new Chinese built railroad scheduled for next month's trial run from Kenya's busy Mombasa port to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi offers students a good opportunity to study the map of East Africa. At the same time, this infrastructure improvement will benefit, not only the Chinese, but all future marketers who want to get their commodities and products in and out of Africa.
China has seen Africa's need for railroads as a promising use for its excess steel production and a way to avoid charges of dumping, i.e. exporting overcapacity at below fair market prices. Since Africa's population is expected to boom from one to four billion between 2000 and 2100, China also is looking ahead to the need for ports and transportation links capable of handling a growing market for Chinese goods (and Africa's own growing economies).
China has experience building railroads that connect African ports, known to handle 90% of the continent's exports and imports, with the interior. In the 1970s, China financed and built the TAZARA Railway from Zambia's Copperbelt to the port at Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Other Chinese railroads connect Nigeria's capital at Abuja to Kaduna, and an electrified railway that opened this year gives landlocked Addis Ababa in Ethiopia access to the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea in Djibouti.
By the time the Mombasa-Nairobi line is ready to handle passengers and freight in January, 2018, it will have taken seven years for a process that required: Kenya and the China Road and Bridge to sign a memorandum of understanding, to finalize $3.6 billion in financing from China's Exim Bank and Kenya's government, to lay tracks, to build and deliver locomotives and cars, and to complete trial runs. Kenya's attitude toward the Chinese-built Mombasa to Nairobi railway turned negative as ballooning costs turned four times the original estimate and raised suspicions of corruption.
Plans call for extending the Mombasa-Nairobi line farther west around the northern coast of Lake Victoria, up to the Uganda border by 2021, and then on to Uganda's capital in Kampala and Kigali, Rwanda, with a branch line to Juba, South Sudan. Extending the Mombasa-Nairobi line into Uganda would facilitate oil shipments from new fields in and around Lake Albert and copper, cadmium, and other mineral shipments from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It also would improve the supply route to the Dominican nuns mentioned in the earlier post, "Celebrate Uplifting Efforts to Promote Self Reliance in Africa."
Although the Mombasa-Nairobi route is only about 300 miles long, terrain required 98 bridges, embankments, cuttings, and an elevated section through Tsavo National Park that provides six openings for wildlife to pass underneath. Annually, freight trains are expected to carry 22 million tons over the line, 40% of all cargo entering Mombasa. Trips from the freight terminal at Mombasa to container depots at Embakasi/Nairobi are expected to take less than eight hours. New standard gauge trains traveling at 75 mph could reduce a passenger's trip from Mombasa to Nairobi to four hours compared to the current all day trip on the deteriorated, leftover meter gauge railway built before Kenya's independence. The trip will take longer when any stops are made for passengers at the 40 stations expected to be completed along the route.
Africa's Chinese railroads are a work in progress. Funding and loan repayment, as well as stolen materials, have plagued these projects. In some cases, the China Communications Construction Company will operate Africa's railways while local employees are being trained. Over Easter, Nigerians complained about changed schedules and poor communication. The same poor maintenance that left colonial railroads in disrepair after African countries gained independence could be a problem in the future.
China has seen Africa's need for railroads as a promising use for its excess steel production and a way to avoid charges of dumping, i.e. exporting overcapacity at below fair market prices. Since Africa's population is expected to boom from one to four billion between 2000 and 2100, China also is looking ahead to the need for ports and transportation links capable of handling a growing market for Chinese goods (and Africa's own growing economies).
China has experience building railroads that connect African ports, known to handle 90% of the continent's exports and imports, with the interior. In the 1970s, China financed and built the TAZARA Railway from Zambia's Copperbelt to the port at Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Other Chinese railroads connect Nigeria's capital at Abuja to Kaduna, and an electrified railway that opened this year gives landlocked Addis Ababa in Ethiopia access to the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea in Djibouti.
By the time the Mombasa-Nairobi line is ready to handle passengers and freight in January, 2018, it will have taken seven years for a process that required: Kenya and the China Road and Bridge to sign a memorandum of understanding, to finalize $3.6 billion in financing from China's Exim Bank and Kenya's government, to lay tracks, to build and deliver locomotives and cars, and to complete trial runs. Kenya's attitude toward the Chinese-built Mombasa to Nairobi railway turned negative as ballooning costs turned four times the original estimate and raised suspicions of corruption.
Plans call for extending the Mombasa-Nairobi line farther west around the northern coast of Lake Victoria, up to the Uganda border by 2021, and then on to Uganda's capital in Kampala and Kigali, Rwanda, with a branch line to Juba, South Sudan. Extending the Mombasa-Nairobi line into Uganda would facilitate oil shipments from new fields in and around Lake Albert and copper, cadmium, and other mineral shipments from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It also would improve the supply route to the Dominican nuns mentioned in the earlier post, "Celebrate Uplifting Efforts to Promote Self Reliance in Africa."
Although the Mombasa-Nairobi route is only about 300 miles long, terrain required 98 bridges, embankments, cuttings, and an elevated section through Tsavo National Park that provides six openings for wildlife to pass underneath. Annually, freight trains are expected to carry 22 million tons over the line, 40% of all cargo entering Mombasa. Trips from the freight terminal at Mombasa to container depots at Embakasi/Nairobi are expected to take less than eight hours. New standard gauge trains traveling at 75 mph could reduce a passenger's trip from Mombasa to Nairobi to four hours compared to the current all day trip on the deteriorated, leftover meter gauge railway built before Kenya's independence. The trip will take longer when any stops are made for passengers at the 40 stations expected to be completed along the route.
Africa's Chinese railroads are a work in progress. Funding and loan repayment, as well as stolen materials, have plagued these projects. In some cases, the China Communications Construction Company will operate Africa's railways while local employees are being trained. Over Easter, Nigerians complained about changed schedules and poor communication. The same poor maintenance that left colonial railroads in disrepair after African countries gained independence could be a problem in the future.
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