ExcerptsFromJosephConrad HeartOfDarkness. Book Review: Before the Birth of the Moon by V. Y. Mudimbe. Title: Before the Birth of the Moon Author: V.
Y. Mudimbe Language: English Translator: Marjolijn de Jager. PAPERBACKS - AN AFFAIR OF CONVENIENCE. BEFORE THE BIRTH OF THE MOON By V.
Y. Mudimbe. Translated by Marjolijn de Jager. 203 pp. New York: Fireside/Simon & Schuster. Washington Drives an “Imperial Wedge” Between Congo and China. We in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have just commemorated the 15th anniversary of the assassination of President Laurent Kabila and the 54th anniversary of the assassination of our independence leader Patrice Lumumba on 16th of January and 17th of January respectively.
Shortly before these commemorations, the DRC was honored by the official visit of the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Wang Yi, China’s top leader to visit the DRC since 2008 when his predecessor former Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr.Yang Jie Chi visited Kinshasa. Can China’s ‘Deal of the Century’ Save Congo? Congo Takes Chinese Investment Over Western Aid.
When Xi Jinping pondered which foreign region to visit first as China’s newly appointed President, he wasn’t swayed to a mineral-rich Australia, a thriving Singapore or steadfast North Korea.
Instead, his careful calculations took him to Africa. After a brief, almost obligatory stop in Moscow, he flew to Tanzania, South Africa and Congo-Brazzaville, where he promised $20 billion in new credit to finance infrastructure and agriculture in Africa over the next three years. Some two months after that visit, President Barack Obama followed in the Chinese leader’s footsteps. It was only the American President’s first extended trip to Africa since taking office some four and a half years earlier.
The sign of America’s lagging commitment to Africa was not lost upon Africans. Response: The last thing Congo needs is these neo-colonial remedies. Paul Collier's prescriptions for resolving the recent post-election crises in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are deeply flawed (Naive faith in the ballot box, November 3).
Collier states: "What is needed is a massive contracting-out approach to health and education, using whatever agencies work: NGOs, churches, private firms. " But fledgling civil society groups - while they are often courageous - cannot be a panacea for providing security in post-conflict situations. As the current crisis in eastern Congo demonstrates, governments in Africa urgently need to be strengthened, to provide security and promote development. Civil society actors are no substitute for a strong state. Paul Collier: Naive faith in Congolese ballot box.
Rape of the Congo by Adam Hochschild. As if eastern Congo had not already suffered enough, seven years ago Nature dealt it a stunning blow.
The volcano whose blue-green bulk looms above the dusty, lakeside city of Goma, Mount Nyiragongo, erupted, sending a smoking river of lava several hundred yards wide through the center of town and sizzling into the waters of Lake Kivu. More than 10,000 homes were engulfed. Parts of the city, which is packed with displaced people, are still covered by a layer of purplish rock up to twelve feet thick. HeartOfDarknessTG.pdf. Cad59c34-dddf-11de-b8e2-00144feabdc0.jpg (JPEG Image, 470 × 276 pixels) Agreeable formula for Congo - Gado. 12-7-Congo-Holocaust.jpg (JPEG Image, 610 × 436 pixels) 6-18-Congo_2.jpg (JPEG Image, 600 × 452 pixels) Farrellworldcultures - African Resource Wars. FightingEasternCongoImplicationsforPeace.pdf. Conflict Minerals. Jump to: Overview | Current Policy | Solutions | Campaigns & Programs Your mobile phone, your computer, your portable music player, and your gaming system all fuel fighting in eastern Congo.
Take Action Now » Overview Armed groups earn hundreds of millions of dollars every year by trading conflict minerals. These minerals are in all our electronics devices. In Eastern Congo, economic colonialism in the guise of ethical consumption? The lush and rolling hills of Masisi territory, North Kivu province, Democratic Republic of Congo.
(Pete Muller/Prime for The Washington Post) The following is a guest post by Christoph Vogel and Ben Radley. Vogel is an Independent Analyst and a PhD candidate at the University of Zurich. Radley is a Director for Heartland Alliance and a PhD student at the International Institute of Social Studies. Obama’s conflict minerals law has destroyed everything, say Congo miners. When his father could no longer make enough money from the tin mine, when he could no longer pay for school, Bienfait Kabesha ran off and joined a militia.
It offered the promise of loot and food, and soon he was firing an old rifle on the frontlines of Africa’s deadliest conflict. He was 14. But what makes Kabesha different from countless other child soldiers is this: his path to war involved not just the wrenchingpoverty and violence of eastern Congo but also an obscure measure passed by US lawmakers. Villagers call it Loi Obama – Obama’s law. Tracing the Source of ‘Conflict Minerals’ Photo BUKAVU, Democratic Republic of Congo — From 1998 through 2002, my country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, endured a devastating civil war.
Getting Rich in Poverty-stricken Congo. “My salary is less than 750 Euros. And yet I can make up to 225,000 Euros per month”, a forty-year-old man tells us in Kinshasa. He’s wearing a diamond watch and glasses of pure gold. Between 2006 and 2011 the man was counsellor at the Ministry of Economics, during the Gizenga and the Muzito administrations. He is willing to confide to us how you can get rich through the Congolese state, on the condition that we don’t get him into any trouble. If he is mentioned by name or if pictures of his villa are published, he would have to fear for his life. He owns a marble, three-storied villa in Mont-Fleury, one of Kin’s better neighbourhoods. There are different ways for the elite in charge to increase their wealth. Block reforms One of the basic strategies is to successfully prevent any government improvements. He says that other ministers’ employees would sometimes approach him with amounts of money that he thought were too low.
Undersell and collect under the table. What Is Coltan? You may not have heard of coltan, but you have it in your cell phone, laptops, pagers and other electronic devices. It is important to everyday communication in the United States, but it is making the conflict in Congo more complicated. What Is Coltan? Columbite-tantalite — coltan for short — is a dull metallic ore found in major quantities in the eastern areas of Congo. When refined, coltan becomes metallic tantalum, a heat-resistant powder that can hold a high electrical charge. These properties make it a vital element in creating capacitors, the electronic elements that control current flow inside miniature circuit boards. What Is Coltan? Chinese colonialism? - BBC News. Is China becoming Africa's new colonial master? Is Beijing sucking away resources to drive its own economic growth, while offering little in return? Africa and China: More than minerals.
The Colonization of Africa. Between the 1870s and 1900, Africa faced European imperialist aggression, diplomatic pressures, military invasions, and eventual conquest and colonization. At the same time, African societies put up various forms of resistance against the attempt to colonize their countries and impose foreign domination. The CIA's early 1960s Meddling in Congo, the Murder of Patrice Lumumba, and the Rise of Joseph Mobutu.
It didn’t take long for Congo’s transition from Belgian colony to sovereign state to turn ugly. Both the Soviet Union and the United States were keeping a close eye on the mineral-rich country at the heart of Africa when, on June 30, 1960, it gained independence under a democratically elected government headed by Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. Belgium confronts its colonial demons. More than a century after King Leopold II of Belgium claimed Congo as his personal colony, an unprecedented investigation into his country's murky colonial past and long-ignored allegations of genocide is to be carried out.
Belgium confronts its colonial demons. Nothing but Pictures: Alex Majoli and Paolo Pellegrin’s “Congo” Exclusive: As the Democratic Republic of Congo suffers another day of bloodshed, its soldiers talk with astonishing candour of their own brutality - Africa. The army has been ordered to retreat to the town, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.