Clinton, in choosing the largest economies and the continent’s most influential capitals, is likely to highlight more traditional US economic and security interests than Obama did on his Ghana trip.
Posts Tagged ‘Democratic Republic of the Congo’
Clinton to go on tour of Africa
July 28th, 2009 |
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US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is to tour seven African countries, starting on 5 August.
The visit is to highlight President Barack Obama’s commitment to making Africa a US foreign policy priority.
While in Africa, Mrs Clinton is set to speak at the Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum (AGOA) in Kenya.
Her office in Washington says this is the earliest in any US administration that both the US president and secretary of state have visited Africa.
Global hunger and agricultural issues will also feature highly in her discussions with African leaders.
Kenya is her first stop, where she is set to address the AGOA forum on new approaches to development, investment and broad-based economic growth.
Kenya is also the birthplace of the US president’s father.
Mr Obama visited Ghana earlier this month – his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa since being elected president.
Mrs Clinton will also visit South Africa, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Liberia, and Cape Verde.
She will also meet Somalia’s President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, president of Somalia, whose forces are battling Islamist insurgents.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
African lake gas poses threat to millions
July 25th, 2009 |
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Trapped methane and carbon dioxide could be set loose by a quake or landslide, say scientists
More than two million people living on the banks of Lake Kivu in central Africa are at risk of being asphyxiated by gases building up beneath its surface, scientists have warned.
It is estimated that the lake, which straddles the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, now contains 300 cubic kilometres of carbon dioxide and 60 cubic kilometres of methane that have bubbled into the Kivu from volcanic vents. The gases are trapped in layers 80 metres below the lake’s surface by the intense water pressures there. However, researchers have warned that geological or volcanic events could disturb these waters and release the gases.
The impact would be devastating, as was demonstrated on 21 August 1986 at Lake Nyos in Cameroon, in West Africa. Its waters were saturated with carbon dioxide and a major disturbance – most probably a landslide – caused a huge cloud of carbon dioxide to bubble up from its depths and to pour down the valleys that lead from the crater lake.
Carbon dioxide is denser than air, so that the 50mph cloud hugged the ground and smothered everything in its path. Some 1,700 people were suffocated.
“The lake was essentially like a bottle of beer that had been shaken up,” said Professor George Kling, of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at Michigan University. “When you opened it, carbon dioxide bubbled up, and the beer frothed over. A glassful is OK. A lakeful is deadly.”
Kling has since turned his attention to Lake Kivu, which is more than 3,000 times the size of Nyos and contains more than 350 times as much gas. More worrying is the fact that the shores of Kivu are much more heavily populated. About two million people live there, including the 250,000 citizens of the city of Goma.
Mount Nyiragongo, near Goma, erupted in 2002 and lava streamed from it into Lake Kivu for several days. On this occasion there was no disturbance of the lake’s deep layers of gas and no deadly outpouring of carbon dioxide or methane. However, Kling has warned – in the journal Nature this month – that in the event of another eruption the region may not be so lucky again.
Indeed, the impact would dwarf the disaster that struck Nyos. “Kivu is basically the nasty big brother of Nyos,” Kling told Nature.
The source of Kivu’s problems stems from carbon dioxide that has bubbled up through the lake bed from molten rocks below. The region – in Africa’s Great Rift Valley – is a centre of volcanic activity. In addition, some of this carbon dioxide has been converted by bacteria in the lake into methane. Hence the accumulation of both gases.
According to studies by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, there was a 10% rise in carbon dioxide concentration, and a 15-20% increase in methane concentration in Kivu between 1974 and 2004. At the same time, plankton fossils on the lake’s bed have revealed several massive bouts of biological extinctions in Kivu over thousands of years. However, it is impossible to say if a new one is imminent, researchers told Nature.
At the same time, engineers are trying to tap Kivu’s rich supplies of methane – by lowering pipes from floating platforms down to its holding layers and siphoning off the gas. This could then be burnt and used as a source of industrial and domestic energy.
Several projects have been established, though only one is currently generating electricity – albeit sporadically – for the Rwandan grid. Another platform sank last year shortly before it was scheduled to begin production.
Tapping Kivu’s methane could, theoretically, reduce the risk of a deadly eruption, say engineers. However, scientists have also warned that tampering with the lake’s gases also carries a risk of triggering a disaster.
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Amnesty International: Human exploitation fuels mining trade in DRC: Apple, Dell look away
July 23rd, 2009 |
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Prominent US and multinational companies such as Apple, Dell, Motorola, Nokia, and Hewlett-Packard are among the businesses pinpointed as culprits in an unflinching, new report…
UK firms ‘buy illicit Congo minerals’
July 21st, 2009 |
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Global Witness report says trade is prolonging 12-year conflict between rebels and army, but firms deny wrongdoing
The continuing violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo is being fuelled by western companies who are buying the country’s minerals without properly checking their origins, a new report alleges today.
Global Witness says the Congolese army and other armed groups in the east of the country control much of the mining and trade in tin ore (cassiterite), coltan, wolframite – often using forced labour.
The report argues the trade is prolonging the 12-year conflict there, which has seen mass killings and rape. About 100,000 people have been driven from their homes in the past few months alone.
“As long as the warring parties can fund themselves through international trade, they will continue to be able to inflict widespread violence on the population,” said Patrick Alley, the director of Global Witness.
The report calls for UN sanctions against foreign firms that buy the minerals from intermediaries without exploring who was profiting from their purchase. Many of the firms accused are Belgian but Global Witness also calls for UN sanctions against a British firm, the London-based Amalgamated Metal Corporation (AMC), whose subsidiary, Thaisarco, buys tin ore in eastern Congo.
Global Witness acknowledges that Thaisarco purchases minerals from legal, government-authorised brokers, but argues the firm should do more to find out who is supplying those brokers. It points to a UN resolution calling for sanctions, including the freezing of assets of individuals or companies helping Congolese armed groups through the trade in natural resources.
The report alleges Thaisarco’s main supplier in the South Kivu region, the centre of the conflict, gets its tin ore from mines controlled by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), one of the main warring factions. Its leaders include Rwandan Hutus involved in the 1994 genocide.
AMC has denied any wrongdoing, saying it has always followed UN guidance in its trade in the region and is in the process of implementing more thorough measures aimed at increasing the transparency of the tin trade.
“Both AMC and Thaisarco have always sought to comply with the requirements and recommendations of the UN in respect of minerals originating in the DRC. In accordance with this, Thaisarco purchases DRC minerals subject to a recently enhanced, formal and detailed due diligence programme which ultimately is aimed at providing transparency throughout the supply chain,” the statement said.
The new industry-wide measures, know as the Tin Supply Chain Initiative, were launched on 1 July, after the Global Witness report was completed.
“The Supply Chain Initiative has traceability of the minerals as its key objective in order to ensure that the trade does not benefit renegade or rebel groups,” AMC said. The foreign office issued a statement yesterday recognising that illegally traded minerals were “one of the factors in the instability in eastern DRC”.
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‘Tyranny and corruption must end’
July 11th, 2009 |
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US president praises host Ghana as model for prosperity and says continent’s era of corrupt ‘strongman’ governments must end
In his first visit to Africa since taking office, Barack Obama said today that the continent of his ancestors must overcome tyranny and corruption if it is to flourish.
Speaking in Ghana’s parliament, Obama said the key to Africa’s future prosperity was democratic and accountable government.
“Development depends upon good governance. That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long. That is the change that can unlock Africa’s potential,” he said.
In an tough speech aimed at politicians across the continent, he gave an unsentimental account of squandered opportunities since the end of colonial rule. “No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves, or police can be bought off by drug traffickers,” he said.
“No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20% off the top … No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, and now is the time for it to end.
“Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.”
Obama conceded that colonialism had left a legacy of conflicts and arbitrary borders. “But the west is not to blame for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants.
“Africa is not the crude caricature of a continent at war,” he said. “But for far too many Africans conflict is a part of life, as constant as the sun. There are wars over land and wars over resources. And it is still far too easy for those without conscience to manipulate whole communities into fighting among faiths and tribes.”
Earlier, after meeting Ghana’s president, John Atta Mills, Obama praised the country’s record of democracy and economic growth as a rare success in a continent beset by corruption and poor governance.
“We think that Ghana can be an extraordinary model for success throughout the continent.”
This morning, Obama was given a hero’s welcome in the country’s capital, Accra. Thousands of people wearing Obama T-shirts thronged the streets, cheering and waving as his motorcade swept past.
Walls and utility poles were plastered with posters of Obama and Mills, as well as the word “change” – the mantra of Obama’s presidential election campaign. Other posters showed the president and his wife, Michelle, with the greeting “Ghana loves you”.
Obama and his family arrived late last night from the G8 summit in Italy, where the world’s richest nations agreed on a $20bn (£12.4bn) food security plan to help poor nations feed themselves during the global recession.
Speaking in Italy before he left, Obama said: “There is no reason why Africa cannot be self-sufficient when it comes to food.”
The Obamas will visit Gold Coast Castle, a former British slave trading post. Michelle Obama is a great-great granddaughter of slaves.
The visit comes as the US plans a much more assertive policy in Africa, using both diplomacy and the threat of force to end the protracted conflicts in Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria, which are seen as two of the main obstacles to the continent’s progress.
“This is both a special and an important visit for him personally as president, but also for our country to articulate a vision for Africa,” said Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman.
Despite the enthusiastic reception from ordinary Ghanians, no major public events have been planned during Obama’s 21-hour visit, for fear it could cause a celebratory stampede, as almost happened during a 1998 stop by Bill Clinton.
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Obama wants to end African conflicts
July 10th, 2009 |
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US president to emphasise democratic goals for African countries during speech to Ghanaian parliament
The US is planning a dramatically more assertive policy in Africa, sometimes backed by a threat of force, to end conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria that are seen as among the principal obstacles to the continent’s revival.
Barack Obama is to address Ghana’s parliament tomorrow on his first visit to Africa as president with a speech that is expected to emphasise that the key to prosperity is democratic, accountable government. But an important part of the new administration’s policy will focus on ending key conflicts through more forceful diplomatic initiatives after years of drift by the Bush administration.
The White House is shortly to appoint a special envoy to central Africa with a brief to tackle a web of conflicts that have afflicted eastern Congo for 15 years,and destabilised the region, in the belief that the success or failure of one of the continent’s largest countries will decide central Africa’s future.
A senior administration source said that the US believes the primary problem is the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which is led by men wanted for the 1994 genocide of Rwanda’s Tutsis who fled to Congo and controls swaths of territory close to Rwanda’s border.
The source said that the priority will be to break the FDLR leadership with a mix of diplomatic pressure, including the prospect of war crimes trials, backed by the establishment of “a more professional force” to replace the ill-trained troops serving in the UN largest peacekeeping mission who have failed to contain the conflict. However, the source said that there is a belief that the threat may be enough to force the FDLR to give up the fight. He said that the make-up of such a force is unresolved.
The initiative will also focus on confronting the Lords Resistance Army, a particularly brutal Ugandan rebel group also based in Congo. But the source said that broader pacification will require more interventionist diplomacy to press other countries such as Rwanda and Uganda that contribute to the destabilisation to recognise that their security is intertwined with Congo’s success.
The administration is also eyeing the continuing violent upheaval in the Niger Delta which is a major source of America’s oil imports amid deep scepticism over the capabilities of President Umaru Yar’Adua who is seen as weak and indecisive as his country fragments.
The conflict is deepening with several rebel groups and parts of the military now acting as warlords and some major oil companies warning that they are considering pulling out of the region altogether.
But the emphasis there is likely to remain firmly diplomatic as the US presses Yar’Adua to address seriously the issues of impoverishment, environmental devastation and endemic corruption that have alienated people in the delta and given rise to rebel groups and armed gangs that now control large parts of the region.
However there are fears that US intervention could result in the further militarisation of the continent. Confronting the FDLR is likely to draw in the US Africa Command (Africom) which is increasingly involved in conflicts on the continent, including overseeing a botched Ugandan attack on LRA rebels in Congo.
The US military is also now supplying weapons to the fragile government in Somalia as it tries to stave off Islamist insurgents. The Americans also allied themselves closely with Ethiopia’s repressive regime during its attack on Somalia.
Daniel Volman, director of the African Security Research Institute, one of three dozen organisations which wrote an open letter to Obama urging him to reverse the militarisation of US policy in Africa, said Africom’s growing role will further destabilise the continent.
“It encourages governments to rely on the use of force to deal with internal problems, to avoid democracy, to avoid addressing the internal issues these African countries face,” he said.
“The US is now engaged in a major new military project in Somalia, providing arms and ammunition to the Somali government there, encouraging countries like Burundi and Rwanda which have peacekeeping forces there to conduct military training so we don’t send to have our own troops there, all of which encourages that government to seek a military solution instead of developing a political solution to the kind of problems that exist.”
There remain deep divisions over other aspects of Africa policy, especially Darfur. Before his election, Obama promised strong action against the Sudanese regime but the state department is at odds with itself on the crisis. The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, believes the Khartoum leadership is not to be trusted and wants a hard line taken with Sudan but others argue that the conflict has been over simplified and that it is in any case largely over.
However, when Obama addresses Ghana’s parliament tomorrow, his focus will be on democratisation as the path to Africa’s revival.
“This isn’t some abstract notion that we’re trying to impose upon Africa,” he told allAfrica.com. “There is a very practical pragmatic consequence to political instability and corruption when it comes to whether people can feed their families, educate their children. And we think that the African continent is a place of extraordinary promise as well as challenges. We’re not going to be able to fulfil those promises unless we see better governance.”
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