Tag Archives: Kivu

The world’s largest measles outbreak has killed over 4000 people in the DRC

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This is astonishing news:

The world’s largest measles outbreak has killed more than 4,000 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo this year, according to UNICEF.

The agency found that 203,179 measles cases have been reported throughout the country’s 26 provinces since January, according to UNICEF, including 4,096 deaths. Seventy-four percent of infections and nearly 90 percent of deaths have been children under the age of five.

According to the WHO:

  • Even though a safe and cost-effective vaccine is available, in 2017, there were 110 000 measles deaths globally, mostly among children under the age of five.
  • Measles vaccination resulted in a 80% drop in measles deaths between 2000 and 2017 worldwide.
  • In 2017, about 85% of the world’s children received one dose of measles vaccine by their first birthday through routine health services – up from 72% in 2000.
  • During 2000-2017, measles vaccination prevented an estimated 21.1 million deaths making measles vaccine one of the best buys in public health.

The measles outbreak in the DRC is attributable to low immunization rates due to the country’s weak public health infrastructure. According to the UNICEF:

measles.png“We’re facing this alarming situation because millions of Congolese children miss out on routine immunization and lack access to health care when they fall sick,” said Beigbeder. “On top of that, a weak health system, insecurity, community mistrust of vaccines and vaccinators and logistical challenges all contribute to a huge number of unvaccinated children at risk of contracting the disease.”

Two doses of the measles vaccine are recommended and roughly 95 per cent of the population needs to be vaccinated to ensure immunity and prevent outbreaks, according to the World Health Organization.  In DRC, measles immunization coverage was only 57 per cent in 2018.

Emergencies like these are reminders of the unfinished business of state-building in most of the Continent, and not just post-conflict states the DRC.

Does Tilly travel to the Congo?

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As pointed out in numerous studies, juridical sovereignty is a serious impediment to stateness and political development in the DRC. Consider this from Christoph Vogel and Jason Stearns and African Affairs:

The most important belligerent in the Congo is the government itself: a large part of the FARDC’s roughly 130,000 troops are deployed in the Kivus, controlling key mining areas, towns and roads. Yet, it does not behave like a Hobbesian Leviathan, squashing competitors to impose control over territory. Instead, the relationship between the army and armed groups often resembles symbiosis: many armed groups, even those fighting the FARDC, retain close ties with army officers and politicians, who are intent on bolstering their own power bases and protection rackets. Much as during the late Mobutu period, instead of being a liability, ‘weak sovereignty has become a kind of resource, which continues to reproduce the state as a lame but living Leviathan’. This duality also applies to the security services as ‘involuted mechanisms, mainly preoccupied with their own reproduction’, even as they erode their own legitimacy. Such a conceptualization alters rationalist assumptions of civil war, as well as those of most foreign donors, insofar as they imagine a state that wants to defeat its opponents.DQcW0xcUMAATCsmThe Congolese government, however, has shown little interest in ending peripheral wars that do not threaten its survival. This does not make it less rational: it has privileged maintaining patronage networks—some of which incorporate its opponents—over the security of its citizens, and elite survival over institutional reform. Overall, these logics have emerged incrementally as various peace deals and integration efforts created deeply factionalized security services. Kinshasa then decided to use that as a means to distribute patronage and reward loyalty, instead of instilling discipline and monopolizing violence through reform, which could create a backlash within the senior officer corps.

The paper also has some great background details on the international dimension of the conflicts in eastern DRC.

Here’s the explainer for the title of this post.

On Bad Roads (in pictures)

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Even presidents get stuck on bad roads when it rains. Here is President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The DRC has a landmass of 2,267,048 sq km, and 2,794 km of paved roads.

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What can be done to increase road access in the DRC? Big projects like this will definitely help. But a big accelerator of the process will probably be urbanization. Kinshasa is the second largest city in Sub-Saharan Africa, after Lagos. Many of you probably have never heard of Mbuji Mayi, a city of about 1.7 million people (Other big cities in the DRC include Lubumbashi, Kisangani, Bukavu, and Kananga, and Tshikapa).

The projected rapid urbanization rate in Africa, and much of the developing world, is often depicted as a disaster waiting to happen (largely due to poor infrastructure and lack of jobs). But urbanization can also be seen as an opportunity to take advantage of economies of scale to provide public goods at a lower cost. It might even have a positive impact on agricultural productivity – by creating reliable concentrated markets in urban areas and possibility through greater levels of land consolidation to take advantage of scale. That said, governments will still have to build major highways linking cities, and farms with markets.

Econometric evidence against Dodd-Frank as applied in the DRC

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This study is the first to provide econometric evidence of the relationship between conflict and mineral endowments in the DRC. While there are vivid debates and speculations around the motives of armed groups, I find that price shocks lead to armed groups violence, between groups and in order to acquire territory hosting the mineral (not to more pillages). This result is in line with other reports based on qualitative data, such UN (2002). Second, I find that interventions aimed at constraining armed groups ability to collect taxes increase violence against civilians in the short-run. Interventions that attempt to weaken armed groups finances have become dominant among policy circles. In particular, the United States issued the Dodd-Frank legislation in 2012, aimed at constraining purchases of minerals whose trade is a source of finance to armed groups. Governments interested in “cleaning” the mineral chain, thus, may need to protect civilians in the aftermath of these interventions, and provide alternative occupations to combatants who lose access to revenues from taxes as a result of these interventions. 

That is Columbia’s Raul Sanchez de la Sierra in a neat paper on the origins of states. Check it out here (H/T Chris Blattman)

For more on this subject see this over at HuffPost.

More on the DRC

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CFR has a nice interview with Jason Stearns, DRC expert and author of Dancing in the Glory of Monsters. Jason in part notes that:

This crisis has brought about a shift in international donor policy for the region, in particular criticism and financial sanctions against Rwanda, which is something that’s new. However, using aid as leverage only makes sense in the context of a larger political process. Bashing Rwanda just for the sake of bashing Rwanda is not a solution. There needs to be a comprehensive political process into which that kind of pressure can be funneled and channeled. But there is no such process at the moment. What you have are talks mediated by a regional body—the International Conference for the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR)—that has the irony of being presided over by Uganda, which is itself playing a role in the conflict by supporting the M23. These talks have been largely limited to an evaluation of the March 23, 2009 peace deal, and the potential formation of a regional military force to deal with the FDLR and M23. But the causes of the crisis run much deeper and involve the failure of local governance, the weakness of the Congolese army, and the persistent meddling of neighboring countries in Congolese affairs.

This is precisely what informs my contention that there is too much focus on the international dimension of the conflict at the expense of the kinds of reforms that Congo needs in order to improve state capacity in Sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest country.

You can’t do business, implement a human rights regime, or even pretend to have democratic governance in a stateless environment (Unless, of course, you live in a state of nature in which everyone has capacity to defend themselves against aggression by others).

Some, including very serious and influential people, think that the solution to Congo’s weakness is to plea with its neighbors not to prey on it. I disagree. I believe that the best solution ought to be the strengthening of Congo so it can deter its neighbors. The international community just wasted a good opportunity to force a cornered Kabila to agree on a peace deal that is self-enforcing, i.e., that reflects the power balance in eastern Congo.

As things stand the continuation of the power vacuum in the Kivus will continue to attract rebels, foreign-sponsored or not.

More on this here.

Also here is a  glimpse of some of the actions by Kabila and his Kinshasa cabal which make it extremely unlikely that the situation in Congo will improve under his rule.

Is this the beginning of the Third Congo War?

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Yesterday Goma fell to the M23, a rebel group in eastern DRC with alleged links to both Rwanda and Uganda. The fall of Goma increases the likelihood of an all out war in eastern Congo that might quickly degenerate into a regional war – just like the Second Congo War was (for more on why peace failed see this ICG report).

I am on record as lacking any sympathies for the Kinshasa regime under Joseph Kabila (see here, here, and here). The horrendous situation in eastern DRC is as much his fault as it is of the alleged meddlers from Kampala and Kigali. The fact that the international community has taken to viewing the conflict as primarily regional is a mistake as it masks Kabila’s own failings in improving governance in the eastern DRC . It also gives him a chance to continue free riding on MONUSCO’s presence in the region.

Sadly, the international community appears set to waste this latest crisis by issuing statements and imposing sanctions which will only tackle the symptoms rather than the real problems behind the conflict. As the ICG argues:

If international donors and African mediators persist in managing the crisis rather than solving it, it will be impossible to avoid such repetitive cycles of rebellions in the Kivus and the risk of large-scale violence will remain. Instead, to finally resolve this conflict, it is essential that Rwanda ends its involvement in Congolese affairs and that the reconstruction plan and the political agreements signed in the Kivus are properly implemented.
For these things to happen Western donors should maintain aid suspension against Rwanda until the release of the next report of the UN group of experts, in addition to issuing a clear warning to the Congolese authorities that they will not provide funding for stabilisation and institutional support until the government improves political dialogue and governance in both the administration and in the army in the east, as recommended by Crisis Group on several previous occasions.
Over at Congo Siasa, the DRC expert Jason Stearns offers some preliminary thoughts on M23’s endgame:
In the past, I have speculated that it will be difficult for the M23 to conquer and hold territory, mostly due to their lack of manpower, which started off at around 400-700 and is probably around 1,500-2,500 now. They have been able to rely on Rwandan (and, to a lesser degree, Ugandan) firepower for operations close to the border (in particular Bunagana and Rutshuru, allegedly also this recent offensive), the farther into the interior they get, they harder it will be to mask outside involvement.
Alliances with other groups­­––Sheka, Raia Mutomboki, FDC, etc.––have acted as force multipliers, but have been very fickle, as the surrender of Col Albert Kahasha last week proved. From this perspective, the M23 strategy could well be more to nettle the government, underscore its ineptitude, and hope that it will collapse from within.
However, the recent offensive on Goma has made me consider another, bolder alternative. If the rebels take Goma, thereby humiliating the UN and the Congolese army, they will present the international community with a fait accompli. Yes, it will shine a sharp light on Rwandan involvement, but Kigali has been undeterred by donor pressure thus far, and has been emboldened by its seat on the Security Council. Also, as the looting by the Congolese army and their distribution of weapons to youths in Goma has shown, the battle for Goma is as much of a PR disaster for Kinshasa as for Kigali.

Give Kagame a break!

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I admire Richard Dowden, Director of the Royal African Society. That said, I disagree with the concluding paragraph in his latest post on the Rwandese military’s involvement in eastern Congo over at African Arguments:

“When a similar situation occurred in Sierra Leone, the Special Court for Sierra Leone went after the main supporters and funders of the rebel movement, in particular the President of Liberia, Charles Taylor. He was recently sentenced to 50 years in jail for his part in funding the murder and destruction of Sierra Leone. Yet the evidence of Rwanda’s support for warring groups in Congo is as strong – if not stronger – than the evidence that convicted Taylor. But because of the genocide in Rwanda and because both Uganda and Rwanda have good development programmes that western donors love to fund, they will not be criticised. Eastern Congo will continue to suffer.”

Following the damning UN report on Kigali’s adventures in the Congo and concerted campaigns by human rights activists, a number of donor countries, including the US, UK, Germany and the Netherlands, have (unwisely) stopped sending aid money to Kigali.

I am inclined to believe that there is truth to the claim that Rwanda supports the M23. But that does not necessary lead me to conclude that Rwanda should therefore be ostracized by the international community, for the following reasons:

  • Rwanda faces a real security threat from rebels in eastern Congo. Kagame is a dictator, no doubt about that (He is not your average tin pot dictator, but that’s beside the point for now). But he is also a purveyor of order in this rather volatile region of central Africa. The last thing eastern and central Africa needs is a slow motion civil war as is currently underway in Burundi. As long as Kinshasa’s incompetence continues to provide a safe launching base for rebels aiming to depose Kagame, Kigali will have no option but to (rightly so) intervene in eastern Congo. Let us not pretend otherwise.
  • The insurgencies in eastern Congo are a direct result of Kinshasa’s calculated inability to project power and control. In this instance, I think the Huntongian view that degree of government matters trumps concerns over the type of government. Eastern Congo needs order, period. Attempts at political negotiations with the numerous rebel factions must also be accompanied with strong military action to defeat all the rebel movements that refuse to come to the table. Kinshasa’s continued failure at either attempt leaves Rwanda no option but to step in in light of the observation above.

In a way the campaign to have Rwanda punished for its adventures in the DRC is emblematic of the problems associated with “mono issue activism” (Remember the danger of a single story?)

This is not a defense of Kagame’s human rights record. Everyone knows it is in the toilet. It is also not a blanket endorsement of foreign interventionism. What it is is an acknowledgement of the very complex context in which Kagame acted, and a consideration of the unintended consequences of cutting aid to Rwanda.

Rwanda’s involvement is a symptom of, and not the cause of the mess that is eastern DRC.

To those that want Kigali punished, I ask: What would it mean for Rwanda’s and the wider region’s security? What would it mean for economic growth and development for the 12 million Rwandese? What would it mean for infant and maternal mortality that have been on the decline (more rapidly than in most of the developing world) over the last decade?

Punishing Kagame (and the people of Rwanda) for Kinshasa’s ineptitude will not solve the problems in eastern Congo. That is just a fact.

UPDATE:

Please check out the comments section below for some insightful discussion on this subject. Despite the combativeness of some of the comments, they all raise some important points that I could not have incorporated in a short blog post.

Waiting for Kabila to be Charlemagne

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Joseph Kabila was sworn in today as President of the DRC following disputed elections last month. The main opposition has vowed to not recognize him as the legitimate president and are planning street protests. Some analysts believe that there will be blood in the streets of Kinshasa and other major urban centers.

If you think for a moment about the size and diversity of the DRC it becomes clear how hard it will be for the incorrigibly inept enormously challenged Joseph Kabila to be the one to drag the DRC out of its 50 year tailspin.

 

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The truth be told, Mr. Kabila would not do any better running a village mboga kiosk. He is not an autocrat in the mold of Kagame, Zenawi, Museveni or even Sankara. He is closer to Samuel Doe, Bokasa and Valentine Strasser, ineffectual at best and outright disastrous at worst.

 

$500 million, and for what?

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Congolese go to the polls on Monday, the 28th of November. The result of the election is almost a foregone conclusion. Incumbent president Joseph Kabila looks set to win another term in office – another 5 years to continue the mismanagement of the DRC’s resources through shady mining deals.

According to the Economist:

Whatever the result, doubts about the election’s fairness will persist, not least because of a perception that the electoral commission’s head is a friend of the president. Logistical problems are also ubiquitous, despite an election budget of $500m or so. As well as 11 presidential candidates, 18,000 hopefuls, including several pop stars and a rebel leader accused of ordering the rape of more than 300 women in eastern Congo last year, are contesting 500 seats in parliament. Some of the ballots will exceed 50 pages, which will surely daunt even the minority of voters who can read.

(Read the whole piece here)

If I were in charge of the promotion of democracy in the DRC I would push for a system of staggered elections, both nationally and at the provincial level. I would also try and broker a deal to create a government of national unity in Kinshasa (representing the provinces) and competitive elections at the provincial level. In my view, the longer that everyone keeps pretending that the Congo – with its 70m+ and landmass the size of Western Europe – can be run by a single central government in Kinshasa – the longer it will take to put the country on the path of institutional development that will be conducive to long run economic growth.

Centralized state development definitely makes sense for smaller African states (think of the infamous trio of the Mano River basin). But if you are the DRC, capacity development in the capital must necessarily be accompanied by the strengthening of institutions at the provincial level – with more emphasis, in my view, on the latter than the former.

The number one problem facing the DRC right now is woeful state incapacity. It is doubtful that elections alone will force politicians’ hand in the right direction.

For more on the elections follow Congo Siasa.

Mining and Voting in the Congo

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Elections in the DRC have come to be marked by a fire sale of state assets. A recent report by the UK parliament estimates that the government may have lost up to $5.5 b due to undervaluation of these state assets before sale.

No prizes for guessing where part of the difference in these sales go.

The whole situation is pretty stinky:

The IMF has asked the government to clarify several obscure contracts signed by Gécamines, which suggests that state assets have been sold for absurdly low prices…….. This would put the loss to the state at $870 mn.

The Chief Executive of Gécamines, Albert Yuma Mulimbi, has refused all requests, from the Mines Ministry to the IMF and others, to publish the controversial contracts, claiming that as a private company it is not obliged to, even though the state owns all its shares. The government has instructed Yuma, we understand, not to provide the information.

More on this here and here.

The Consequences of Dodd-Frank in the Kivus

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The dusty streets of Goma, North Kivu’s capital and a mining hub, illustrate Congo’s ills. Metals dealerships dominated the city’s economy until last year but are mostly padlocked now. Repair shops and bars that relied on mining business are empty. So are most public offices. Local government, financed by mining taxes, is insolvent; salaries have not been paid in full for months.

In the past year Goma has suffered a miserable decline. Hundreds of mines in the surrounding countryside have cut output by as much as 95%. At the Humule coltan mine a few gumbooted miners scramble up a red-earth ravine where last year there were thousands. Most stopped coming because they could no longer find buyers for their nuggets of coltan, a metal used in electronic gadgets. They blame what they call “the American law”.

That is the Economist reporting on the mining sector in the DRC.

Dodd-Frank (found here) is a lesson in the failure of solutions imposed from 30,000 feet. As has been stressed by many DRC experts (see Mvemba, Aronson and Seay, for instance), the problem with eastern DRC is not a law enforcement problem but a weak state problem.

With that in mind, it is sad that Joseph Kabila, the man who has failed to pacify the country, is poised for reelection this November. Good governance, even in relatively peaceful and cohesive states, take a long time to evolve. Once can only imagine how much longer Congolese will have to wait before they can get an effective and accountable state.

For  a slightly different opinion check out AFJN.

conflict minerals in the congo

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As is now common knowledge, the mineral glut in the DRC has been more a source of pain rather than gain. Minerals have financed both corrupt governments and their cronies in Kinshasa and marauding rebel groups in the ungoverned corners of the vast country.

To over-simply the issue, reforms will have to tackle both angles of the problem, i.e. both Kinshasa and the plethora of armed groups will have to come clean with regard to the extraction and sale of mineral resources. Kinshasa’s hoarding of all the benefits from the trade provides a perverse legitimacy for armed groups to continue their illicit activities.

Jason Stearns, the author of Dancing In the Glory of Monsters [I highly recommend the book], has a post on the complexities surrounding conflict minerals in the DRC.

First, “cautious” is the operative word. The Congolese export ban (September 2010 – March 2011) and the US electronic industry’s embargo of untraced minerals (April 2011 – present) have caused major job losses in the Kivus, as well as played into the hands of a select elite of military commanders, including ICC-indictee Bosco Ntaganda. It is, however, important to point out that neither initiative was caused directly by the Dodd-Frank legislation in the US. Rather, the export ban was decreed by the Congolese presidency, while the industry embargo was an aggressive interpretation of the US legislation. Dodd-Frank call for companies to carry out due diligence and to report their findings; the OECD guidelines call on companies to minimize the risk of financing armed groups.

Secondly, the Malaysia Smelting Corporation (MSC), which I had reported as having signed a deal for the largest tin mines in the Kivus, has not yet officially concluded a deal. A large Congolese delegation visited Malaysia earlier this year, and MSC and their Belgian partners Traxys then came to meet with President Kabila. A “confidentiality agreement” was signed with MSC regarding the Sakima concessions in Maniema, a good place to start as most of the mines there are removed from the main areas of conflict. In addition, MSC has not yet given $10 million for certification an tracing schemes, although the mining minister says they have agreed to fund these initiatives.

More on this on Jason’s blog here.

remembering lumumba

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Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost, has an editorial in the Times in honor of Patrice Lumumba, the firebrand Congolese independence leader who was assassinated 50 years ago. His death, amid the chaos of the Katanga secession, marked the beginning of the hellish catastrophe that was the land of Mobutu Sese Seko, and latterly the Kabilas.

Throughout Africa, Lumumba remains a celebrated hero. The many Lumumbas across Eastern Africa are a testament to this fact.

Whether the same would be true had he actually lived to run the vast Central African state is another question altogether. As noted by Adam Hochschild in his piece:

“Patrice Lumumba had only a few short months in office and we have no way of knowing what would have happened had he lived. Would he have stuck to his ideals or, like too many African independence leaders, abandoned them for the temptations of wealth and power? In any event, leading his nation to the full economic autonomy he dreamed of would have been an almost impossible task. The Western governments and corporations arrayed against him were too powerful, and the resources in his control too weak: at independence his new country had fewer than three dozen university graduates among a black population of more than 15 million, and only three of some 5,000 senior positions in the civil service were filled by Congolese.”

The democratic republic of congo

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Just in case you forgot, the Kivus are still on fire. Thousands of people remain displaced. Dozens routinely get killed and raped by both government and rebel forces, and sometimes even by UN peacekeepers. Things are crazy bad out there.

Meanwhile, Kabila and his cabal in Kinshasa remain as ineffectual as ever with no apparent strategy or plan, not just for the Kivus, but for the whole country.

The ICG has this nice report on the Congo. People may not agree on the priorities and approaches of resolving the conflict in the Kivu’s, but this report provides a good background for those who are new to the conflict.

Also check out this Report on the Congo from the Congressional Research Office.

catch me if you can: of presidents and genocide

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Those who conceive of justice as an end in itself must be livid. The last several days have seen one appeasement after another of heads of state who may have or have committed heinous crimes against their people. First there was the Kenyan invitation and failure to arrest suspected genocidaire Omar al-Bashir of Sudan. Then came the leaked UN report accusing Kagame’s men of committing crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide, in eastern Congo that did not stop regional presidents from attending the increasingly autocratic Kagame’s inauguration after his sham reelection. The damning report even forced the UN Secretary General to fly to Kigali in order to reassure Mr. Kagame and express his regret over the leaking of the report (I wonder if Mr. Kagame reminded Mr. Ki-moon about his peacekeepers’ abysmal failure to protect civilians from sexual violence in eastern Congo).

While appreciating the complexity of the respective cases (which have serious implications for regional security and stability), the recent events related to Messrs Bashir and Kagame may serve to  create a dangerous precedent. The whole point of the ICC was to make heads of state and other people in power think twice before going Pol Pot on their people. This objective will not be served if leaders realize that not even genocide can get in the way of regional and global geopolitical considerations.

In other news, as usual, Texas in Africa has interesting posts on the Congo. Check them out.