Africa’s Richest Man Gives Aid to Congo

Africa’s richest man, Nigerian Aliko Dangote, has donated $500 000 to victims of last month’s munitions blasts in Congo which killed at least 282 people, his group said on Tuesday.

Dangote made the donation at the weekend in the Congolese capital Brazzaville with a pledge to increase his charity works as well as create more jobs for Africans this year.

“About this philanthropy, I think from this year, I personally want to take it very seriously. I want to be much more aggressive than what we have had in the past,” he said in a statement.

Speaking at the occasion, Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso said that his gvernment has started reconstruction of houses affected in the blasts, adding that “this contribution will go a long way in building new houses for the victims,” the statement said.

Dangote, rated by Forbes as Africa’s richest man with vast interests in oil and gas, banking, flour, sugar and food production in Nigeria, also operates in about a dozen other African countries.

The powerful March 4 blasts in Brazzaville, blamed on a short-circuit and fire, killed at least 282 people, injured 2 300 more and destroyed hundreds of homes around the munitions depot, leaving 14 000 people homeless.

Joseph Kony in Congo

Copied from The Enough Project (http://www.enoughproject.org/blogs/enough-101-lords-resistance-army-congo)

 

Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, was formed in northern Uganda in 1987, and in the past 25 years has murdered, kidnapped, and spread terror among civilians in four countries in central Africa, including the Congo. 

Despite currently being pursued by regional forces supported by U.S. military advisors, the LRA now operates in an area covering approximately 115,000 square miles in the Congo, Central African Republic, or CAR, and South Sudan.

The LRA first shifted its base of operations to Garamba National Park, Congo, beginning in 2005. Due to years of civil and regional war and lack of governance, the Congo was primed to serve as a refuge for armed groups. The LRA did not start attacking Congolese people until September 2008, instead preferring to use its base in the Congo to rebuild its strength while launching attacks and raids into CAR and southern Sudan. During this time, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, known at the time as MONUC, coordinated two forays into the park with the Congolese army, both of which failed to contain the LRA due to major logistical and tactical errors.

LRA leader Joseph Kony had been in peace negotiations with the government of Uganda since2006, but ultimately refused to sign the accords.  When the peace talks fell apart and the LRA began attacks in Congo, a military operation led by Uganda, with the support of the United States, launched in December 2008. 

In retaliation for the Uganda-led operations, the LRA killed more than 865 civilians and abducted at least 160 children from three areas in northern Congo over a period of a few weeks in the infamous “Christmas Massacres” of December 2008 and January 2009. According to Human Rights Watch, “LRA combatants hacked their victims to death with machetes or axes or crushed their skulls with clubs and heavy sticks.”

From September 2008 through mid-January 2009, the LRA killed over 1,033 civilians and abducted at least 476 children in Congo.

In March 2010, Enough documented a series of LRA attacks on Congolese soldiers, “suggesting a level of confidence on the part of LRA fighters that one would not expect from a militia rumored to be dying out.” And in early 2011, the LRA increased attacks on more heavily populated civilian areas, targeting civilians and humanitarian aid agencies.

More recently, after a lull in attacks in the latter half of 2011, the LRA has increased its activity in Orientale province in northeastern Congo. In the first two weeks of February 2012, at least 12 LRA attacks were reported in Congo.

The armies of the four governments, with the assistance of U.S. military advisors, began a new operation against the LRA in late 2011. The mission is based in CAR and South Sudan. However, although there is a battalion of the Congolese army deployed in LRA-affected areas of Congo, it has limited ability to respond rapidly to possible threats to civilians and is conducting only some patrols in the vast area in which the LRA currently operates, according to Enough sources. The Congolese government has refused for the past six months to allow Ugandan troops to operate in its territory to pursue the LRA senior leadership and protect civilians. The Congolese government consistently denies the threat of the LRA on Congolese soil—they do not want Ugandan troops in the Congo, at least in large part due to their exploitation of Congo’s natural resources several years ago, and would prefer U.S. military aid to be given directly to the Congolese army rather than to the Ugandans.

Since 2008, LRA attacks have displaced an estimated 320,000 people in Congo’s Orientale province and 30,000 Congolese refugees have fled to the Central African Republic and South Sudan.

In January 2012, the U.N. and the African Union met with representatives of the countries affected by the LRA and agreed in principle to allow troops to freely cross borders in pursuit of LRA forces. However, in practice the Congolese government continues to block access to the Ugandan army, severely limiting the effectiveness of the mission as the LRA continues to attack civilians in Congo.  See the LRA Crisis Tracker for the most recent updates on LRA violence.

In March 2012, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, reported that thousands of people have been displaced due to the recent spike in LRA attacks in Congo. According to a UNHCR spokesperson, “There have been 20 attacks since the beginning of this year. One person was killed and 17 abducted during these incidents.”

Congolese Fight Back Causing Warlord To Surrender

A senior commander of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) militia, Lt. Col. Idrissa Muradadi, has surrendered in the face of a military offensive by the Congolese army and UN forces.

FDRL is an outfit operating mainly in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and it’s composed of elements responsible for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

Speaking to The New Times, Jean Sayinzoga, the Chairman of the Rwanda Demobilisation and Reintegration Commission (RDRC), confirmed the development.

“He is still in Congo, I am yet to get more details,” said Sayinzoga.

DRC Army Commander, Col. Sylvain Ekenge, also confirmed Muradadi’s surrender saying that he turned himself in with three of his bodyguards on March 10.

Ekenge said the captive is now in the hands of the UN peacekeeping mission in the DR Congo (MONUSCO) prior to his repatriation to Rwanda. He said Muradadi surrendered because of military pressure.

The Congolese army, backed by MONUSCO, launched an offensive on February 15 to hunt down FDLR fighters after a series of attacks by the rebel group.

“More than two dozen civilians have been killed by FDLR since New Year’s. The latest attack by the FDLR in South Kivu on Feb. 25 killed 4 civilians and left three others injured,” Ekenge told agencies.

“We will continue this offensive until all of the rebels go home”.

In the same region, 15 other rebels and 74 of their dependents also turned themselves over to the military, Ekenge said.

$70 Million in Congo Mining Revenue Untraceable

Anti-corruption investigators in the Democratic Republic of Congo say they cannot trace more than $70 million that mining companies claim to have paid to the government.

Professor Jeremy Dumba is the Congo coordinator of a global anti-corruption watchdog, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, or EITI.  His team has collected figures on what mining companies say they paid the DRC government, and what the government says it received from those companies.  On Thursday, he announced that he could not make the two sets of figures match.

Dumba said there are a lot of gaps in the figures, and he and his team had not been able to reconcile the payments declared by companies with the state’s receipts.  He said it was very difficult to get figures from the state revenue service that matched what the companies had declared.

Dumba submitted the figures as part of a long-overdue EITI report on Congo.  He said the latest figures collected for the years 2008 and 2009, show mining companies say they paid tax revenues far higher than what the government says it received from them.  In 2008 for example, they declared payments of $121 million, while the government said it received $69 million.  In 2009 the gap was smaller — $99 million paid, say the companies; $73 million received, says the government.

EITI 

The EITI was launched by the British government in 2002 and is supported by the United States and other Western countries. It brings together governments, companies and civil society to try to ensure that taxes from mining, oil and gas are properly accounted for and go to national treasuries. The initiative aims to improve governance in countries that depend on those industries so that the revenues are used to reduce poverty.

The amount of tax that companies say they pay should equal what governments say they receive.  For most other countries applying for EITI membership the amounts are more or less equal.  But figures for Tanzania and Mali also show gaps of tens of millions between payments and receipts.

Congo has applied for membership of the scheme, and President Joseph Kabila has said that his government is committed to it.  But before becoming a full member, the country’s reports on company payments and tax receipts have to be approved by the EITI board.

Unreliable data 

Dumba said the figures for the DRC’s oil industry add up, but the data has has been able to collect on the mining sector is not reliable. 

Another Congolese anti-corruption expert, Jean-Claude Katende, said it was difficult for Congo to provide accurate figures because its mining industry is more complex than the industry in other countries.

“You have countries that have three or four or 10 mining enterprises whereas in the DRC you have more than 200 mining enterprises,” Katende noted.  “And to that you should add the petroleum industry and the comptoirs.”

Comptoirs are licensed exporters of minerals.

Data

Another problem, Katende said, is that Congo does not have a centralized databank for its mining sector.  But, he said, the government is working with donors on a plan to computerize mining data, which will then be held centrally.

The gap between what mining companies pay and what Congo’s government should receive may be far greater than the tens of millions unaccounted for in Dumba’s report.

Mining companies may be hiding some of their income and thus paying less tax than they should. Dumba said he knew of cases where this may have been happening.

He said for example there’s the case of a company that exported 400,000 tons of minerals.  They should have paid 2 percent tax on that, but their tax declaration came to much less, indicating that they hadn’t declared all their income. 

It has also been claimed that in the past few years the government has sold large mining concessions at far less than their market price. British member of parliament Eric Joyce, chairman of the UK Parliament Great Lakes of Africa group, has alleged that in the past four years Congo has lost more than $5.5 billion through the sale by the government of mineral assets at less than their fair market value. He said the sales had been made through offshore companies which had captured the profits.

Transparency 

When asked about Joyce’s allegation last year, President Kabila said he was not going to respond to a British MP. He said his commitment to good governance was meant to benefit the Congolese people, not to please foreign politicians.

As evidence of open dealings, Kabila said that his government’s $9 billion mining deal with a Chinese consortium, its biggest deal in the mining sector, was only signed after it was debated and approved by the parliament. 

 

Originally covered by Voice of America.