News About Congo

Water Crisis Hits Mbuji-Mayi

Can you imagine a town of 3 million people without water for domestic use?

Congo's infrastructure is fragile and collapse quite frequently.  It is aged and under-sized.

Mbuji-Mayi, the twin provincial capital of the Kasai Provinces in central Congo, is located in East Kasai.   

IRIN Africa | DRC: Water crisis hits Mbuji-Mayi | Great Lakes | DRC | Water & Sanitation | News Item.

Hundreds of thousands of residents of Mbuji-Mayi, central Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), are caught up in a water crisis since a landslide damaged the town’s water supply in March.

Some of the town’s three million residents now walk more than 20km daily in search of water, with reports that a water vendor died recently after a lorry ran over him as he ferried water for sale in Mbuji-Mayi.

“Lack of water in Mbuji-Mayi has been dire for several weeks now; at the moment people are obliged to walk over 20km to fetch water for domestic use from small rivers around the town,” Theodore Thiyekele, a Catholic priest, told IRIN. “Others are buying drinking water from young men who fetch it from sources far away from the town.”

Hunger Kills 700 Kids Per Day in Peaceful Congo

In safe areas, hunger kills 700 kids a day in five peaceful provinces in Congo.  Kasai Occidental (West) is one of those places.  There is no fighting, strife, or violence in 4 of the 5 provinces cited by the Minster of Health.  Only Equateur Province has had violence in the past months. 

These provinces are located outside of the Wild, Wild East provinces of South Kivu, North Kivu, and Orientale.  I would expect the daily death total of children and women is much higher. 

700 kids die per day in DRC.

THE Democratic Republic of Congo health minister said Tuesday that at least 700 children under the age of five were dying from hunger a day in five of the strife-ravaged country's provinces.

More than a million women aged between 15 and 49 were also malnourished in the five provinces, which together account for 51 per cent of the population of the vast central African country, Health Minister Victor Makwenge said.

'At least 700 children under five years are dying every day in the five provinces, where only one child out of five has a varied diet,' Makwenge told reporters. 'Close to 530,000 children under five and more than a million women need urgent food aid,' he said.

The minister was referring to the provinces of Equateur, Kasai, Kasai West, Katanga and Maniema. UNICEF representative Pierrette Vu Thi agreed that malnutrition was a public health problem in the country, despite its rich potential for food production.

The World Food Programme says that every month it helps to feed about a million vulnerable Congolese, including pregnant women and children.

Global Economic Crisis Halts Diamond Operations in Congo

The East and West Kasai Provinces are impacted by the De Beers' operational shutdown.  Last year, De Beers closed it office in Kananga, West Kasai.  They consolidated operations in Mbuji Mayi, East Kasai.

De Beers Halts Diamond Exploration Project in Congo

De Beers, the world’s largest diamond producer, halted exploration in Democratic Republic of Congo as the declining value in gems made the project unviable.

“The DRC remains highly prospective, but we cannot ignore the current global economic crisis,” Marie-Chantal Kaninda, De Beers’s head of administration in Congo, said in a statement e- mailed today from the capital, Kinshasa. “When economic conditions improve, De Beers will assess new opportunities for accessing prospective ground holdings in this country.”

De Beers said in February it suspended mining at a Botswana venture responsible for a fifth of global diamond supply and would borrow $500 million from shareholders. Jewelry sales are plunging as the global economic slowdown forces even the wealthiest consumers to curb spending on luxury goods.

De Beers found 14 kimberlites since starting exploration in Congo’s central Western Kasai province in 2005, it said in the statement. Kimberlites are diamond-bearing rock formations. The company handed its camp in Bena Luabeya, near the diamond center of Mbuji Mayi, to the local population, it said.

Congo has run out of funds after the country’s extractive industries lost value, the International Monetary Fund’s Africa Director Brian Ames said March 31. Some of the country’s copper and cobalt mines and smelters have been shut after metal prices fell.