News About Congo

Low water on Congo River triggers Kinshasa blackouts

Congo is a dark country for the most part.  In most cities, electricity is only available for a few hours a day.  In the village, electricity is non-existent.  

Now, the capital city of Kinshasa is experiencing long blackouts, too.

via af.reuters.com

Democratic Republic of Congo's main hydro-power plant is running at half capacity due to low water levels, triggering long blackouts in Kinshasa and causing havoc for the city's businesses.

 

Problems with the Inga I and II dams come as Congo struggles with broken equipment at the decades-old plant, which could lead to continued outages even after water levels come back up, officials said.

The issue is a potential worry for President Joseph Kabila in an election year.

"Production is limited to around 350 MW (megawatts) following this natural calamity which has struck the Congo River," Inga's director, Mbuyi Tshimpanga, told Reuters, adding that Inga should be producing around 800 MW from its four working generators.

Businesses in Kinshasa have complained that the outages have forced them to run diesel generators at high cost, and a civil society leader said he was organising a demonstration to protest the blackouts this weekend.

The start of the rainy season in September will improve the situation, but capacity remains constrained by equipment problems at the plant and transmission capacity to the city that could take years to fix, according to Daniel Yengo Masampu, the director of the country's electricity supplier, SNEL.

Congo Airliner Crashes in Kisangani

Oh My God, another airplane crash in Congo!  

The sad part of the equation, travel by air is a NECESSITY.  You can not travel by highway, rail, or waterway.  For me to get from Kinshasa, the capital, to Kananga, a provincial capital, it would take weeks or longer.  One way is go by boat (Kinshasa to Illebo) and train (Illebo to Kananga).  But we have been waiting on the train from Illebo to arrive in Kananga for about two months or more.  Two weeks ago, it finally left Illebo but it derailed a few miles out of the station.

God Have Mercy!

 

via www.nytimes.com

A passenger plane crashed in a thunderstorm as it was trying to land in Kisangani, Congo, on Friday, killing at least 48 people.

The authorities said 53 passengers survived and that at least a dozen people were trapped in the wreckage.

“I confirm the crash of one of our planes,” Stavros Papaioannou, the chairman and chief executive of Hewa Bora Airways, said in a telephone interview. “There are already 46 bodies at the morgue, and another two that just died in the hospital.”

The plane had departed from Kinshasa, the capital, and was bound for Kisangani in the northeastern part of the country.

A government spokesman, Lambert Mende, said the plane went down in bad weather a few yards from the Kisangani airport. “It was due to the thunder,” he said. “There are around 50 dead and 53 survivors, as well as a dozen people still unaccounted for.”

Hewa Bora, which means “Fresh Air” in Swahili, has a history of crashes. 

 

Pictures: Improvement of Boulevard de 30 Juin

I agree with the blog post below.  The main boulevard in Kinshasa has changed for the worst.  It has the cultural and visual perspective of the main runway of Chicago's O'hare Airport.  Check out the pictures.

Pictures: China’s Infrastructure Building Machine Comes Home.

Before they decided to “improve” 30 Juin, it was a truly wonderful boulevard. Today, it’s a barren, dust filled desert whereas until 2007 it had huge trees that lined both sides of the road and there was a center divider that did an excellent job of slowing traffic and giving pedestrians sufficient guidance as to where to cross. Now the situation couldn’t be more different.

The whole city center along the boulevard is not considerably hotter than it was before due to the tree removal. Sadly, several different locals have told me that due to the Chinese “renovation” there are now one to two deaths per day on this street. Notice how they have not laid down a single drop of paint on the road for either cars or pedestrians. It’s a very dangerous road for everyone. We are all hoping that the Chinese are eventually going to make this boulevard safer by adding traffic lanes and crosswalks.

No one is too optimistic though.

I Can't Wait to Ask the Question

Is 'the pill' available?  That's the question I want to ask the doctors of the Bulape Hospital and Health Zone in rural Congo (DRC).

I never thought about asking in the past.  I had heard most rural Congolese considered a form of their retirement plan.  Also, I knew that the Congolese families had many children to make allowance for the high child mortality rate.  It is a fact, one in five children do not live to their fifth birthday.

But I failed to think about the Congolese women.  Child birth complications kill one out of thirteen of them.

For more about the poverty and the pill, please read the article below or in its entirety.

Poverty and the pill.

In almost every village we stop in, we chat with families whose huts overflow with small children - whom the parents can't always afford to educate, feed or protect from disease.

Here in Kinshasa, we met Emilie Lunda, 25, who had nearly died during childbirth a few days earlier. Doctors saved her life, but her baby died. And she is still recuperating in a hospital and doesn't know how she will pay the bill.

"I didn't want to get pregnant," Emilie told us here in the Congolese capital. "I was afraid of getting pregnant." But she had never heard of birth control.

In rural parts of Congo Republic, the other Congo to the north, we found that even when people had heard of contraception, they often regarded it as unaffordable.

Most appalling, all the clinics and hospitals we visited in Congo Republic said that they would sell contraceptives only to women who brought their husbands in with them to prove that the husband accepted birth control.

HIV/AIDS Funding Is Limiting Treatment

Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) said that only 10 percent of people, 35,000 people, in the DRC who need ARV's have access to them.  The main reason for the low numbers is lack of funding.

PlusNews Global | DRC: Funding crunch threatens ARV rollout | Great Lakes | DRC | Care/Treatment - PlusNews Economy Health & Nutrition HIV/AIDS (PlusNews) PWAs/ASOs - PlusNews Aid Policy | Breaking News.

According to MSF's Benazech, some programmes in the capital are no longer accepting new patients for HIV treatment.

"Many patients coming from the government hospital, which has run out of drugs, arrive at the MSF clinic when they are already extremely weak and close to death so their chances of survival are low," she said. "Patients on treatment are forced to pay for the CD-4 examination [which measures immune strength] follow-up... which is extremely expensive for the average Congolese person.

"HIV in the DRC is not chronic, like it is in many other African countries, where significant coverage is being reached; here it is acute," she added. "We urgently need more advocacy and mobilization for additional funding for treatment in the DRC; the situation is critical."

Meet President Kabila of Congo

A very informative interview with President Joseph Kabila.  After I read the article, I am not sure if others could have done a better job.  I know that talk is fast, cheap and easy, but turning around the Congo will take a long time, reconstruction will be expensive, and healing the conflict will be difficult.  

For Congo’s Leader, Middling Reviews

THERE seem to be two Joseph Kabilas running Congo.

One is the archetypal African president, a strongman who rolls into town in an impressive column of steel with hundreds of machine-gun-toting, ski-mask-wearing bodyguards, and who has been widely accused of silencing political enemies with heavy doses of lead.

But the other Joseph Kabila seems different. He is a shy man with a warm, almost Caribbean lilt to his voice and a convincing, unpretentious air.

Congo Officials Start Paying Income Tax

Congo government closes the first tax loop hole.  The president, government ministers and lawmakers start to pay their income taxes.

DRC officials start paying tax

The president, government ministers and lawmakers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have begun to pay income tax at source under new budget legislation, government officials said on Tuesday.

"We at the top of the pyramid should set an example, starting with the head of the state, ministers and members of parliament," Communications Minister and government spokesperson Lambert Mende told AFP.

"We never had a tax culture and I think we should."

Taxing at source had allowed the tax authorities to recover 952.8m Congolese francs (1.23m dollars, 925 000 euros) on salaries at the end of March, Budget Minister Michel Lokola said in a statement.

A Cell Phone Captures Scenes from Kinshasa

You get a unique view of Kinshasa from a youth pulling a Cardboard Car with a cell phone mounted in it.  I think this is just the start.

Cell phones help filmmakers reveal unseen Africa

Resourceful African filmmakers are using cell phones tell their stories in spite of political censorship.

Kiripi Katembo Siku, an art school student from the Democratic Republic of Congo is one such director who shot his first film using only a mobile phone.

The ingeniously devised "Voiture en Carton" ("Cardboard Car") provides a rare glimpse of street-life in Kinshasa, the country's capital, while highlighting the lengths filmmakers must go to in circumventing the eye of the law.

While the country's name implies freedom of speech, filmmakers in the country's capital are restricted by government censorship.

To get around these problems, Siku came up with a novel plan.

He attached his mobile phone to a toy car, set it to film, and gave it to a young girl to pull behind her on a piece of string as she walked through the streets of Kinshasa.

The film runs for seven minutes, during which time the toy car stops and starts (it also upends a number of times and has to be righted by Siku's young camerawoman) giving viewers a clandestine look at life in the capital -- the dancing feet of children, some teenagers gambling, and at one point a United Nations jeep passing by.

Congo's Parliament Speaker Gambled and Lost

Mr Kamerhe, Congo's Parliament Speaker, gambled, lost, and now he is gone.

I can imagine him betting that the Rwandan army would never leave Congo.  They were invited for a joint operation.  The last of the Rwandan soldiers returned home on Sunday.

I had reservations, too!

Congolese assembly speaker quits

The Democratic Republic of Congo's parliament speaker has quit after criticising the decision to let Rwandan troops enter the country in January.

Vital Kamerhe had said the president should not have allowed them in for a joint operation against rebels.

Mr Kamere was under pressure from his own party, the People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy, which is also President Joseph Kabila's party.

The speaker was reportedly applauded as he announced he would stand down.

Congo and Belgium Makeup Again

Great news! 

DR Congo, Belgium normalize relations

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Belgium are set to normalize their relations after a nine-month row, an official source told APA on Sunday.

Kinshasa and Brussels have agreed to normalize their bilateral relations, establish and hold a permanent, open and constructive dialogue, in line with both countries’ democratic and legal institutions.

In addition to "ensuring a good management of their bilateral relations, in accordance with the principles of sovereign equality and reciprocity", the statement harps on boosting again their cooperation.

Congolese Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito and his Belgian counterpart, Herman Van Rompuy signed the statement in Kinshasa.