Congolese photographer Sammy Baloji’s Essay on Urban Planning interrogates the links between colonialism, extractive practices and environmental catastrophes in Urban Africa
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/ 30 January 2008
Thirteen people were killed and dozens remain missing after an overloaded barge sank in Central Africa’s Lake Tanganyika overnight on Monday, the maritime inspection service said on Wednesday. The disaster took place about 5km from Kalemie port, on the Democratic Republic of Congo side of the lake.
The army chiefs of Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) met on Monday for 48 hours of security talks behind closed doors. Monday’s talks in the city of Lubumbashi, in the south-east of the DRC, were also due to be attended by the United Nations mission in the DRC in an ”observer” role.
For a country with an unelected hereditary leader, there is a blunt irony in calling itself the Democratic Republic of Congo. This vast swath of Central Africa is many things — a failed state, a humanitarian crisis, a natural resource bounty — but a representative democracy it is not. That may be about to change with Sunday’s vote — the first multi-party elections in 40 years.
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/ 23 November 2005
More than 60 000 people have fled their homes in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s southeastern province of Katanga after an offensive by government troops, aid workers and church sources said on Wednesday. The bishop of Kilwa-Kasenga has alerted authorities to an ”influx of people displaced by conflict”.
Two cave-ins at a gold mine killed at least 22 miners late last month at Lunga in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Katanga province, local officials said on Friday. Those who died in the successive accidents on May 28 and 30 were local gold-diggers working at the mine near the town of Kalemie.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda have agreed to put an end to the presence of armed groups in the DRC that pose a threat to all of them, the DRC government said on Friday. Rwanda’s deputy minister of foreign affairs confirmed that there is a commitment ”to work in close collaboration”.