President Joseph Kabila signed a new mining code into law on Friday.

The country is Africa’s biggest producer of copper and cobalt, a vital component in mobile phone batteries.

Foreign mining firms strongly opposed the law, saying their operations in DR Congo would stop being profitable.

Several chief executives flew to the Congolese capital Kinshasa this week in the hopes of persuading Mr Kabila to change his mind.

They argued that the legislation would deter future investment and violate existing agreements, reported Reuters news agency.

The government however has agreed to consider their concerns on a case by case basis, and work with them in executing the new code.

DR Congo has talked for years about changing its 2002 mining code, which it believed put too many profits in the hands of foreign companies, says BBC World Service Africa editor Mary Harper.

Its mining industry – which also produces diamond, tantalum, tin and gold – is the country’s largest source of export income.

The law, which was passed by parliament in January, will double government royalties on all minerals.

The impoverished yet mineral-rich nation provides more than 60% of the world’s cobalt. Prices for it more than doubled last year thanks to an increased demand for electric cars, which require cobalt for batteries.

Royalties on cobalt could also more than quadruple if the government labels it a “strategic substance”.

–

Source: BBC

The post DR Congo signs new law to increase taxes on mining firms appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The Guest of Honour for the ceremony was Brigadier General (Dr) EW Kotia, Commander of MONUSCO Western Sector and Ghana’s Contingent Commander.

In his address, General Kotia admonished GHANBATT troops to remain professional at all times and continue to raise the flag of Ghana high.

He urged troops to remain worthy ambassadors of Ghana in the DRC, and further encouraged all to eschew acts that would bring the name of Ghana into disrepute.

General Kotia reflected on the contributions, struggles and sacrifices made by the forefathers led by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah towards Ghana’s independence, and encouraged all to rekindle the spirit of patriotism and work hard to make Ghana strong and truly independent.

The colourful ceremony was graced by Ghana’s Ambassador-Designate to the DRC, HE Joseph Kwaku Antwi.

Other dignitaries present were the Commanding Officer MONUSCO GHANBATT 14, Lieutenant Colonel BB Pantoah, personnel from other countries serving with MONUSCO, Ghanaians residing in the DRC and friends of GHANBATT in the DRC.

It would be recalled that Ghana gained her independence from the British on 6 March 1957 and became the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to have gained independence.

The theme for this year’s celebration was “Ghana beyond Aid.”

–

By: citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Ghana Battalion in DR Congo celebrate independence day appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

He said the depressing news of the continuing and deepening crisis in the DRC, leading to the massive displacement of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, was “a test of the effectiveness of the AU, which it cannot and must not fail.”

President Akufo-Addo made the call when he delivered the keynote address at an event on transformative governance in Africa, organised by the Kukah Centre in Abuja, Nigeria.

The Kukah Centre is a Nigerian-based policy research institute.

The President said the conflict in the DRC had festered too long and it was time the Continental body rose to the occasion and found a lasting a solution to the tragic situation.

“That solution has to address the twin issues of the unity and stability of the Congolese state, and the establishment of democracy that will allow the Congolese people the opportunity in free and fair elections to choose their leaders,” President Akufo-Addo said.

He stressed the need for the Member States of the AU to demonstrate a commitment to strengthening and protecting the institutions and culture of democratic governance; respecting human rights and religious freedom.

They must also ensure the empowerment of women and the rights of the individual and minorities, build strong market economies and facilitate the free movements of people, knowledge, goods and services across member states.

“The time has now come for us in Africa to move on even further to deepen our democracy. It is time to make sure that we have genuine separation of powers between the various arms of government.

“Our Parliaments, the legislative arms of government, must grow into their proper roles as effective machineries for accountability and oversight of their Executives. Our Judiciaries must also inspire confidence in the citizens so we can all see the courts as ultimate, impartial arbiters when disputes arise, as they would,” he said.

President Akufo-Addo noted that Africa can only confront and deal effectively with corruption when its public institutions work properly.

He applauded the systematic targeting of corruption by the administration of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, calling on all well-meaning Nigerians and Africans to support the crusade.

“It is early days yet, but our institutions are growing and the self-confidence of our people is become manifest. I dare say that we are even beginning to accept that a political party can lose an election with grace, and serve with honour in opposition,” he said.

President Akufo-Addo said: “If we stop being beggars, govern ourselves intelligently and honestly in freedom and spend Africa’s monies inside the Continent, Africa would not need to ask for respect from anyone. We would get the respect we deserve.”

He was optimistic that stable democracies in Africa could help unleash energies to drive the transformation of the Continent.

“There is a lot of talk that this will be the Asian century, the Chinese century – but take it from me: the 21st century holds excellent prospects for Africa. This can be Africa’s century. We can claim it if we believe in ourselves,” he said.

–

Source: GNA

The post Find lasting solution to DR Congo’s crisis – Nana Addo appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

Protesters are demanding that President Joseph Kabila – whose expected term of office expired more than a year ago – should step down.

Police have used tear gas to disperse protesters in Kinshasa, where UN peacekeepers have been deployed.

Similar demonstrations three weeks ago led to a number of deaths.

A spokesman for the UN mission to the country said about 50 people were injured in Sunday’s clashes and that dozens had been arrested.

Jean-Baptise Sondji, a former minister, told AFP he had witnessed the death of a 16-year-old girl outside a church in the Kitambo area of the capital.

“An armoured car passed in front of the church. They began firing live bullets, I protected myself… a girl who was at the left side door of the church was hit,” he said.

The widespread marches had been called for by the country’s Catholic Church, which appealed for a large but peaceful demonstration.

The Congolese authorities, however, banned the marches and no formal permission was given. On Saturday evening, internet access in the capital Kinshasa was cut.

Police warned that they would not tolerate “any attempt to disturb public order.”

Despite the ban, protesters gathered after morning Mass on Sunday to march through the streets, accompanied by members of the clergy.

Local media outlet Radio Okapi reported protests in Kinshasa, Kisangani, and Bukavu. Other cities remain quiet, it reports, though a heavy police presence has been seen in many places.

Radio Okapi also later said that one of its journalists had been wounded by a bullet in the Lemba district of the capital.

The UN mission in the country – which has been running continuously since 1999 – said it deployed its troops to the streets to observe and record any violence.

President Kabila has been in power since 2001, and was supposed to step down after his second and final term came to an end in 2016.

Under a deal reached more than a year ago, he was due to step down by the end of 2017 – but that has not happened.

Instead, the election to replace him, originally planned for 2016, has now been delayed until December 2018.

The country’s powerful Catholic Church has been a voice of opposition to Mr Kabila. The Church also called for the demonstrations in late December which led to at least seven deaths, according to UN peacekeepers.

Dozens were arrested in the aftermath of those protests.

Sunday’s demonstrations were also backed by the country’s Muslim community. Before the march, representative Cheikh Ali Mwinyi M’Kuur told AFP: “I ask the authorities to avoid repressing the march.”

“If they decide to repress, there will be no peace. But if they let the march take place, they will respect the constitution and peace will prevail,” he said.

DR Congo’s evangelical Christian churches also lent their support to the march organised by their Catholic counterparts.

–
By: BBC

The post DR Congo: Several deaths in anti-Kabila protests appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

Protesters are demanding that President Joseph Kabila – whose expected term of office expired more than a year ago – should step down.

A number of people have been injured, and UN peacekeepers have reportedly been deployed in the capital.

Similar demonstrations three weeks ago led to a number of deaths.

The widespread marches had been called for by the country’s Catholic Church, which appealed for a large but peaceful demonstration.

The Congolese authorities, however, banned the marches and no formal permission was given. On Saturday evening, internet access in the capital Kinshasa was cut.

Police warned that they would not tolerate “any attempt to disturb public order.”

Despite the ban, protesters gathered after morning mass on Sunday to march through the streets, accompanied by members of the clergy.

Local media outlet Radio Okapi reported protests in Kinshasa, Kisangani, and Bukavu. Other cities remain quiet, it reports, though a heavy police presence has been seen in many places.

The UN mission in the country – which has been running continually since 1999 – said it deployed its troops to the streets to observe and record any violence.

President Kabila has been in power since 2001, and was supposed to step down after his second and final term came to an end in 2016.

Under a deal reached more than a year ago, he was due to step down by the end of 2017 – but that has not happened.

Instead, the election to replace him, originally planned for 2016, has now been delayed until December 2018.

The country’s powerful Catholic Church has been a voice of opposition to Mr Kabila. The Church also called for the demonstrations in late December which led to at least seven deaths, according to UN peacekeepers.

Dozens were arrested in the aftermath of those protests.

Sunday’s demonstrations were also backed by the country’s Muslim community. Before the march, representative Cheikh Ali Mwinyi M’Kuur told AFP: “I ask the authorities to avoid repressing the march.”

“If they decide to repress, there will be no peace. But if they let the march take place, they will respect the constitution and peace will prevail,” he said.

DR Congo’s evangelical Christian churches also lent their support to the march organised by their Catholic counterparts.

–

Source: BBC

The post DR Congo: Anti-Kabila protests dispersed with tear gas appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

Some of the victims from the village of Kavumu were just 18 months old.

The men allegedly targeted young girls between 2013 and 2016 because a spiritual adviser told them that the blood of virgins would grant them supernatural protection.

The alleged militia leader, Frederic Batumike, a provincial legislator, and the other defendants deny the charges.

Rights groups hope the trial will help to end a culture of rape as a tool of war in DR Congo.

“The start of the trial is a strong signal in the fight against impunity,” Jean Chrysostome Kijana, an activist representing the victims, told Reuters news agency.

Proceedings started 10 hours late and lasted only 20 minutes on Thursday, during which time the defendants’ names were read aloud, according to Reuters.

Advocacy groups have told Reuters that the case has been particularly difficult to investigate because the victims were so young.

“Their families were often asleep when the alleged rapes occurred,” Reuters reports.

Villagers believed a magic powder was being used to induce sleep, investigative journalist Lauren Wolfe told BBC Newsday:

“I thought… Could they [the attackers] be using some kind of herbal anaesthetic? It actually turned out to be true. They were.”

She said the militiamen had been illegally squatting on an “extremely fertile” plantation previously owned by a German botanist who was murdered in 2012.

Following more than 20 years of conflict, much of eastern DR Congo is under the control of various militia groups.

The Democratic Republic of Congo was labelled “the rape capital of the world” by Margot Wallstrom, the former UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict.

Writing in The Guardian, Wolfe says that two years ago “one UN official resigned out of frustration at the UN’s continued failure to halt the atrocities” in Kavumu.

–

Source: BBC

The post DR Congo’s Kavumu child rape trial opens appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

Some of the victims from the village of Kavumu were just 18 months old.

The men allegedly targeted young girls between 2013 and 2016 because a spiritual adviser told them that their blood would grant them supernatural protection.

The alleged militia leader, Frederic Batumike, a provincial legislator, and the other defendants deny the charges.
Rights groups hope the trial will help to end a culture of rape as a tool of war in DR Congo.

“The start of the trial is a strong signal in the fight against impunity,” Jean Chrysostome Kijana, an activist representing the victims, told Reuters news agency.

Proceedings started 10 hours late and lasted only 20 minutes on Thursday, according to Reuters, during which time the defendants’ names were read aloud.

Advocacy groups have told Reuters that the case has been particularly difficult to investigate because the victims were so young.

“Their families were often asleep when the alleged rapes occurred,” Reuters reports.

–

Source: BBC

The post DR Congo’s Kavumu child rape trial opens appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The figure, reported by Reuters, is from Church sources in the country.

The deaths are the result of clashes between the army and a rebel group, but civilians have also been caught up in the violence.

The UN has reported on the discovery of more than 20 mass graves but has put the death toll so far at about 400.

According to the church, 20 villages have been completely destroyed, half of them by government troops.

The UN human rights chief, Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said investigators in Kasai province had identified dozens of mass graves along with harrowing evidence of people being shot, burned or hacked to death.

Atrocities were being carried out by the security forces and a government-backed militia, known as the Bana Mura, which was set up to help fight a rival group known as the Kamuina Nsapu, Prince Zeid said.

He added that local authorities had denied the UN access to information about what was happening in the region. The UN has said it has evidence that hundreds of villagers from the Luba and Lulua ethnic groups have been killed.

The UN Human Rights Council is likely to vote this week on whether to mandate an independent investigation into the violence following what the group’s commissioner described as horrific atrocities committed in Kasai province.

The Congolese authorities have said they would reject it.

More than a million people have been displaced in the region in the last year and aid workers say the humanitarian response on the ground has so far been inadequate.

Violence erupted in the once peaceful Kasai region last August, after the death of a local leader during fighting with security forces.

–

Source: BBC

The post DR Congo Kasai conflict: ‘Thousands dead’ in violence appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

He told MPs in the capital, Kinshasa, that he will name an opposition prime minister within the next 48 hours to lead the country to the polls.

He has been under pressure to salvage a political deal after it collapsed last week, leaving the country on edge.

Critics said he delayed the elections on purpose to hang on to power.

Mr Kabila was supposed to step down after his second and final term came to an end last year but the vote to replace him was not held.

The electoral commission cited financial and logistical difficulties.

The failure to organise the polls led to a wave of deadly demonstrations by opposition supporters, with calls from diplomats for the president to respect the constitution.

The Catholic Church stepped in to broker a deal right at the end of last year which outlined the creation of a transitional government that would oversee the elections.

The deal collapsed because the government and the opposition were unable to agree on the power-sharing mechanism under the arrangement.

In response to calls by the Catholic bishops, Mr Kabila told MPs the polls will go ahead as planned.

“I would like to solemnly announce to our people that the elections will be held. That those who are still in doubt we will stick to the electoral calendar,” Mr Kabila said.

“This process is the work of the Congolese, financed by the Congolese people themselves, without any foreign interference,” he added.

Mr Kabila’s address came days after the UN Security council voted to downsize Monusco, its peacekeeping mission in the country.

Before the vote, US ambassador to the UN Nikki Hailey blamed the organisation for partnering with a “corrupt” government in Congo, which she said works against the interests of its people.

Mr Kabila did not refer to the US criticism of his government but he vowed to defend the independence of the DR Congo.

“It is our duty to stand up for our independence and the national sovereignty,” he said.

He then announced that he will soon name an opposition prime minister for the transitional government that will lead the country ahead of elections due at the end of the year.

The president set a 48-hour deadline for the opposition to overcome its “internal disagreements” and table a list of names to be considered.

–

Source: BBC

The post DR Congo President warns against foreign interference appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

Torrential rains caused the Kalamu river, which flows through the city of Boma into the River Congo, to overflow for two hours before the waters receded, washing some of the victims across the border into Angola.

The waters left parts of the city, Democratic Republic of Congo’s sole Atlantic port, covered in up to a metre of mud and a search was under way to dig out more bodies that may be buried.

“The rains on the night of Monday to Tuesday in Boma have caused at least 50 deaths,” Jacques Mbadu, governor of Kongo Central province told AFP.

“We buried 31 bodies on Wednesday and we expect to get about 20 more bodies back today that ended up across the border in Angola,” Mbadu added.

Mbadu said the waters hit a peak of two metres (six feet) above their usual level, destroying at least 500 homes and leaving several thousand people homeless.

Boma, which lies near the mouth of the River Congo around 470 kilometres (300 miles) southwest of the capital Kinshasa, is home to between 150,000 and 200,000 people.

“This is a cyclical phenomenon which happens every 10 years. It last happened in January 2015 but with climate change it’s now happened again in December 2016,” Mbadu said.

Locals told AFP that two of the city’s three districts were still covered in mud, up to a metre deep in some places, and described tragic scenes as the waters rushed dramatically into their houses.

“I lost my two children, carried off by the waters, which rose up to three metres like a tsunami. I could only watch them as they were washed away,” Faustin Lutete, a government employee, said.

Fisherman Jean-Marie Kola said he just had time to “run far away, as our house was showing signs of fragility. It collapsed later.”

Shopkeeper Camille Inonga said he had “lost everything” in the flash floods.

“My shop is covered in mud. I can’t get in there. This is a whole life gone up in smoke,” he said.

Provincial governor Mbadu said the authorities were encouraging those left homeless by the floods to seek shelter with relatives to avoid “creating more problems”, rather than putting them in reception centres.

He said he had been working with a Dutch company to divert the “waters of the Congo river, whose enormous flow puts pressure on the Kalamu, to try to prevent these floods happening again.”

Congolese towns and cities are typically built up in a haphazard fashion and government services to deal with natural disasters are practically non-existent.

Floods in Kinshasa in December 2015 left more than 30 people dead and 20,000 families homeless, most of them in the capital’s slums, where residents were left to battle with their bare hands through noxious mud, slime and fecal matter.

Despite its vast mineral wealth, Congo is classed among the world’s poorest countries and two thirds of its 70 million inhabitants get by on less than $1.25 a day.

–

Source: AFP

The post Floods in DR Congo kill at least 50 appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.