Democratic Republic of Congo

Susanna Kalaris an intern in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. As Americans flocked to polling stations on November 8, United Nations peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) were hit by a grenade blast that killed one and injured thirty-two others. Since 1999, the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), and its successor, MONUSCO, have deployed peacekeepers to implement a ceasefire, disarm combatants, and protect civilians following an international war that killed an estimated 5.4 million people between 1996 and 2003 and plunged the country into economic and political chaos. Yet despite more than seventeen years, twelve billion dollars spent, and twenty-thousand personnel dispatched across the country, the peacekeeping missions have left an unfulfilled mandate and a local government that recognizes and profits from its failures. President Joseph Kabila and his government are emboldened to maintain the political status quo; while peacekeeping troops struggle to contain violence, the government violates democratic processes and civil rights with impunity, knowing MONUSCO will not stop it anytime soon. Like some other notorious UN peacekeeping missions, MONUSCO has failed to intervene as rebel forces attacked civilians and outraged those they are meant to protect. In November 2012, as the M23 insurgent group invaded the city of Goma, fleeing civilians were passed by trucks full of peacekeepers themselves escaping the rebels. M23 troops went on to take Goma without resistance from the better-equipped and more numerous MONUSCO forces. The peacekeepers drew both international and local criticism: France called their actions “absurd,” and young Congolese deemed them “useless” and “dismissed.” During a rebel attack in June 2014, at least thirty civilians were killed in the two days it took for MONUSCO forces to respond to calls for help in South Kivu. In August of this year, rebel fighters massacred at least fifty civilians with impunity, prompting over two thousand protestors to decry the lack of action from MONUSCO. These instances of inaction have powerful consequences not only for the victims of attacks, but for the future of the DRC. Since succeeding his father in 2001, President Kabila has presided over a government plagued by corruption, instability, and civil rights violations. Between June 2014 and May 2015, the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office reported numerous violations of the rights to free speech and assembly, including suspending opposition radio and television programs and blocking citizens’ access to text messaging and internet services. The government has also used force against opponents, as in January 2015 when national security forces killed at least twenty unarmed protestors. The arrests and deaths of demonstrators and opposition leaders across the DRC foreshadowed Kabila’s latest exploit, postponing presidential elections until 2018 and violating presidential term limits. Political violence has since escalated throughout the country—clashes between police and civilians protesting Kabila’s postponement left seventeen people dead in September. Critics have explained Kabila’s violation of the constitution and civil rights solely as an attempt to cling onto power, but it can also be considered a result of the inefficacy of MONUSCO forces. MONUSCO’s mistakes set an example of weakness that allows the political climate in the DRC to endure and even worsen, as it has in the past months. The failures of MONUSCO troops to protect the civilian population demonstrate to Kabila and his government that an international force has little power to affect change within his country. Consequently, Kabila is empowered to repress speech, arrest opposition voices, and use deadly force with impunity. As long as peacekeeping troops fail to create positive change in the DRC, the government can continue the current climate of violence and repression can continue without accountability. While many scholars advocate for better-equipped troops, more specific mandates, or flexible forces in the DRC, what is missing is accountability. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon regularly condemns rebel attacks on civilians, though there is neither criticism nor rebuke for the inaction of peacekeepers and their commanders. A UN Office of Internal Oversight Services report acknowledges several reasons why peacekeepers fail to protect civilian populations, but its few recommendations—like publishing “self-contained guidance” and increasing reporting of failures—lack teeth. Only by holding forces and their commanders accountable with tangible consequences will troops fully commit to their mandates and the populations they are asked to protect. If the UN truly held MONUSCO forces in the DRC responsible, and if peacekeepers fulfilled their mandate, President Kabila and his government would find their impunity greatly curbed and the opportunities to repress democracy interrupted. No longer would their rule be immune to the civil rights and democratic processes that are essential to a lasting peace.

Gabriella Meltzer is a research associate in the Council on Foreign Relations Global Health program. From Ebola to Zika, recent global health crises have been defined by unpredictable outbreaks of mysterious pathogens. However, the yellow fever epidemic currently sweeping across Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo was not only predictable, but could have been stopped by the World Health Organization (WHO) with the necessary political will and logistical organization. Like Zika, yellow fever is carried by the Aedes mosquito, and is endemic to tropical parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, along with South and Central America. Most cases are asymptomatic or mild with fever, chills, nausea, and fatigue, but roughly 15 percent become more severe. About half of these cases prove fatal. Similar to other mosquito-borne diseases, yellow fever is typically transmitted between infected mosquitos and non-human primates in jungle environments. However, deforestation and general climate change often create more hospitable breeding grounds closer to human populations. Yellow fever then enters an urban cycle, whereby people and mosquitos infect each other. Unlike in the jungle, the virus is no longer naturally contained—transmission occurs quickly in overcrowded environments ripe for mosquitos where people are constantly in motion. The Central African cities of Luanda, Angola and Kinshasa, Congo have been at the epicenter of the most recent outbreak. Since December 2015, there have been 3,818 suspected cases and 369 deaths in Angola, and 2,051 suspected cases and 95 reported deaths throughout Congo. Both of these nations are plagued by weak health systems with average life expectancies of fifty-three and sixty, respectively. The collapse of global oil prices has forced Angola to cut public spending by 40 percent over the past two years, allowing Luanda’s trash collection and water sanitation services to fall by the wayside and mosquitos to proliferate. Meanwhile, Congo has only one lab with diagnostic capabilities for a country with a population of nearly sixty-eight million, ten million of whom are located in densely populated Kinshasa. It is shocking and disappointing that this epidemic continues to escalate while a yellow fever vaccine exists—one that not only provides lifelong immunity, but is safe and inexpensive to produce. There are five manufacturers worldwide, and production costs are just over one dollar. The WHO-led International Coordinating Group for Yellow Fever Vaccine Provision (ICG) only maintains a small emergency vaccine stockpile of six million in the event of an outbreak. In 2015, UNICEF reported a 42 percent shortage of supply relative to global demand before this epidemic even began. The WHO, plagued by mismanagement and lack of accountability, has once again found itself scrambling to contain a quickly spreading virus in Sub-Saharan Africa. Not only have administered doses been diluted by 80 percent to maximize emergency coverage, but of the six million emergency doses sent to Angola in February, one million disappeared entirely—a claim the agency has publicly denied. Many of the shipments that did reach the region were sent to areas with no cases, arrived without proper materials, or were not kept cold enough to ensure effectiveness. Angola, Congo, and many other at-risk countries throughout Sub-Saharan Africa must take proactive measures to strengthen their weak health systems to counter the growing threat of mosquito-borne and other viruses. But in the interim, these nations must rely upon the support of a WHO that is failing them.

The Council on Foreign Relations’ Africa Program has just “soft-launched” a new online tool we call the Sub-Saharan Security Tracker (SST). We anticipate a roundtable at the Council’s New York and Washington offices to introduce formally the SST. In the meantime, it is available for use. Like the Nigeria Security Tracker, the SST tracks incidents of political violence. The purpose of the SST is to show the trends in political violence across all of sub-Saharan Africa. The SST uses data provided by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) Project to map over three million data points. It allows the user to determine the geographic distribution of violence as well as trends over time, and the actors involved in political violence. The SST is updated monthly. The SST’s map and graphs represent information based on the number of deaths. However, the map also allows the user to see the number of reported incidents of violence in each country. The countries where the numbers of deaths attributed to political violence are the greatest are Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic. Nigeria has seen by far the most deaths attributed to political violence (over 34,000). However, Somalia has had more than double Nigeria’s number of incidents of political violence (approximately 12,800 to 6,100). Sub-Saharan Africa is made up of forty-eight countries and is home to approximately one billion people. It does not include Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. The data used in the SST begins June 1, 2011. To find out more about the Sub-Saharan Security Tracker you can visit: www.cfr.org/african_security_tracker.

This is a guest post by Allen Grane, research associate for the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Studies program. In recent years, southern Africa has been the last bastion for elephant protection. Countries such as Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have been regarded as the leaders of elephant conservation in Africa. While countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania have seen substantial decreases in their elephant populations, many southern African countries have seen an increase in their numbers. In this light, it is all the more worrying that certain areas of southern Africa are being targeted by elephant poachers. The first sign was in South Africa’s famed Kruger National Park in May 2014. For the first time in over ten years, poachers entered the park with the intent of killing an elephant for its tusks and succeeded. (While South Africa’s elephants have been relatively safe over recent years, its rhinoceros population is under serious threat.) By the end of 2015, the number of elephants poached in Kruger had reached twenty. Compared to the thousands killed in Tanzania this number is small, but it is worrying, nevertheless. Perhaps more alarming is a recent study conducted by the Great Elephant Census in Zambia. While the elephant population across that country is stable, the southern regions of Zambia have witnessed declining numbers due to poaching. Sioma Ngwezi National Park in particular has seen a catastrophic decline in its elephants. In fact, the survey only identified 48 live elephants compared to 280 elephant carcasses. Sioma Ngwezi is in the southwestern corner of Zambia, bordering Angola and Namibia, and just over forty miles from Botswana. The potential for poachers to move between countries and parks is very high, which could place populations in all four countries at risk. The southern African country of Mozambique, which has seen high levels of poaching, has faced its greatest threat of poaching in Niassa National Park, a park that has a common border with Tanzania. Until now the great success of southern African countries has been due to their willingness to prioritize conservation and protect their elephant populations. Unfortunately, these countries don’t have the resources to train and equip their park services and rangers to cover all of their territory, meaning that there will always be ‘safe zones’ where poachers can operate with near impunity. Until the market for illicit elephant ivory is eliminated, it is likely that we will continue to see these poaching hotspots, despite the hard work of local governments and conservationists.

Tyler Falish is an intern for the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Studies program, and a student in Fordham University’s Graduate Program in International Political Economy & Development. In late February, Yoweri Museveni was elected to his fifth term as Uganda’s president, extending a reign that officially began in 1986, but was preceded by years as an influential guerilla leader. The New York Times characterized the election as “widely criticized.” The main opposition party, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), had good reason to cry foul as party candidate Kizza Besigye was arrested twice in two days during the voting, and has been under house arrest almost continuously since the election on February 18. Further criticism came from some of the electoral observers. The European Union (EU) deployed a mission comprised of 137 observers to Uganda, and the EU Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) released a preliminary report on February 20, highlighting the first ever live presidential debates and “vibrant campaign events,” but bemoaning the “intimidation and harassment of [the] opposition,” the fact that polls in opposition strongholds like the capital, Kampala, opened hours late, and that access to social media was blocked on the day of the election. Observers from the Commonwealth (an intergovernmental organization consisting mostly of former territories of the British Empire), with a tendency to place a positive spin on polls, said the election “fell short of meeting some key democratic benchmarks.” The African Union Election Observer Mission (AUEOM) praised Ugandans for their turnout, and described the election itself as “largely peaceful, but not without shortcomings,” ultimately endorsing the poll. The East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) regarded the election as “generally free and fair.” However, as senior EU observer Jo Leinen quipped, “Free and fair are categories with large margins.” As the opposition plans to challenge the election results in court, what impact, if any, will the assessment of the various electoral observer groups have on the perceived legitimacy of the election outcome? Although it may not be immediately apparent, it is possible that judgement passed by electoral observer missions has the long-term effect of emboldening the opposition. Electoral observers are invited by the host country, and there is little doubt that their presence inspires some additional confidence in the electoral process. But does the incumbent—especially a deeply entrenched incumbent—risk anything by extending that invitation? The EU has already stated that it will not send electoral observers to the Republic of Congo for the presidential election later this month, citing the paucity of recent electoral reforms, and the treatment of opposition party members. President Denis Sassou Nguesso has been in power since 1979, with the exception of a hiatus from 1992 to 1997 that ended with a brief civil war and ultimately the reclamation of his role. In response to the EU’s snub, the Congolese government replied, “whomever does not observe cannot judge.” In some cases, staying home might say more than a carefully worded statement.

This is a guest post by Cheryl Strauss Einhorn, a journalist and adjunct professor at the Columbia Business School. Just this past month, Rwandan President Paul Kagame followed neighboring rulers in Burundi, the Republic of Congo, and Togo to become the latest long-serving African ruler this year to attempt to extend his hold on power for a third term. Like his neighbors Kagame has done it legally, through a change in the nation’s constitutional term limits, but not without coercion. “He’s never pretended to be a democrat,” says Boston University’s Timothy Longman, director of the African Studies Center. “There’s an attempt to respect the rule of law at one level, in contrast to military dictators, he did not seize power; he went through a process of changing power.” But the process was not free and fair. Kagame supporters circulated a petition suggesting a constitutional change and obtained signatures from 60 percent of voters, over 3.5 million people. However, Longman says interviews about the process revealed that “people were going door to door and telling people to sign.” If they didn’t sign, the petitioners recorded their names and addresses. “It was not a free signature,” he says. “The petition tells us nothing about Rwandan public opinion.” The petition, though, was influential. Rwanda’s Supreme Court cleared the way for the constitutional change and then just weeks ago the country’s upper house of parliament voted unanimously to make it so. The result is that the 54-year old Kagame could potentially remain in office until 2034. He’s been in power since 1994, following his Tutsi rebel force’s victory over the interim government at the end of the Hutu led genocide that killed over 800,000 Tutsis. Since then he’s won two consecutive terms with 95 percent of the vote in both elections. But even though Kagame and the leaders of his neighboring countries are not violating their constitutions, the resistance to term limits is symbolic. It shows the continued fragility of African democracy. Third termism like this is a milestone on the road to president for life. Only term limits make it possible to consider voting someone out of office. And only then is it possible to transition power. Kagame is being coy about whether he’ll allow a transition. He says he’s open to being persuaded to run again and wrote on his presidential twitter account that "If I ran again, I would do more of what I am doing to improve the well-being of the citizens of Rwanda." It’s just that record of improved well-being that makes Kagame somewhat different than his peers trying to extend their power. Kagame is largely credited with praise for not only ending the Rwandan genocide but also for rebuilding the nation. The World Bank says between 2001 and 2014, real GDP growth averaged 8 percent per annum, far above the tepid growth of his neighboring countries. Still, Longman says that Rwanda manipulates its economic statistics, that it’s part of Kagame’s propaganda and is not real “because they’ve changed the measures.” And, apart from Burundi, Rwanda remains the poorest country in East Africa, according to the World Bank Development Indicators, with per capita income of $638 comparing negatively with Kenya’s $1,245, Tanzania’s $912, and Uganda’s $657. The United States has warned Kagame that he faces instability and uncertainty if he presses ahead with running for a third term, but it is unlikely that Rwanda will experience the kind of violence that resulted from term limit controversies in Burundi, Congo, and Togo in part because Kagame does not tolerate dissent. Human rights groups accuse Kagame of increasingly repressive measures to curtail civic and political life. Reporters Without Borders, which ranks press freedoms according to criteria including media independence, consistently reports Rwanda as among the most authoritarian, listing it as 161st out of 180 countries surveyed in 2015’s World Press Freedom Index. Two years ago, a journalist received a seventeen-year sentence for charges including “insulting the president” and “inciting the people against the government.” Opposition politicians are not tolerated well either, according to a report that Dr. David Himbara, who spent six years in Kagame’s government promoting economic development as the head of Rwanda’s Development Board, gave to Congress. Himbara fled Rwanda two years ago after becoming concerned about the increasingly violent nature of the Kagame regime. But if a country is a democracy then dissenters should not have to flee, journalists should not be jailed, and the people should get to express their true opinion at the polls. No one is saying democracy is the only form of legitimate government. But, certainly Rwanda and these other countries are not legitimate democracies. These power grabs are effectively coups.

The eastern Congo has been ravaged by foreign invasions and homegrown rebellions that have killed and displaced millions. A fragile peace process seeks to bring stability to central Africa, but its hard-won gains remain at risk.

This is a guest post by Allen Grane, research associate for the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Studies program. On June 19, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) crushed more than a ton of elephant ivory in the middle of Times Square, New York City. Speakers at the event included the Wildlife Conservation Society Executive Vice-President John Calvelli, FWS Director Dan Ashe, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell,  and U.S. Customs and Borders Protection Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske. The speakers spoke about the security implications of elephant poaching and how the United States can assist to end the trade with its links to international crime and terrorism. The security implications are real. As recently as June 16, poachers killed a park ranger and two soldiers in Garamba national park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is just one example of how elephant poaching poses a serious threat to security throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Militant groups like Sudan’s Janjaweed and the Lord’s Resistance Army, as well as state-sponsored militaries like the FARDC (Forces Armées de la Republique démocratique du Congo) are known profiteers of the ivory trade. The money from poaching helps provide these organizations with continued funding to buy arms and supplies. The poaching of elephants could only provide a financial incentive if there was a demand for elephant ivory. That demand is extremely high, with one kilogram of ivory going for $2100 to $3000 a kilogram on the black market. At this rate, a low estimate of the illegal value of the ivory crushed last Friday was just over $1.9 million. The speakers at the “crush” spoke to what the United States is doing to combat the ivory trade. President Obama announced the formation of a Wildlife Trafficking Task Force in July 2013. It is focused on intercepting ivory and other wildlife products while in transit at major transportation and logistics hubs. The idea is to curb the trade by making it difficult for illicit networks to move animal products from point a to point b. The U.S. government is training international partners as part of this effort. Commissioner Kerlikowske in his speech referred to a group of Tanzanian customs agents training in the United States with sniffing dogs to locate ivory when being transported. The government and the FWS are also trying to curb the demand in the United States. One way of doing this is by destroying confiscated ivory and animal products, the ivory crush being a high-profile example. However, as was outlined by the events speakers, in order to curb the demand, stricter laws must be passed in the United States. While several states, such as California, are currently reviewing legislature that would restrict the legal trade of ivory, the federal government implemented tighter restrictions on elephant ivory in June of 2014. It is anticipated that further federal restrictions will be adapted later this year. To end the ivory trade, the United States and its partners must implement a multifaceted strategy that works to address the poaching, trafficking, and the demand. A high profile event such as the June 19 ivory crush in the center of America’s largest city helps build vital public support for the effort.

This is a guest post by Allen Grane, research associate for the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Studies program. Lately, conservationists and lovers of Africa’s diverse wildlife have been hard pressed for good news. From South Africa’s difficulty tackling rhino poaching to Zimbabwe’s sale of baby elephants to foreign countries, it often seems that African governments are either ill equipped to protect their animal populations or simply don’t care—or worse. However, it is important to remember that there are park rangers who are working tirelessly to protect and save Africa’s biodiversity. In the face of the ever increasing threat of poaching, these rangers have shown great ingenuity, embracing innovative technology and new strategies to safeguard Africa’s wildlife. More and more, these ranger organizations have been looking to the sky in order to combat poaching on the ground. The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT), which has raised orphaned elephants and rhinos in Kenya since 1977, uses aircraft  to find and identify at risk animals and discover potential poachers. The Namibian government, Kruger National Park, and the Kenya Wildlife Service have all begun using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These organizations believe that by using aircrafts and UAVs they will be able not only to catch poachers in the act, but also to deter potential poachers before any animals are harmed. Working a bit more down to earth, many conservancies and wildlife services have embraced the use of trained dogs. Groups in Kenya, South Africa, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have begun using dogs to aid in anti-poaching operations. The most popular breeds tend be bloodhounds and malinois/shepards. These dogs offer comparative advantages based on the mission and region: the hounds, which are trailing dogs, have been very successful in the forests of Kenya and in the DRC while the malinois/shepards, air-scenting dogs, are more widely used on the open terrain of South Africa. In South Africa’s Kruger National Park, one private reserve, the Bulele nature reserve, has formed an all female team of rangers to conduct anti-poaching operations. The group, known as the Black Mambas, are unarmed and meant not only to stop poachers but to also change communal perception of rangers in local communities, who are often seen as playing the villain to the impoverished poachers’ Robin Hood. As a result, more women want to participate in anti-poaching and to help the Black Mambas. As one member of the organization put it, “I am a lady, I am going to have a baby. I want my baby to see a rhino, that’s why I am protecting it.” Over the last ten months, there hasn’t been a single rhino killed in their section of Kruger Park. Compare this to last year, when 827 of the 1215 rhinos reported poached in South Africa last year were in Kruger. It is important to remember that despite all of the alarming trends of increased animal poaching over the last few years, there are people on the front lines continuing to fight to protect animals. However, the poaching epidemic is far too large and too international for rangers on the ground to counter it alone. Governments and international organizations must assist rangers in their fight by implementing and enforcing stricter laws against poaching and the trade of wildlife goods.

This is a guest post by Jean-Yves Ollivier, a French businessman who has spent over forty years involved in peace talks in Africa. He serves as CEO of the Brazzaville Foundation for Peace and Nature Conservation. Judging by the media coverage, everyone seems to be in agreement: since the wind of revolt pushed Blaise Compaoré out of Burkina Faso and finally liberated the “Republic of honourable people” from a "twenty seven year dictatorship," the other “dinosaurs” in power in Africa just have to sit tight and forget about any ideas they had about keeping power. But people have jumped to conclusions regarding the nature of the revolt, the nature of the deposed regime, and the chances of current presidents to keep power. To start with, it was a coup d’état by young people. Whoever saw the revolts in Ouagadougou – whether in real life or on TV – must have realized what demographers have been telling us for years: that 70 percent of the population is under 30 and have never known any other president than Blaise Compaoré. I can remember a thirty-odd year old man shouting at the camera: “Fed up with Compaoré! I have a Master’s degree in law but no job.” Whoever comes to power in Burkina Faso, I’m very afraid that he will remain unemployed…and outraged. The Sahel is not all of Africa. In this southern strip of the Sahara the population growth rate is greater than 3 percent. However, there is but dry earth to scrape and not enough paying jobs for the hordes of young people who haven’t had the right education but dream of what they see on satellite TV night after night. Hence emigration or escape to so-called economic “rackets” or else full-scale contraband including drug trafficking; hence the fundamentalism of new moral economies whether it be Christian born again-style Pentecostal churches or jihadist movements from Ansar Dine in Mali and Boko Haram in Nigeria to al-Shabaab in Somalia. Data and situations vary from one end of this huge continent to the next. For better or worse, how do you compare the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), rich in every ore, with Burkina Faso? The same goes for the nature of the regimes. This is the second conclusion that has been jumped to and muddles Blaise Compaoré’s government with Joseph Kabila’s in DRC or Paul Biya or Paul Kagamé in Cameroon and Rwanda. The lone commonality between these men is how long they have been in power. Is that enough to conclude that an enduring power is a harsh government or dictatorship? We might as well praise the “cabinet reshuffle.” And, there’s the third sweeping conclusion: wanting to stay in power would surely be “bad” and wrong whilst a change in power would be good and more democratic. In the aftermath of Ouagadougou’s sweeping change, it would seem that the rejection of any constitutional amendment to extend the presidential mandates, whether it is done democratically or not, gives the opponents a rightfulness and support from the international community. However, if the people freely decide to pay a premium for stability by way of a referendum for example, who can stop them? And who’s to say that the young people who ransacked parliament in Ouagadougou represent the people? The army got involved for a reason. The opposition was unable to control its troops. Once in power, will it be capable of ensuring order and respect for property and people? Will it respect liberties and the liberty of those who are against it? It’s too early to tell. If presidents in power want to renew their mandate wherever they are despite existing constitutional constraints, they must reinvent themselves and win over their young populations – that is essential and that will be a determining factor in defining the effect as a domino or a boomerang.

The Nigerian military has announced that it captured from Boko Haram a “T-55 armored tank” and a “highly sophisticated” armored personnel carrier during a battle near the town of Konduga in Borno state. This indicates that Boko Haram has tanks and armored personnel carriers and is growing in military strength. There are unanswered questions. Sahara Reporters carries a picture of the captured tank which it identifies as a “T-55.” However, the picture is not of a T-55 tank. The T-55 is of Soviet manufacture first produced more than fifty years ago. The militaries of Chad, Central African Republic, Congo, Togo, and Nigeria all have T-55’s or a variant in their arsenals. Qaddafi’s Libya had many of them. If the tank was indeed a T-55, Libya would be a likely source. However, the “tank” in the photo appears to be a Panhard ERC-90 Sagaie, a wheeled armored fighting vehicle of French manufacture. Chad and Cote d’Voire each have a few of these vehicles, and, according to one commentator, the Nigerian military has forty-two of them. If that is accurate, then it is likely that the tank and the armored fighting vehicle were stolen from a Nigerian military armory and did not come from Libya. Hard evidence as to where Boko Haram gets its weapons is scarce. But, a credible hypothesis is that most of its weapons are stolen from Nigerian military sources.

The health minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Felix Kabange Numbi, has announced an outbreak of the Ebola virus in the remote Equateur province. Two cases have been confirmed by the ministry. The authorities have moved quickly to isolate the village where the disease was found. The DRC outbreak appears to be unrelated to Ebola in west Africa. The DRC strain of the virus is much less deadly, with a mortality rate of about 20 percent, rather than up to 90 percent in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. The eastern part of the DRC has been the venue of almost constant warfare for nearly a generation. Infrastructure, including hospitals, has largely collapsed. The region would appear to be ripe for a new outbreak of Ebola. In fact, according to the World Health Organization, seventy people have died over the past two weeks from hemorrhagic gastroenteritis. But, that is not Ebola. The DRC has had long experience with responding to Ebola. There have been six outbreaks of the disease since it was first discovered in 1976. As recently as 2012, Ebola killed thirty-six people in the DRC. In west Africa, Ebola was new. Medical personnel initially failed to recognize it, and protocols for responding to it were not in place. In the DRC, experience made a difference. Because the authorities are familiar with the disease, protocols were in place. They have moved quickly to isolate it. They set up a laboratory in the affected village to verify the Ebola cases, and they have banned the hunting of “bush meat,” small animals, including monkeys, that can harbor the disease and transmit it to humans. Unlike in west Africa, the DRC outbreak has occurred in a rural area, making isolation of the disease much less difficult than in, say, the teeming slums of Monrovia.

This is a guest post by Allen Grane, former intern for the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Studies program. Allen is currently an officer in the Army National Guard. His interests are in Africa, conflict, and conflict resolution. On July 8, 2014, former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo and Innovation: Africa, an Israeli non-profit, launched a new program in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to provide clean and sustainable energy to people in need. The program will serve people in Mutombo’s hometown of Kinshasa and neighboring villages. Mutombo reached out to Innovation: Africa after hearing of the organization’s success in developing solar energy projects in Uganda, Malawi, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and South Africa. Innovation: Africa will provide solar power to four facilities in the DRC. The organization uses the solar power to administer a number of electric services, such as lighting a school that serves over 740 students and providing water to a Kinshasa orphanage with 150 children. In conjunction with the Christian Broadcast Network, Innovation: Africa has drilled down over fifty meters into an aquifer that can provide the orphanage with its own source of clean water. Using solar energy, this water can be brought up to the surface. The projects are varied. The group is also setting up a light installation that will allow for more efficient energy use at the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital in Kinshasa. Another major project provides energy to a medical clinic in Bu Village, which serves a community of over eleven thousand people. By providing energy to these facilities, Innovation: Africa is offering communities hope. The energy that is provided through solar power allows the medical facilities to operate at night and to refrigerate medicines and vaccines. Medicine and access to clean water offer children a better chance of survival in a country where the under-five mortality rate is three times higher than the global average. Sivan Ya’ari, founder and president of Innovation: Africa, is proud that these projects are developed to be self-sustaining. The organization encourages participating schools, orphanages, and clinics to use the access to energy in order to develop their own businesses.  Innovation: Africa provides oversight to ensure that the businesses are sustainable. One of the organization’s business models is to set up cellular phone charging stations where customers pay a fee to charge their phones. The profits of these businesses are managed by a board and overseen by Innovation: Africa’s field managers in order to ensure that the money is used to repair and maintain the solar panels. In just five years, Innovation: Africa has helped over 450,000 people in six countries and is now running seventy-eight solar power projects. According to a 2011 World Bank report, only 6 percent of the population of the DRC has electricity. Innovation: Africa has the opportunity to help a great deal of people through its work.