While we cannot change the past, anyone reading the last paragraph might wonder why the wealthy nations of Western Europe (a geographical area which includes the United Kingdom) do not get a mention and the future hope is seen as with a different US Administration.
To ask this question is to answer it - when the United Kingdom left the EU it weakened it as well as insuring British impotence to influence events in Africa. An earlier generation of Conservative leaders - Macmillan, Alec Home, Heath and at least in her earlier years Margaret Thatcher -understood this very well.
This is not just a political loss. It is also a financial loss. London was for many years the major centre in which companies creating economic investments in Africa - not just giants like Anglo-American and RTZ but a host of smaller enterprises. I recall the financing of one such that acquired a small oil field from an oil major and, working with the local population, restored damaged pipeline to the coast and improved productivity, stopping leaks of oil and making the enterprise profitable while increasing income in the local area.
The Conservative Part's psychosis over the EU is denying Kemi Badenoch a chance to do what Macmillan, Heath and early Thatcher (think the Single Market) did and Alec Home and John Major carried on: creating a European future in which the United Kingdom and its capital city can play a major part in a better world
Relevant insights and observations, but remember Tiny Rowlands and his conglmerate, who tended to stir the pot of tribal rivalries whilst making a packet and extracting wealth or is that unfair?
Further to above contribution, I also noted no mention of UK involvement or possible leverage - quite possibly the answer is, because it has none or little.
That said, would be useful for amount of British aid to both C and R to be advised, plus possible sources of soft power.
Given previous government 's agreement with R on illegal migrant deportation, clearly there are diplomatic lines available.
Couldn't David Lammy and the Foreign Office acting in concert, if possible, with strategic EU allies, exert at least some pressure on R to rein-in M23 at the very least?
He, in some ways, is in a relatively good position to try and put his FO philosophy into action.
A very interesting and horrifying article. Lawrence - you allude to some of the possible effects of the current chaos in the USA. It would be interesting to read your opinion on the likely global impact of policies such as the destruction of USAID, the Trumpist circus about future policy on Gaza, and the removal of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data (and much more). What are these events likely to do to international stability and the risks of war?
Thank you for sharing, the more we learn, the better about DRC and other countries.
I am just back from Morocco, met with a brilliant young Moroccan and learned so much about the resource curse they suffer from, along with the continuing legacy of domination by European powers (most notably the French) and the interweaving of that power with the power of the monarchy. That country is in a far better condition than DRC, yet still, for the core factors I mentioned (and others) does far worse than it could.
This is a good broad sweep of DRC; it carries a few thoughts, and invites inferences, about the last 30 years which aren't quite right though. The Resource Curse is a Western trope and lacks supporting evidence or theory of any sort: Africans notice it's only directed at them. The ceasefire before the genocide was very far from the end of Tutsi oppression. The figure taken by Joseph Kabila is a lot higher than you put here, but much of that was used to pay off others at and near the top of his regime. Tshisekedi lost the 2018 election by a very long way, to Martin Fayulu, there's really no informed dispute about that; that's important because Kabila placed Tshisekedi as president and still controlled most things. He could plausibly be back next time around as he's still the most important figure in DRC. It's no more greedy to want to exploit minerals in Africa than to do so in Europe: Greed is hardly the thing the present public chat in the UK about Rosebank is centred on. Kagame deserves a much less negative treatment than he gets here; there's plenty of data to back that up. It's too easy for the West to stress sovereignty on a difficult border, but it created what has seemed since its creation an unviable nation state. Kinshasa's writ has never in history run in Goma and as a consequence the Kivus, particularly North Kivu, have always represented a serious security risk to tiny Rwanda. It's important to view the border situation through an African prism; Goma an Bukavu are extraordinarily beautiful places with a high number of young, well-educated but largely unemployed people; they've never been able to venture outside those cities safely. There's plenty of evidence that Kagame is in earnest about diplomatic discourse; and more that Tshisekedi is simply unable to understand or execute his role properly. It would likely be better for the people of the Kivus, particularly Goma and Bukavu, if the area had a high degree of local autonomy and a special formal relationship, including even perhaps an open border, with Rwanda. The international community appears, as ever, to be trying to force an unworkable model on the situation borne out of imperatives in places like Ukraine. Rwanda is also an extraordinary place - Kigali is safe and a completely viable tourist destination following its terrible period - as an example of what can be achieved by an African state in a short period of time it's a very best one; again, plenty of empirical evidence.
This is a truly terrible story.
While we cannot change the past, anyone reading the last paragraph might wonder why the wealthy nations of Western Europe (a geographical area which includes the United Kingdom) do not get a mention and the future hope is seen as with a different US Administration.
To ask this question is to answer it - when the United Kingdom left the EU it weakened it as well as insuring British impotence to influence events in Africa. An earlier generation of Conservative leaders - Macmillan, Alec Home, Heath and at least in her earlier years Margaret Thatcher -understood this very well.
This is not just a political loss. It is also a financial loss. London was for many years the major centre in which companies creating economic investments in Africa - not just giants like Anglo-American and RTZ but a host of smaller enterprises. I recall the financing of one such that acquired a small oil field from an oil major and, working with the local population, restored damaged pipeline to the coast and improved productivity, stopping leaks of oil and making the enterprise profitable while increasing income in the local area.
The Conservative Part's psychosis over the EU is denying Kemi Badenoch a chance to do what Macmillan, Heath and early Thatcher (think the Single Market) did and Alec Home and John Major carried on: creating a European future in which the United Kingdom and its capital city can play a major part in a better world
Relevant insights and observations, but remember Tiny Rowlands and his conglmerate, who tended to stir the pot of tribal rivalries whilst making a packet and extracting wealth or is that unfair?
Further to above contribution, I also noted no mention of UK involvement or possible leverage - quite possibly the answer is, because it has none or little.
That said, would be useful for amount of British aid to both C and R to be advised, plus possible sources of soft power.
Given previous government 's agreement with R on illegal migrant deportation, clearly there are diplomatic lines available.
Couldn't David Lammy and the Foreign Office acting in concert, if possible, with strategic EU allies, exert at least some pressure on R to rein-in M23 at the very least?
He, in some ways, is in a relatively good position to try and put his FO philosophy into action.
A very interesting and horrifying article. Lawrence - you allude to some of the possible effects of the current chaos in the USA. It would be interesting to read your opinion on the likely global impact of policies such as the destruction of USAID, the Trumpist circus about future policy on Gaza, and the removal of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data (and much more). What are these events likely to do to international stability and the risks of war?
Thank you for sharing, the more we learn, the better about DRC and other countries.
I am just back from Morocco, met with a brilliant young Moroccan and learned so much about the resource curse they suffer from, along with the continuing legacy of domination by European powers (most notably the French) and the interweaving of that power with the power of the monarchy. That country is in a far better condition than DRC, yet still, for the core factors I mentioned (and others) does far worse than it could.
This is a good broad sweep of DRC; it carries a few thoughts, and invites inferences, about the last 30 years which aren't quite right though. The Resource Curse is a Western trope and lacks supporting evidence or theory of any sort: Africans notice it's only directed at them. The ceasefire before the genocide was very far from the end of Tutsi oppression. The figure taken by Joseph Kabila is a lot higher than you put here, but much of that was used to pay off others at and near the top of his regime. Tshisekedi lost the 2018 election by a very long way, to Martin Fayulu, there's really no informed dispute about that; that's important because Kabila placed Tshisekedi as president and still controlled most things. He could plausibly be back next time around as he's still the most important figure in DRC. It's no more greedy to want to exploit minerals in Africa than to do so in Europe: Greed is hardly the thing the present public chat in the UK about Rosebank is centred on. Kagame deserves a much less negative treatment than he gets here; there's plenty of data to back that up. It's too easy for the West to stress sovereignty on a difficult border, but it created what has seemed since its creation an unviable nation state. Kinshasa's writ has never in history run in Goma and as a consequence the Kivus, particularly North Kivu, have always represented a serious security risk to tiny Rwanda. It's important to view the border situation through an African prism; Goma an Bukavu are extraordinarily beautiful places with a high number of young, well-educated but largely unemployed people; they've never been able to venture outside those cities safely. There's plenty of evidence that Kagame is in earnest about diplomatic discourse; and more that Tshisekedi is simply unable to understand or execute his role properly. It would likely be better for the people of the Kivus, particularly Goma and Bukavu, if the area had a high degree of local autonomy and a special formal relationship, including even perhaps an open border, with Rwanda. The international community appears, as ever, to be trying to force an unworkable model on the situation borne out of imperatives in places like Ukraine. Rwanda is also an extraordinary place - Kigali is safe and a completely viable tourist destination following its terrible period - as an example of what can be achieved by an African state in a short period of time it's a very best one; again, plenty of empirical evidence.