The past two weeks have largely focused on investor concerns over Eurozone contagion and the post-election protests in Russia. But the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC's) incumbent president Joseph Kabila is also under pressure after his victory in the December 9 election. Political violence is expected to escalate in the country. 

Here is the map of global emerging risks and an article on the rising governance risk in the Democratic Republic of Congo via Maplecroft:

Event 

Incumbent president Joseph Kabila claimed victory on 9 December 2011 after an election which saw delays and political violence. According to the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), Kabila won 48.97% of the vote. Veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi - who won 32.3% of the vote - rejected the result and declared himself the winner. The resulting political deadlock is likely to further undermine Kabila's legitimacy and potentially prompt an escalation in political violence. 

Significance 

Concerns that the DRC's vast landmass and poor infrastructure might impede a free and fair electoral process proved justified, as logistical problems resulted in the extension of the 28 November election by three days, and delayed CENI's announcement of the results by 48 hours. US NGO the Carter Centre expressed concerns about electoral integrity from the outset, citing major procedural difficulties including transport issues, missing ballots and closed polling stations. While CENI announced implausibly high turnout and support in pro-Kabila constituencies, logistical problems severely disrupted voting and resulted in the loss of over 2,000 polling stations' results in pro-opposition constituencies, including up to 350,000 votes in Kinshasa alone. 

Reports of such electoral irregularities and bias have increased the salience of the opposition's claims of official electoral manipulation. The early 2011 constitutional amendment that abolished the second-round vote appears to have facilitated Kabila's hold on power, as the opposition failed to unite around a single candidate, effectively handing Kabila victory. Concerns regarding the democratic credibility of the Kabila-appointed CENI and Supreme Court have clearly informed Tshisekedi's refusal to submit an electoral appeal to the Supreme Court or pursue a power-sharing agreement, making political stalemate a likely outcome at present. 

International pressure may deter widespread violence – temporarily 

The international community's decision to stop short of calling for the annulment of the results suggests tacit support for a Kabila government – with input from Tshisekedi and the UPDS if possible – rather than risking further deterioration in the country's political stability. Given the DRC's violent history, international organizations such as the International Crisis Group are now pressing for post-election mediation, with input from international stakeholders such as the UN, EU and African Union (AU). However, a peaceful resolution of the impending political impasse will be reliant on both Kabila and Tshisekedi softening their positions, and offering political concessions. 

Tshisekedi has already asked his supporters to refrain from violence, but should UDPS supporters grow impatient at slow or stalling political progress, they are likely to be met with violence, as Kabila deploys DRC security forces in an increasingly authoritarian manner. Since 26 November there have been reports of increasing arbitrary detention, and over ten fatalities, as DRC security forces use tear gas and live ammunition against civilians. The long-term viability of such state repression is questionable, given international scrutiny and pressure for a peaceful resolution. However, progress toward a democratic solution may help minimize the short-term escalation of violence, particularly in Kinshahsa and eastern regions. 

Potential for populist policies and increasing regulatory uncertainty 

Questions surrounding the legitimacy of core state institutions such as CENI and the Supreme Court, and the electoral process itself will negatively impact upon the legitimacy of Kabila's tenure. This is likely to hamper policymaking, while sustained political opposition and low-intensity conflict in eastern and southern regions will challenge the government's ability to implement policy. While Kabila's lack of a clear campaign platform makes regulatory and tax predictions problematic, increased and unsustainable spending may be seen as a way to bolster ailing support in traditional Kabila strongholds such as Katanga and the Kivus. Similarly, the temptation to enact populist policies similar to the 2010 tax on unrefined metal exports from Katanga may increase. Meanwhile poor government effectiveness may continue to impede progress toward international transparency and accountability standards, such as the Extractives Industry Transparency Principle (EITI). 

Forecast 

A Kabila government – with or without input from Tshisekedi and the UDPS – will do little to mitigate investor concern over existing regulatory and transparency risks in the DRC. However, the international community is likely to support Kabila's continuing tenure, albeit with demands for a post-election mediation process, due to the absence of a viable alternative and the underlying potential that the DRC could descend into violence. 

Vitally, the peaceful resolution of the current post-election political deadlock is a pre-requisite of decreasing governance, regulatory and human security risk in the future. In the interim, businesses and investors may face increasing regulatory uncertainty should Kabila embark on populist public spending and tax reform, while achieving the level of transparency required by international transparency standards will continue to be problematic.

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In 18 seasons in the National Basketball Association, Congo-born Dikembe Mutombo was a relentless defender, an 8-time all-star who accumulated the second-most blocked shots in the league's history and averaged a double-double in rebounds and points in each of his first 11 seasons. Mutombo became a star -- even during the NBA's Michael Jordan-Patrick Ewing-Karl Malone golden age -- because of his ability to intimidate. The 7-foot center owned the most feared and arguably most dangerous elbows in the league, and after every blocked shot, Mutombo would wave a taunting index figure at whatever hapless small forward or shooting guard had attempted to drive the lane against him.

But off the court, Mutombo was the kind of genuine role model that the decadent, late-90s NBA mostly lacked. In a time when players routinely skipped college for the pros, Mutombo finished a linguistics and diplomacy double major at Georgetown. An ugly labor dispute in 1998 convinced even many dedicated basketball fans that their favorite players were selfish and overpaid. But Mutombo, whose playing career overlapped with a horrific war that devastated his home country, dedicated himself to humanitarian pursuits. The Dikembe Mutomobo Foundation built a hospital in a poor area of Kinshasa, and Mutombo has worked with philanthropic heavyweights like the Clinton Global Initiative and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

"Dkembe's heart is enormous, and his bond to the people of his beloved DRC defines him, and clearly motivates his humanitarian work," says Caryl Stern, CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, in an email. Mutombo's charitable work wasn't aimed at drawing attention to himself, writes Stern. "Dikembe has proven himself to be someone who will put in the hours behind-the-scenes, away from the cameras.

Mutombo may be a renowned basketball player and humanitarian. But as a UN Group of Experts reportpublished last December makes clear, he's not much of a businessman. Mutombo had linked up with Houston-based oil executive Kase Lawal, a respected businessman whom President Barack Obama had appointed to the Federal Trade Commission's Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiation. According to the UN document (and as first reported by The Houston Chronicle), the two attempted to purchase what they thought was $30 million worth of gold from dealers in Kenya -- only to find out that the gold (most of which was probably counterfeit) was in the possession of a notorious Congolese warlord, who ended up profiting handsomely off of Mutombo and Lawal's blind enthusiasm and almost total lack of due diligence.

The incident provides a glimpse into the complex situation in the eastern Congo, where gold traders attempt to make quick money off of the area's conflict-tainted mineral resources -- and end up exacerbating the region's long-standing misery. It's a reminder that the Congo gold trade is so dirty -- and so pervasive -- that even these prominent Americans ended up handing millions of dollars to a warlord who is widely considered to be one of the most brutal and dangerous men in Central Africa.

On December 2, 2010, Mutombo gathered a small group of men in a New York City hotel. He told them of an opportunity that could earn up to $20 million in a matter of weeks. His main audience was Kase Lawal, the CEO of Houston-based energy company CAMAC, and Carlos St. Mary, a former West Point football player and a trader in West African diamonds. Mutombo asked them to put together $10 million to buy, from dealers in Kenya, an unusually large amount of gold: 4.5 tons. That haul could be worth three times as much if Mutombo, Lawal, and St. Mary could arrange for it to be transported out of Africa and re-sold on the international market.

Mutumbo, though a humanitarian, presented this purely as an investment. The retired basketball star is also the titular CEO of the Mutombo International Group, a small outfit that mostly invested in retail around Atlanta. The gold must have seemed like an irresistible opportunity.  

It should also have seemed too good to be true. "Immediately when you say you've got 4.5 tons, you pull back from the table," recalls St. Mary, who frequently buys diamonds in countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. "I work in places where if people have 10 grams of gold they run down to my office front so that they can sell that. I couldn't fathom 100 kilos, 10 kilos, let alone 4,000 kilos."

Still, with so much money to be made, St. Mary kept listening. The story was compelling. According to the Powerpoint Mutombo presented, which St. Mary has shared with The Atlantic and can be viewed here, the retired basketball player claimed that the gold was held in a village in Kenya. He said he knew exactly where the cache was, and he implied it would be easy to buy and move.

"Mr. David [Kapuadi] and Mr. Stephane Kapuadi brought to us a time sensitive yet lucrative deal," reads one slide of the Powerpoint. David and Stephane, who are from the family of Mutombo's wife, were in the room for the New York meeting. The Powerpoint simply stated that the "gold is safely stored in Nairobi where Mr. David and partners are seeking a buyer." According to the presentation, David and Stephane had personally verified that the gold was real and would be able to hand it over to any buyers immediately.

Mutombo's presentation must have sounded promising at the time. But, reading it now, knowing how badly the deal would go, his omissions can seem glaring. He suggested that his in-laws had access to the gold, but didn't say who actually owned it. He referred to "partners" who had some unspecified control over the gold, but didn't say who they were or what they wanted.

When The Atlantic tried to reach Mutombo through his foundation, a representative said that neither the former basketball star nor his charitable foundation would be commenting. Kawal's company, CAMAC, responded to similar requests with this statement: "CAMAC is a law-abiding company and we disagree with the representations made in the UN report. We have already answered questions on this and see no reason to address it further."

St. Mary admits that he didn't press for details during the meeting. As a family friend of Lawal's and a longtime acquaintance of Mutombo's, he says, he didn't want to get pushy with either. "I probably should have looked at things a little closer," he says, "but when you put the pedigrees of those people together there's stuff you overlook."

Lawal agreed to fully finance the $10 million deal and to give Mutombo and St. Mary, who would supervise the transaction, a cut of the eventual profits. Lawal immediately sent St. Mary to Nairobi on a private jet, where David Kapuadi introduced him to the mysterious "partners" from Motumbo's PowerPoint presentation: Eddy Michel Malonga, who was named as the gold's owner on a Kenyan export form, and a man who introduced himself only as "Benoit." According to the UN report, Malonga is part of a Kenya-based counterfeit gold ring active throughout central Africa. "Benoit," according to both St. Mary and the UN panel, was most likely Yusuf Omar, a counterfeit gold smuggler.

For the moment, the gold appeared to be legitimate -- Malonga took St. Mary to a refinery to show him purified samples. But the sellers insisted the deal couldn't be completed in Nairobi, according to St. Mary. The majority of the gold, they admitted, wasn't even in Kenya. The sellers demanded a $5 million dollar deposit, then gave Lawal the choice of picking up the gold sometime later in Kampala, Uganda, or getting it immediately at Goma, the capital of long-troubled North Kivu province in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

If Lawal had had any idea just how costly and ethically murky this transaction was going to become, he might have backed out. But it's understandable why he wanted to keep going. St. Mary had just handed $5 million of his money to a pair of shady gold dealers about whom they knew very little, and they still had nothing to show for it. But, with $5 million sunk already, Lawal's enthusiasm for the deal still hadn't dimmed.

Looking at his company's performance that year, it's easy to see why he would be so eager to believe things would work out. CAMAC's stock hovered at a little over $2 a share by mid-December, down from $5.07 that April. And while CAMAC controlled over $400 million in assets, it had just $22 million on hand in November of 2010, according to public filings, only a little more than the projected $20 million Lawal thought he could make off of the gold. The company reported nearly $188 million in losses for 2010, leaving Lawal in need of an easy payday. He had an office in Kinshasa and expected that a deal in the DRC would be seamless.

According to St. Mary, Lawal didn't think the exchange -- the remaining $5 million for more than four tons of gold, which everyone still assumed was real -- would take longer than a single afternoon.

Fred Robarts, an author of the UN experts report, told me that the sudden change in venue, along with the exchange of large amounts of money in Nairobi, should have been a tipoff that Lawal and Mutombo were likely being scammed. "These guys have an international network," Robarts says of the Kenyan-based smuggling and counterfeiting ring that Omar and Malonga were a part of. "And they use quite elaborate means to convince their buyers. They have a network of people within the region who play various roles -- customs officers, and so on. They can probably get a hold of fairly convincing documentation as well."

Which they did. Before St. Mary left New York for Kenya, Reagan Mutombo, Dikembe Mutombo's nephew, and David Kapuadi provided him with Congolese export forms authorizing the transfer of 73 grams of gold to Kenya. These forms confirmed that the gold had legally crossed an international border, and could therefore be bought and sold, in the opinion of both the Kenyan and Congolese governments.

According to the forms, the gold came from the conflict-torn Goma region of eastern Congo. In September of 2010, DRC President Joseph Kabila had imposed a domestic ban on mineral exports from the Congo's eastern provinces, the point of origin for so-called "conflict minerals," natural resources extracted from squalid mines whose mineral yields fund militia activity in the region. Kapuadi's "partners" might have gotten around the ban by claiming they were re-importing gold that originated in Kenya. It is also possible that Mutombo and Lawal either didn't know about the ban, or knew about the ban and simply didn't care. And it's possible that all the documentation, which also included a Kenyan "certificate of ownership" establishing Malonga as the gold's true owner, was simply forged. "Every damn thing they had was fake," St. Mary claims. "But it looked official.

That the gold (or what Lawal, Mutombo, and St. Mary believed to be gold) might have originated in Goma, and was apparently still in the Eastern Congo, should have been a glaring red flag, a sign that either the gold or its owners were somehow involved in the illicit mineral trade. Twenty million dollars in potential profit was enough to convince Lawal and Mutombo to overlook the possibility that they were getting themselves into something risky and possibly unethical. Instead, Reagan Mutombo went to Goma to oversee his uncle's side of the deal. A few days later, on February 4, 2011, Lawal sent St. Mary to Goma on a leased Gulfstream jet, along with several CAMAC employees and nearly $5 million in cash.

It wasn't until the plane landed in Goma that St. Mary realized just how deeply involved the Congolese army was in the transaction. "When we got there they came on the plane and took our passports," says St. Mary. "They said 'the general wants to see you.' We said, 'general who?' At that point nobody had even told us. They said 'Bosco wants to speak to you now.'"

Passengers board the leased Gulfstream jet, arranged by Lawal and later impounded by Congolese troops / Carlos St. Mary

Bosco Ntaganda is one of the most infamous figures in Central Africa. A former official in the military wing of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, Rwanda's current ruling party, Ntaganda now serves as both the leader of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), a powerful and Rwanda-supported militia that is now allied with the Congolese government it once fought, and a general in the Congolese army. He was indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2006 for his enlistment and use of child soldiers in the early 2000s, during the violent closing years of the second Congolese civil war.

When Kabila's government decided in 2009 to integrate the CNDP insurgents it had been fighting for two years into the country's armed forces, it ended a seemingly endless war of attrition. But Kabila also gave Bosco Ntaganda even more power than the general already had. After an agreement between the governments of the DRC and Rwanda (the details of which remain secret to this day), Kabila put Ntaganda in charge of the army's campaign against the FDLR, the Congo-based Hutu militant group that the Tutsi-led Rwandan government accuses of sheltering fighters responsible for the country's 1994 genocide, and considers an ongoing threat to national security.

Ntganda has since waged a brutal campaign on the Rwandan and DRC governments' behalf, according to Jason Stearns, author of Dancing In The Glory of Monsters, a history of the DRC's recent conflicts. "At the end of 2009, and through 2010, the eastern Congo saw an escalation on par with the worse violence of the war," he says of the years after Ntganda began leading the campaign there, with "thousands of women raped" and over a million civilians displaced. "Many of those abuses were carried out by the Congolese army," says Stearns, "and many of those units were spearheaded by CNDP officers."

According to Melanie Gouby of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Ntaganda runs the eastern Congo as his own mafia-style fiefdom. "You can't do much without going through him," she says. "He can move his troops the way he wants around the region to secure mineral smuggling and mineral deals. Any cash coming out of the mines goes into his pocket." The UN says it believes that Ntaganda is linked to Yusuf Omar, the probable real name of the "Benoit" who took $5 million from St. Mary in Kenya. Ntaganda is on the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control list of sanctioned individuals. Any American caught doing business with him could face a fine of up to $1 million or up to 20 years in prison.

After landing in Goma, St. Mary and the small group of CAMAC employees traveling with him were taken to a hotel owned by Ntaganda. "When we get to the hotel the yard is littered with soldiers and [Ntaganda] comes in looking like Crocodile Dundee with a bolo collar and a leather hat and vest on," recalls St. Mary. Ntganda announced that he was the actual owner of the gold they had come to buy, and that the exchange would take place at the Goma airport the following morning.

St. Mary realized that his chances of leaving the country with four tons of gold were fading. "I told Bosco, you took almost five million from us in Nairobi. We don't have one gold bar. Give me just one reason to trust any of you in this room," says St. Mary. "And he looks me in the eye and says, 'We didn't kill you this morning.'"

Ntaganda demanded that St. Mary's team take at least some of the money they'd left on the plane and give it to him to hold temporarily, supposedly to cover customs, documentation, and routine bribes. St. Mary, along with one of Ntaganda's colonels, was sent to the airport to retrieved a suitcase with $3.1 million from the CAMAC Gulfstream -- money that, it would turn out, neither St. Mary nor the Congolese government would ever see again.

Later, when Ntaganda allowed the UN Group of Experts to interview him for their report, he claimed that the entire deal had been a setup, and that he was simply working with the DRC government to entrap gold smugglers. Sure enough, the day after St. Mary's arrival, customs officials seized Lawal's chartered plane, arrested everyone on board, and took the remaining $2 million St. Mary had brought with him. But even if Ntaganda is technically telling the truth, it still appears likely that he profited off of the deal, and probably took an active role in the scam.

The interwoven strands of bribery and corruption in this incident are difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle. Numerous high-ranking government and military officials seemed to be on the prowl for kickbacks on February 5, the day St. Mary and the CAMAC employees were supposed to leave Goma. The officer in charge of civilian intelligence for North Kivu, as well as the head of the presidential guard in Kinshasa, both searched the CAMAC Gulfstream. The military was deployed at the Goma airport, and Ntaganda, the most powerful man in North Kivu, was nearby. No one moved to halt the looming deal or alert outside authorities, the involvement of which would only ruin any opportunity for extortion.

What brought the entire episode to a premature end was one small detail someone seemed to have overlooked. "Everybody had been involved and bought off," says Stearns, the Congo historian. "But there was one poor, low ranking-officer at the airport who didn't know anything about this. He saw this official getting off the airplane and said, 'Sir I'd like to inspect your bags.'" After a brief physical struggle, the bag tore open, revealing the remaining $2 million in cash. The plane was impounded shortly afterwards, and its passengers were officially placed under arrest.

Stearns believes that Ntaganda played a late but integral role in the scam. "His importance in this particular case is that he was used by a bunch of Congolese businessmen, who were basically trying to scam a bunch of American businessmen, as muscle to protect the transaction." But he did more than simply act as muscle: Ntaganda was the intended recipient of the $5 million on the plane, according to the UN report. The general had contacts with Yusuf Omar and the gold smugglers whom St. Mary had met in Nairobi, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the deal. The UN report also strongly implies that Ntaganda himself ended up keeping the $3.1 million that had been transferred to him the day before the plane was raided. Five days after the events at the Goma airport, Ntaganda was asked to produce the suitcase of money that his colonel had taken off the plane. According to the report, Ntaganda gave customs officials a bag with $3 million in counterfeit bills, "printed on yellow copy paper, with all bills having the same serial number." Robarts believes that Ntaganda "was certainly trying to profiteer, and he certainly made some money out of this transaction."

CAMAC CEO Kase Lawal, who was in Houston receiving constant updates from both St. Mary and the CAMAC employees he had sent with him, appears to have known, by the time money started exchanging hands in Congo, that they were doing business with Ntaganda. According to the UN report, St Mary told the group of experts that both he and CAMAC Nigeria Vice President Mickey Lawal, who is Kase's half-brother, had "informed Kase Lawal about the general's ownership, providing his name" in the hours before the $3.1 million in cash was taken off the airplane. Still, there's no indication that Lawal attempted to stop the deal; according to the report, he "appeared relieved" to learn that his point-men were finally dealing with what he believed to be the gold's true owner. "Far from being dissuaded when they found out about his involvement" Stearns says of Lawal's reaction upon hearing of Ntganda's role in the deal, "this seemed to be an encouragement because they thought they were dealing with the real power broker."

And even if Dikembe Mutombo, following events from afar, was unaware of Ntaganda's involvement, his nephew Reagan had arrived in Goma ahead of St. Mary, and likely was. "[Reagan] was there in Goma," says Robarts. "He actually preceded the others. I think it's impossible that he did not know about Ntaganda and his role, at least as it emerged."

In a second statement sent to The Atlantic, a CAMAC spokesperson writes that "Kase Lawal and CAMAC deny that CAMAC funds were a part of any illegal payment" and that the company disputes any parts of the UN report "that allege a connection between CAMAC and Bosco Ntaganda." The statement adds, "It is important to remember that the Congolese government filed no charges and that neither CAMAC nor Dr. Lawal have made any admission of wrongdoing."

What CAMAC has not done is deny Lawal's personal involvement in funding or arranging the deal. The Houston Chronicle reported that the botched transaction, between the $10 million exchanged in Goma and Nairobi, the costs of bailing out St. Mary and his employees, and the rented Gulfstream, ended up costing Lawal about $30 million.

The chance to make quick money off of cheap and probably tainted Congolese minerals was enough to draw two prominent Americans into a multi-million dollar deal with an indicted war criminal. But in the corrupt world of the east Congo mineral trade, the only thing that was particularly unusual about this incident was the backgrounds of the prospective buyers. Traders, smugglers, militants, and foreign merchants attempt to turn a quick profit on east Congo conflict minerals on a daily basis. And, much of the time, they succeed.

The DRC's Ministry of Mines estimates that 80 percent of the country's overall gold exports are smuggled out illegally. Regulations in the U.S. and most European countries, meant to curb both tax evasion and the conflict mineral trade in places such as Congo, mean that commercial gold can only be imported with some documentation accounting for its provenance and proving it is legal to export. But in Dubai, which is home to the largest gold market on earth, this isn't the case. "There are zero regulations on declaring gold imports into that country," says Aaron Hall, a policy analyst with the Enough Project. "You can just take gold into the country and there's no record of it coming in or being processed."

The Dubai government does keep some partial statistics on its gold imports, but even these incomplete numbers suggest that an astounding amount of smuggled gold is making its way into the United Arab Emirates. According to the UN report, Dubai logged 6,600 kilograms of gold originating in Uganda and Kenya (worth around $363 million on today's market) entering the Emirate in 2010, compared to only 157 kilograms from the Congo. This is a strong indication, according to regional experts who spoke to The Atlantic, that gold from the DRC's war-torn, gold-rich east is being trafficked through neighboring countries and into the Gulf. "The majority of gold smuggled out of the country ends up in the same place. Most people are washing it in Dubai," says Hall, adding that smugglers and militants have little trouble getting Congolese gold out of the country, and laundering it through Uganda or Kenya. "The problem in Congo is that there are no institutions and really no oversight of gold mining on the ground. Nearly every mine in the eastern Congo is militarized."

Some are not. Last year, the Canadian company Banro produced its first gold bar from a government-sanctioned, fully regulated industrial mine in the eastern Congo. Gouby, of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, says that prospective buyers can legally purchase Congolese minerals if they're willing to follow UN and DRC government guidelines meant to help "track the minerals to the point where they're negotiated," thereby ensuring that they're conflict-free. But, for individual buyers like Mutombo and Lawal, ethical mineral trading in the Congo requires a level of on-the-ground due diligence that's probably not possible. "If you're a basketball star you can't really go to Congo and say 'let's do this and that,'" says Gouby. "You have to know the region and know how to verify these things."

Banro's mine is a sort of experiment, an attempt to see if conflict-free mining in the Congo can be profitable. But for now, most of the DRC's mining sector is informal or artisanal, and activists and scholars still debate how the region's conflict mineral trade can best be reduced. A provision in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill mandates that the Securities and Exchange Commission regulate possible conflict minerals in American products, a measure that critics claim has regulated one of eastern Congo's few profitable industries out of existence, without actually attacking any of the structural causes of the DRC's ongoing misery.

The conflict mineral trade funds, and thus worsens, some of the Congo's worst problems: its corruption, its proliferation of guns and militias, labor exploitation, and some of the weakest governance and poorest security in the world. Yet the conflict mineral trade is a symptom, rather than a cause, of the DRC's ills. Riven by decades of conflict and governed by a predatory and ineffectual state, the DRC is still a country where the government's employment of Ntaganda and other bloodstained ex-insurgents who also work in the conflict mineral business is, ironically, considered a lynchpin of the fragile regional peace.,

Whether Mutombo and Lawal were aware of it or not, they initiated a deal that has likely enriched the same people who turned the eastern Congo into one of the most violent places on earth. But that's not the most amazing thing about this incident. After all, these sorts of deals go through all the time: the buyers are experienced enough not to get caught and, if they are caught, they're usually not presidential appointees or famous basketball stars. And that's exactly what makes this story so remarkable. Replace the two high-profile Americans with savvier mineral merchants, and it's practically routine.

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A shy, brightly colored monkey species has been found living in the lush rainforests at the heart of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a find that utterly surprised the researchers who came upon it.

"When I first saw it, I immediately knew it was something new and different — I just didn't know how significant it was," said John Hart, a veteran Congo researcher who is scientific director for the Lukuru Wildlife Research Foundation, based in Kinshasa.

In fact, the find was something of a happy accident. Hart first spied the suspect monkey in 2007 while sifting through photographs brought back from a recently concluded field expedition to a remote region of central DRC.

Yet the image that caught his eye hadn't been taken in the field. It was snapped in a village, and showed a young girl named Georgette with a tiny monkey that had taken a shine to the 13-year-old. [See Georgette and the monkey.]

What is that?

It was a gorgeous animal, Hart said, with a blond mane and upper chest, and a bright red patch on the lower back. "I'd never seen that on any animal in the area, so right away I said, 'Hmmm,'" he told OurAmazingPlanet.

Hart decided to get to the bottom of the mystery. Fast forward through five years of field work, genetic research and anatomical study, and today (Sept. 12) Hart and a list of collaborators formally introduced to the world a new primate species, dubbed Cercopithecus lomamiensis, and known locally as the lesula. Their work is announced in the online journal PLOS One.

It turned out that the little monkey that hung around Georgette's house had been brought to the area by the girl's uncle, who had found it on a hunting trip. It wasn't quite a pet, but it became known as Georgette's lesula. The young female primate passed its days running in the yard with the dogs, foraging around the village for food, and growing up into a monkey that belonged to a species nobody recognized.   

Further investigation revealed the full story of the strange monkey. It turned out that C. lomamiensis, a cryptic, skittish primate, roams a swath of dense rainforest some 6,500 square miles (17,000 square kilometers).

"For a big mammal to go unnoticed is pretty unusual," said Kate Detwiler, a primatologist and assistant professor at Florida Atlantic University, and an author on the paper. Yet one visit to the area that the lesula calls home reveals why the monkeys escaped scientific notice for so long, Detwiler told OurAmazingPlanet. This region of the DRC is remote and vast.

The trees tower overhead, blocking out the sun, and the forest floor — the chief domain of the lesula — is steeped in a permanent gloom. The forest is full of sounds. At first light, the lesulas raise a lilting chorus of booming calls, distinct from the cries of their monkey neighbors who pass their lives in the trees high above the forest floor; at dusk, the cries of African grey parrots echo through the canopy. The earth is wet and soft, and feet sink into the ground with each step. There is a gentle, steady thud as fruit falls from the trees.

One gets the feeling of being on a ship very far out to sea, Detwiler said — only here, the ocean is the endless expanse of the trees. "I felt so privileged to be there," she said. "I wish everybody could have that experience."

Blue buttocks

The lesulas live in this isolated region in groups up to five strong, and feeds on fruit and leafy plants. The males weigh up to 15 pounds (7 kilograms), about twice the size of the females. They also have some rather arresting anatomical features.

"They have giant blue backsides," Hart said. "Bright aquamarine buttocks and testicles. What a signal! That aquamarine blue is really a bright color in forest understory." [World's Freakiest Looking Animals]

"So in terms of monkey viewing, females can definitely find males," Detwiler said.

"We don't really know what this means because it's very uncommon for monkeys in this lineage," she added.

The only other monkey to share this feature is the lesula's closest cousin — the owl-faced monkey, a species that lives farther east. At first it was thought the monkeys were close kin, but genetic analysis suggests the two species split from a common ancestor about 2 million years ago.

Now that the new species has been formally identified, Hart said, the next task is to save it. Although the lesula is new to science, it is a well-established sight on the dinner table.

What's for dinner

There's a thriving market for bush meat, particularly in urban areas, Hart said, and the monkeys are just one of dozens of species, from snakes to elephants to apes, that are targeted.

"People have disposable income, and this is the cheapest meat," he said. "Bush meat is a go-to item because it's less expensive than chicken or beef. This is not a new problem, but it's a problem that doesn't have a solution yet."

Hart and his wife, Terese, are partnering with local people to try to set up a national park in the lesulas' territory, but it's still a work in progress. In the meantime, researchers have set up camera traps in the dense forest to try to better understand the habits of the shy animals.

Georgette, the girl whose lesula companion started it all, is now 18. "The animal was very attached to her," Hart said. But one day the monkey disappeared.

"It was suspected that somebody in town had taken it in," Hart said. "And it ended up in their cooking pot."

Reach Andrea Mustain at amustain@techmedianetwork.com, or follow her on Twitter@AndreaMustain. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook& Google+.

• Gallery: Monkey Mug Shots
• Images: The Amazing Chimpanzees of Congo's Goualougo Triangle
• The 10 Most Pristine Places on Earth

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An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo is at risk of spreading to major towns if the epidemic is not reined in, warned the The World Health Organization (WHO).

Eugene Kabambi, a WHO spokesman in Congo's capital Kinshasa, told Reuters by phone: "The epidemic is not under control. On the contrary the situation is very, very serious." Since last week, the death toll has risen by more than double. 

Kamabi added that the WHO immediately needed an estimated $2 million had to be pay for measures to combat the outbreak. 

"If nothing is done now, the disease will reach other places, and even major towns will be threatened," 

The outbreak was officially declared by the WHO on August 17; to date, 31 people have died in the DRC, including five health workers. 

The Ebola virus is highly contagious — it is passed through bodily secretions and causes hemorragic fevers. Up to 90 percent of those infected are killed.

Earlier this summer, a deadly endemic of different subtype of Ebola broke out in Uganda, the DRC's neighbor to the east. The outbreak there has since subsided, and was considered relatively minor, according to Dr. Pierre Rollin, an epidemiologist at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) who worked firsthand to quarantine the outbreak in Uganda.

But Dr. Rollin told Business Insider that containment might be more difficult in the DRC, highlighting the fact that the DRC does not have the resources— including a modern lab — that Uganda does to combat rare viral outbreaks. 

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As the world watches the in Gaza and Israel, a destabilizing conflict has broken out in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with far reaching consequences but only a fraction of the viewership.

Rebels from the M23 militia have effectively captured the city of Goma, a city with a crucial tactical location — it borders Rwanda and its airport is responsible for bringing in aid and exporting a fair amount of natural resources — and a population of over a million people. 

The capture of such a huge city could easily draw the entire region into chaos. While the DRC has dealt with rebels consistently in its recent history, threats to its sovereignty in the past decade have never been this serious. 

Rwanda and Uganda, two of Africa's most politically important countries and key U.S. allies in the region, have been accused of backing the rebels and impeding on the sovereignty of the DRC, a country almost as large as all of Western Europe. A war between these states would seriously impede the regional economy, as Goma and the surrounding areas are abundant in natural resources.

Speculation has already surfaced that Rwanda and Uganda will try to take over the conflict area themselves. Uganda is supposed to act as the impartial mediator for the conflict in upcoming negotiations.

What's happening on the ground

According to reporters on the ground, the militia has seized the airport, "sweeping past" the DRC military and UN peacekeeping forces on the ground. M23 spokesperson Colonel Vianney Kazarama stated that "despite the attack helicopters, and the heavy weapons, of the FARDC [the Congolese army] let the town fall into our hands." 

Reports out of Goma are hazy. The Telegraph is reporting that looting has started, while the Guardian adds that the police surrendered there weapons and a "small group" of residents have welcomed them. Many residents have begun to flee the city and nearby refugee camps.

Despite the murkiness surrounding many of the details, it is becoming clear that the army did nothing to stop their invasion.

Failed Integration

The M23 movement traces its roots to a group of Tutsi rebels which were active prior to 2009 and located in the Eastern part of the DRC. On March 23, 2009 (where M23 derives its name), the rebels signed a peace accord with the government that would form a political party to represent their interests — the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) — and integrate rebel soldiers into the Congolese army.

In 2012, their grievances gave way to mutiny; the M23 group was formed on April 4, 2012, began its actions and allegedly committing war crimes, according to Human Rights Watch. UN forces were called into action last July

Tensions have risen significantly since, but reached a tipping point last month when leaked UN documents accused General James Kabarebe, the Rwandan defence minister, of being the de facto leader of M23. Uganda was also implicated, allegedly backing M23 as well.

Tutsis, Coups and Cell Phones

The various social, economic, and military components of the conflict have a myriad of consequences for the parties involved. 

As noted previously, the M23 is mostly made up of Tutsis — the ethnic minority that was almost extinguished in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Rwandan President Paul Kagame is also a Tutsi.

After the Rwandan genocide, over 2 million Hutus fled across the porous border between Rwanda and the DRC, fearing reprisals from the new Tutsi-led government. Since the late 90s, the Rwandan government — which has become a key military power in the region despite its size — has at times officially backed Tutsi militias or been accused of backing rebel Tutsis.

Social factors and ethnic strife aside, both Rwanda and Uganda have an interest in protecting their respective borders. But its clear to all sides that economics is a critical factor. The eastern part of the DRC, where M23 has been active, is rich in mineral wealth. Trade and influence in the region could lead yield serious economic gains.

"We're very tired, we're going to greet our friends now." 

While rebel forces have claimed that they will fight until the government falls, the Telegraph notes "it will be impossible for the M23, whose total strength is thought to number no more than 2,500 soldiers, to hold Goma." "We're very tired, we're going to greet our friends now." Colonel Kazarama added on Monday.

The rhetoric is just as heated. Congolese government spokesman Lambert Mende told reporters "Goma is in the process of being occupied by Rwanda," a claim that could not be independently verified. Reuters reports that Rwanda has accused the Congolese military of shelling its borders, although it has not called for a military response.

Negotiations are set to begin soon in Uganda, but M23 will not be invited. Their presence has been deemed "unnecessary,"as the Congolese government refuses to negotiate with the group. 

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Africa is covered in epithets, like graffiti. It has been labeled dark, lost, hopeless. But generalizations about Africa are dangerous. The only certainty is its size: it could contain the United States, China and India and still have room to spare. Recently it has been dubbed rising, hopeful, the continent of the future. But Africa cannot be declared successful until its vast, rich heart, the Congo, is peaceful and prosperous.

Most other African countries have more or less emerged from the uprisings and chaos of the 1990s that followed the end of the Cold War. But Congo lies broken and wasting. The last two elections have not produced a government capable of delivering services or security. The legacy of Mobutu Sese Seko's 22 year corrupt kleptocracy remains the zeitgeist of its ruling class. The people must fend for themselves.

Congo's potential, like most of Africa's, is immense and unmeasured. It has everything that the rest of the planet needs for the future; the highest reserves of mineral ore, thousands of square miles of fertile land and the second largest rainforest in the world. The energy of its huge, fast flowing river could power up much of southern Africa.

The knee-jerk reaction of Britain and other western countries is therefore to give Congo aid. And the only way of spending 0.7% of our GDP on aid is to give it to governments. But has Congo got a government? In 1997 the remnants of the Mobutu regime were pushed out by the armies of Rwanda and Uganda. They replaced him with Laurent Kabila, a former revolutionary and cafe owner, living in exile. When he rejected the Rwandans' tutelage, they had him murdered and replaced him with his son, Joseph.

To legitimize Joseph Kabila the aid donors paid for and organized two elections, each costing more than a billion dollars. In 2011 that came out of a national budget of £4.6 billion ($7.3 billion). The elections satisfied the western political need to give Kabila international legitimacy so he could now receive aid. But the elections in Congo divided rather than united. The losers saw them as fraudulent.

After the election supporters were rewarded, opponents shunned but they live in different parts of the country so a small war broke out. At the very moment when the country needed to come together, the western solution deepened the divisions. It also handed total political and economic power to a greedy elite incapable of constructing a viable state – even, as one Congolese academic said, in their own narrow interests.

What has wrecked the Congo is not lack of aid. It is politics. Aid has probably made things worse by offering development which may never be delivered. There is no state capable of delivering it. If ever there was a case for a country to be under a UN mandate, it is Congo. The United Nations' current half-baked, ill-thought-out mandate was cruelly exposed last week as UN troops stood back to allow rebels to take the city of Goma in eastern Congo.

But there was a second, even more catastrophic contradiction in western policy. After the Rwandan genocide, western governments, ridden with guilt, supported the incoming Rwandan regime, a rebel group led by the charismatic Paul Kagame. He now runs a capable state – perhaps too capable. Rwanda is a tightly controlled dictatorship, with almost no press or political freedom. But it uses aid well, it is not stolen. A succession of British aid ministers from Clare Short to Andrew Mitchell see Kagame as the savior of Africa. They gave him money – currently £83m a year, knowing it will be spent on education, health and other good things.

Rwanda's success however is Congo's loss. Fearful that political opponents will gather in the forests and mountains across the border in eastern Congo, the Rwandan and Ugandan regimes have armed militias there, most recently the M23, Mouvement de 23 Mars. This militia protects the Tutsis of eastern Congo, Kagame's ethnic group, and guards mines and plantations controlled by senior Rwandan and Ugandan officers. They control and tax trade routes and bring the loot across the border to Uganda and Rwanda. Above all, they ensure that there is no order, security or justice in eastern Congo. Every village has a militia and many have turned into roving gangs killing, raping and stealing at will. Controlled anarchy in eastern Congo suits Rwanda and Uganda – as long as the anarchy does not get out of hand.

Unfortunately, and embarrassingly for the British and American governments, Rwanda and Uganda, their closest allies in the region, have been fingered by a well-researched United Nations report, as the suppliers of weapons to M23 as well as the beneficiaries of the free-for-all in eastern Congo. The US tried to suppress the report. The British suspended aid to Rwanda. On his last day at DFID Mitchell restored it.

The war in eastern Congo is the worst war in the world, costing according to some estimates five million lives. It is time the US and UK took it seriously and played a more even and consistent hand in trying to bring peace.

Richard Dowden is the director of the Royal African Society and author of Africa; altered states, ordinary miracles

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

See also: How the conflict in the eastern DRC could destabilize the entire region >

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Just because the war in Afghanistan is winding down doesn't necessarily mean that the armed forces can expect a break.

A recent memorandum to President Obama from Michael O'Hanlon, a member of the Brookings Institute, urges Obama to send thousands of troops to both the war torn east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Libya.

O'Hanlon insists that a small force is all that the US needs to commit to the region to ensure major security gains.

O'Hanlon urges, in his memorandum to Obama, that:

[A] total of roughly 5,000 U.S. troops, to the DRC to beef up the existing U.N. peacekeeping force of just under 20,000 and give it the capacity to help the DRC get on its feet ... You should also deploy up to several hundred Americans as part of a coalition team to train and mentor Libyan security forces so that Libya, which seemed a successful part of the Arab Spring when Qaddafi was overthrown in 2011 but has since descended into chaos, can return to a more successful path.

This small force is completely within reason, O'Hanlon believes, due to the freeing up of soldiers after the ending of the war in Iraq and the winding down of operations in Afghanistan.

Although the US has been involved in low level training of DRC troops in the past, sending 5,000 troops to the country's turbulent east would be an unprecedented - and likely immensely unpopular - move, as the DRC poses no risk to US national security. 

The call for deployment of troops in Libya could be equally unpopular with Americans. Obama and other military officials long insisted that Libya would require absolutely "no boots on the ground."

This position could be reversed as Libya has been progressively sliding into a worse and worse state of anarchy. Rebels and extremists have been able to pillage Libyan weapons stores, leading to an increasing state of lawlessness stretching from Mali to Tunisia. Many of the weapons have flowed into the hands of al-Qaeda linked fighters in the region.

French troops are already engaged in fighting militants in Mali, and more recently the growing sectarian conflict in the Central African Republic, but O'Hanlon believes that a wider sense of security will not reach the region until Libya is fully stabilized.

Still, Obama insisted during his State of the Union address Tuesday that US involvement in any future conflicts would be a last resort.

“I will not send our troops into harm’s way unless it’s truly necessary. Nor will I allow our sons and daughters to be mired in open-ended conflicts,” the president said.

O'Hanlon holds onto hope that the US will become involved. He believes that this is a key time period to help stabilize Africa, and that:

[I]n a broader historic sense, helping make Africa a “zone of hope” could prove a durable and notable accomplishment. And after the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has created advisory capacity of a type it never had before that could make a major contribution elsewhere.

Whether Obama, and the average American, agrees with O'Hanlon is to be seen. But, with an increasingly war weary population, it is unlikely that anyone will look to his recommendations with much excitement.

SEE ALSO: Haunting Infrared Photos Of War-Torn Congo

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Brandon Stanton is the photographer behind Humans of New York, the wildly popular photography blog that currently has more likes on Facebook than the entire population of New York City itself. Stanton was recently tapped by the United Nations to go on a nearly 2-month-long "world tour" to bring his signature style to various countries around the globe.

Stanton's method involves high-quality portraits of people he meets on the street paired with illuminating quotes from them. The blog has been documenting people in and around New York City (and various other select cities) since 2010, and was the subject of a best-selling book released last year.

Currently, Stanton is shooting in Uganda. Before that, he traveled to Kenya, Jordan, Iraq, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Next up are India and Vietnam, according to The Atlantic. The trip was created to build awareness for the UN's Millennium Development Goals project, by attaching human faces to the project's written objectives.

While Stanton's travels have just begun, he's already got some great shots in the bag. Click through our slideshow to see some of the best ones. You can see more on his site, which is updated regularly.

I asked the mother for a photo, but she said the decision was up to her son. So I asked the boy. He stood up, walked over, looked me up and down, and said: "Prove to me you’re not a terrorist."(Kampala, Uganda)

"I clean the streets. I used to work as a lifeguard at a fancy hotel on the Dead Sea, but I lost my job. I brought some of the mud from the beach to my cousin because it is good for your skin. My manager said: ‘Hey! We can sell that! You’re stealing!’" (Amman, Jordan)

"We were engaged for six months, but her parents made her marry a richer man.""What’s the last thing you said to her?""I told her: ‘I’ve done all that I can do. I wish you happiness in your life.’" (Petra, Jordan)

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has claimed the lives of at least 1,427 people in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea.

Now, what appears to be a different strain of the hemorrhagic fever has been discovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) — in Central Africa — and 13 victims have already died. Two people have tested positive for the virus in the northwestern Equateur province, which borders the Republic of the Congo, and a quarantine area has since been set up, health minister Felix Kabange Numbi told the BBC.

While the DRC is the first country outside West Africa to confirm Ebola in this particular outbreak, it is where the virus was first discovered in 1976 when it was known as Zaire (alongside a simultaneous infection in Sudan). The region has since experienced multiple outbreaks.

"It's not unheard of to have two separate outbreaks, usually independent," Stephen Morse, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, told VICE News. Morse also noted that the DRC outbreak, which is taking place in a rural area, is much more typical. "West Africa's really an odd situation," he added.

In addition, Abraham Borbor, a Liberian doctor given the experimental serum ZMapp — the drug given to fully recovered American aid workers Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol — has died, according to Liberia's information minister. Two other Liberians who were given the drug are believed to be still alive, although their condition is unclear. ZMapp was also administered to a Spanish priest, who also succumbed to Ebola earlier this month.

On Saturday, the Philippines ordered the return of over 100 soldiers serving with the United Nations, citing concerns about safety, Reuters reported.

"The president is getting worried over the Ebola outbreak in Liberia and has ordered all 115 Filipino troops to return home as soon as possible,"said a senior defense official. Philippine troops working for the United Nations Disengagement Observation Force (UNDOF) number between 800 and 1,000 around the world.

There's no cure for Ebola yet — but there is an experimental serum. Read more here.

Meanwhile, aid workers in Ebola-affected areas of West Africa are working under ever-increasing strain. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at least 120 health workers in West Africa have died from Ebola and more than 240 are infected with the disease. Many more workers have left the infected regions, and fewer than 250 doctors remain in Liberia.

"What I'm really worried about is that we don't have enough people on the ground to handle the outbreak in West Africa, and now we have one in the DRC," said Morse. "In general, the response [in West Africa] was not the kind of immediate, quick response we've seen in the past."

Yesterday, the WHO also announced that one of their health workers had fallen ill with Ebola in Sierra Leone, the first of the organization's employees to test positive for the virus.

This is the first time someone working under the aegis of WHO has fallen ill with #Ebola

— WHO (@WHO) August 24, 2014

"The loss of so many doctors and nurses has made it difficult for WHO to secure support from sufficient numbers of foreign medical staff," the organization said in a statement.

Concern grows over spread of Ebola in Liberia. Watch here.

Follow Jordan Larson on Twitter: @jalarsonist

SEE ALSO: The Real Reason This Ebola Outbreak Is So Big

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The recent FIFA scandal shone a spotlight on the prevalence of global corruption.

A recent report from Verisk Maplecroft, a risk analysis and forecasting company, now identifies where similar occurrences happen most often in the world.

Defining corruption as "exerting influence, often through the provision of money or favours, to obtain a service," Verisk examined the economies of 198 countries from August 2012 to August 2014 based on reports by Transparency International, Freedom House, and the US Department of State and determined that developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East suffer the most from corrupt practices.

Throughout the two-year period, Verisk tracked five factors: the frequency of corruption, the duration of the corruption, the spread of corruption, the severity of the corruption, and the ability of those committing corruption to operate with impunity. 

Analysts at Verisk Maplecroft then quantified this data into a predefined scoring system on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being at extreme risk for corruption and 10 being at low risk for corruption.

In particular, Verisk determined that 45% of the countries deemed at "extreme" risk for corruption are located in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, oil, gas, and mining firms are the businesses most frequently exposed to demands for bribery, which dragged several Middle Eastern countries, as well as Russia, toward the bottom of the rankings.

"[Corruption] risks are particularly prevalent in developing economies,” Trevor Slack, legal and regulatory analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, wrote in the report. “Factors such as weak rule of law and a lack of institutional capacity in these markets undermine efforts to combat entrenched systems of patronage, while exposure to corrupt public officials and a reliance on third party agents is also higher.”

Out of the 198 countries, Verisk found 73 at "extreme" risk for corruption, 64 at "high" risk, 38 at "medium" risk, and 23 at "low" risk. (Denmark was rated as the least corrupt country, the US was rated 23rd-least corrupt).

SEE ALSO: Fans don't care if FIFA is corrupt

#10 South Sudan (tied)

Score: 0.15/10

A recent film by Al Jazeera, entitled "South Sudan: Country of Dreams," examines how the world's newest country (created in July 2011) spiraled into civil war.

"Despite its oil wealth, extensive corruption plagued the fledgling democracy," Al Jazeera reported. "Less than three years after gaining independence, the new country descended into civil war, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of its people and the displacement of almost two million."

#10 Russia (tied)

Score: 0.15/10

Here are just a few recent examples of shady Russian practices:

1. The imprisonment of politician Alexei Navalny, a Moscow mayoral candidate and one of Vladimir Putin's biggest critics.

2. Winning the 2018 FIFA World Cup bid by allegedly buying votes from FIFA delegates.

3. The alleged close relationship between the Russian government and the construction companies involved in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

#10 Myanmar (tied)

Score: 0.15/10

A May 2015 profile on the southeast Asian country by the BBC reported that the Burmese economy is "one of the least developed in the world and is suffering the effects of decades of stagnation, mismanagement, and isolation. Key industries have long been controlled by the military, and corruption is rife."

Out of the 23 poorest countries in the world, 19 are located in Africa, according to an analysis by the Global Finance Magazine. 

Based on data from the IMF, the magazine ranked the world's countries according to their GDP per capita and determined the poorest and richest ones.

The analysis also used a Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) basis, which takes into account the living cost and inflation rates, in order to compare living standards between the different nations.

Some small territories, such as Liechtenstein, Nauru, Vatican City, Monaco, San Marino and Andorra were not included in the study.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) ranks in as the poorest country in the world based on its GDP per capita over the 2009-2013 period.

With DRC citizens earning on average $394.25 a year, the country stands in sharp contrast with Qatar — where people earn an average of $105,091.42 a year. 

Following the Democratic Republic of Congo are Zimbabwe, where in 2013 people earned $589.25 on average, Burundi, where they earn $648.58 a year, and Liberia, where people earn $716.04 on average. 

The first non-African country on the list is Afghanistan, which comes in at the 10th place. It is also the first country where the average annual income passes the $1,000 threshold with $1072.19.

The other non-African countries on the list of the poorest 23 countries in the world are Nepal, Haiti, and Myanmar. 

Here is the list of the 23 poorest countries in the world (and here's the full study):

SEE ALSO: The 23 richest countries in the world

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NOW WATCH: This animated map shows the largest company by revenue for every state

The United Nations has spent half a billion dollars on contracts with a Russian aviation company since discovering one of its helicopter crews in the Democratic Republic of Congo drugged and raped a teenage girl in a sexual attack.

Senior UN officials considered terminating the company UTair’s contract after concluding that the incident, in which the girl was dumped naked and unconscious inside the helicopter base, was indicative of a wider culture of sexual exploitation at the company.

Internal UN documents, marked “strictly confidential” and leaked to the Guardian, reveal how the UN’s internal complaints unit uncovered evidence the woman was abused with lit cigarettes and photographed lying on the ground. The UN concluded the shocking attack in 2010 was perpetrated by the manager in charge of UTair’s base in Kalemie, eastern DRC.

The main investigative report, from March 2011, warned of a possible “culture of sexual exploitation and abuse” at UTair. Copies of that report were circulated among top officials at the UN, including, in New York, the office of the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.

After what is described as collective “disgust” at the top echelons of the UN over the case, officials considered terminating UTair’s contract. Instead, the company was permitted to continue doing business with the UN on the condition it introduce a new training regime overseen by a monitor. UTair remains the largest provider of air transportation to the UN.

The disclosures come at a critical moment for the UN secretary general, who has struggled to contain the fallout from recent revelations concerning the sexual abuse of children by French and other peacekeeping troops in the Central African Republic.

Last month Ban, who argues the UN has a “zero-tolerance” policy toward sexual exploitation, ordered an independent review of the case involving involving French peacekeepers and wider problems with dealing with sexual abuse, an issue that has plagued the UN for decades.
He will now be forced to explain how a company implicated in sexual exploitation managed to expand its contracts with the UN.

“It wasn’t just one or two bad apples,” said a senior UN official familiar with the report and its fallout. “It was clear the problems of sexual exploitation were wider.”

Since the damning report into UTair was completed four years ago, the company has been granted new contracts, or renewed existing deals, for helicopter support at UN missions in Lebanon, Western Sahara, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Somalia and Mali.

In total, the company, which is referred to in some documents as Nefteyugansk, a subsidiary operating in the DRC, has been granted contracts worth $543.3m for services provided in 11 countries since the UN became aware it had a problem with sexual exploitation.

The UN was notified of disturbing reports about UTair’s compound in Kalemie in August 2010. A local NGO relayed a complaint from the teenage girl who said she had been sexually assaulted by “pilots” who worked for the UN’s mission in the country, MONUSCO. 

The complaint was passed on to the UN’s office of Internal Oversight Service – an internal investigations unit, commonly known as OIOS – which dispatched a senior investigator to the country.

The final investigation report, signed off by the then the officer-in-charge of OIOS investigations, Michael Dudley, is accompanied by dozens of medical reports and witness interviews. They reveal how UN investigators focused on two UTair employees: the site manager at the compound, and a ground engineer.

However, the report paints a picture hints at routine sexual encounters between local women and staff at the base, and does not rule complicity of other helicopter crew at the base.

The victim told UN investigators that she had been walking to see a friend when a man she assumed to be a security guard at the compound invited her in to meet with the site manager.

She said she was was escorted to the site manager’s room, where she was offered a fizzy drink. She then became drowsy, she told investigators, and drifted out of consciousness, as a second man entered the room.

The UN report found she did not regain full consciousness until around four hours later, at about 6pm. The girl recalled waking up naked, being taken into a bathroom, having water poured over her and later complaining “her private parts were sore”. She recalled being escorted from the compound by a guard who helped her get dressed.

The man who escorted the girl to the site manager’s room, a cleaner, testified that he had been instructed by the Utair site manager to “find a girl he could have a ‘good time’ with”.

A security guard who worked at a church organisation neighbouring the compound, told UN investigators that he also saw the teenage girl lying naked and unconscious in the site manager’s garden that day.

He testified that the UTair ground engineer implicated in the case “took pictures of her and threw cigarettes on her”.

The report continues: “He [the guard] further said that [the ground engineer] put a lit cigarette in her anus. He also said that [the ground engineer] was very drunk and beat [the victim] severely, including kicking her in the buttocks”.

The UN report did not use the term “rape”. However, in the US the sexual assault it describes being perpetrated on the victim would constitute rape under the definition adopted by the FBI since 2013.

The UN report notes that when the lead investigator interviewed the ground engineer, weeks later, he smelt strongly of alcohol and had bloodshot eyes. He denied any knowledge of the incident involving the teenager and told the investigator he had never seen any women inside the compound.

UTair’s site manager, the chief suspect, was never interviewed; the report notes only that he was “invited” for an interview three times and failed to show up.

The OIOS is an administrative investigative office whose authority is limited to certain parts of the UN system. A UN spokesperson told the Guardian the OIOS “has no coercive authority over people who are not UN staff”.

The UN’s investigator did, however, interview several other UTair crew members, including three engineers, three pilots and two flight attendants. They all gave similar evidence about never having seen women at the base, a claim the OIOS concluded was “inconsistent with the balance of evidence”.

Although UTair’s site manager refused to be interviewed, he was confronted, two days after the rape was said to have occurred, by a local UN official. Felix Kitungwa, who was then the UN’s acting officer in charge of child protection in the area, told the OIOS that he accompanied the rape victim to the Russian helicopter base to help retrieve her mobile phone.

When they encountered the UTair site manager, he admitted to Kitungwa that the teenager had been at his house, but denied she had been raped. The site manager then tried to give the victim $500.

The report concluded the site manager “either sexually abused or facilitated the sexual abuse of a minor”. The ground engineer, the report said, “physically assaulted and engaged in activities denigrating a minor”.

The report also concluded that UTair had not given its staff mandatory training designed to prevent sexual abuse and exploitation at UN peacekeeping missions.

In the wake of the UN’s findings, UTair dismissed both the site manager and ground engineer implicated in the report. Both have been blacklisted from future work with the UN.

Around the time of their dismissal, the news agency Reuters reported that two contracted UN helicopter operators in the DRC had been sacked over an unknown incident.

Until now, however, the UN and UTair have have succeeded in keeping secret details of the rape and the company’s wider perceived problems.

Unlike UN staff and peacekeeping troops, contracted UN workers are not afforded diplomatic immunity from prosecution.

According to a second UN source with close knowledge of the investigation, the lead investigator in the case recommended, in an early draft of the report, that the UN’s findings be shared with local law enforcement authorities.

However, that recommendation appears to have been struck from the final draft. The UN told the Guardian it was unable to confirm or deny whether a recommendation to pass evidence to local law enforcement authorities was removed from early drafts of the report.

Prosecutors in the DRC were already aware of the case, the UN said in a statement. Once its investigation was completed, the report was shared with authorities in Russia, the UN added.

The first UN source said: “OIOS looked at other things involving the company... It is clear the problems of sexual exploitation were wider than just two individuals. We believed there was a need to change the culture of the organisation.”

In the end, the final OIOS report on the attack contained only a single recommendation: for the findings to be shared with divisions within the UN that deal with procurement of services consider “appropriate action against” UTair.

Around May 2011, the UN suspended both UTair and its subsidiary and convened what it now describes as an “ad hoc high level panel comprised of senior UN officials” to advise the appropriate repercussions for the Russian helicopter provider.

In its statement to the Guardian, the UN confirmed the panel considered terminating UTair’s contract. But after taking into account “the mission criticality” of its helicopter services top UN officials ultimately decided to keep working with the company on the condition it submitted to a “compliance monitor”.

According to the UN, the monitor, an international law firm, was mandated to oversee the implementation of sexual abuse and exploitation “prevention training and outreach programmes” at the company.

The agreement came into force in October, 2011, kickstarting a four-year period of expansion during which UTair has significantly bolstered its business with the UN across the world.

Asked for a comment, a representative of UTair pointed the Guardian to a statement published on its website four years ago. It said the company “actively participated” in the UN’s investigation and “took the necessary disciplinary measures” against one employee.

The process of “constant monitoring” introduced by the UN, the UTair statement added, would help the company meet the high standards expected of UN contractors.

The UN, in its statement, said the novel auditing procedures it imposed on the Russian helicopter operator was intended to achieve “rehabilitation, as contrasted with contract termination”.

“It is a long-term external and independent oversight mechanism for a UN vendor, implemented through contractual rather than judicial terms,” the UN said. “It is the first agreement of its kind adopted by the UN.”

The UN statement added: “The United Nations takes very seriously any case of sexual abuse perpetrated staff or by affiliated contractors.”

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Former President Bill Clinton once sought information from Hillary Clinton's State Department about speaking invitations "related to two of the most repressive countries in the world,"ABC News reported Friday.

According to the report, which was based on newly uncovered emails, Bill Clinton's team wanted feedback three years ago on two potential paid speeches. One was for the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the neighboring Congo, and the other was "related" to North Korea.

It's not clear what, exactly, the North Korea speech would have entailed. The government in Pyongyang is a fierce adversary of the US.

Hillary Clinton, who served as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, is the 2016 Democratic presidential front-runner.

The emails shine a light on what has been one of the more controversial aspects of her campaign: Bill Clinton's highly lucrative paid speeches, some of which conservative critics alleged represented conflicts of interest for his wife. The State Department reviewed and at least one time questioned some of his speeches connected to foreign governments.

"Is it safe to assume [the US government] would have concerns about WJC accepting the attached invitation related to North Korea?" a Bill Clinton staffer reportedly wrote to some of Hillary Clinton's top aides in 2012, using the former president's initials.

The State Department, predictably, panned the idea.

"Decline it," replied Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.

But the Bill Clinton staffer, Amitabh Desai, still wanted more information, and he reportedly said the invitation came via Hillary Clinton's brother, Tony Rodham. (Rodham is no stranger to controversy and was linked to alleged political favors in a report published by the Department of Homeland Security's investigator general.)

"We would be grateful for any specific concerns that we could share," Desai reportedly wrote to the State Department three weeks after Mills shot down the North Korea idea. "Tony is seeing WJC in a couple hours."

Mills replied: "If he needs more let him know his wife knows and I am happy to call him secure when he is near a secure line."

ABC said it obtained the messages because of a records request from the conservative group Citizens United.

The details of the Congo invitation were even more fleshed out in the report, written by ABC's chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl.

In a June 2012 email to the State Department, Desai wanted to know whether Bill Clinton could speak in Brazzaville, Congo, and pose for photos with the "dictators" of Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Karl wrote. The speaking fee for the gig: $650,000.

Bill Clinton apparently wanted to give the money to his family's foundation.

"WJC wants know what state thinks of it if he took it 100% for the foundation," Desai wrote to Mills and other Clinton aides, including the close Clinton adviser Huma Abedin. "We'd welcome your thoughts."

The Harry Walker Agency, which helped coordinate Bill Clinton's speeches, reportedly recommended turning down the invitation given the human-rights record of the Democratic Republic of Congo's problematic leader, Joseph Kabila.

"The speaking agency's vetting of the Democratic Republic of the Congo noted the 'prevalence and intensity of sexual violence against women in eastern Congo is widely described as the worst in the world,'" Karl wrote.

The legitimacy of Kabila's government has also been questioned.

"The 2011 presidential election was tainted by serious irregularities and voter fraud, according to American and European electoral observers," The New York times noted earlier this year. "Kabila's second term began in controversy, with protests erupting and his main challenger also claiming victory."

In response to the ABC story, Bill Clinton's office said the emails were routine and that he did not ultimately give either speech.

"As a matter of course, all requests were run by the State Department," Clinton's press secretary told ABC. "Ultimately, the president did not give these speeches."

A top Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman also dismissed the story on Twitter:

But Karl disagreed and wrote back that it was notable that Bill Clinton even needed to ask about these two invitations:

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Long before the 70th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) captivated global attention this past September and granted emerging countries the opportunity to highlight their commitment to development and their respective ascendancies to the forefront of the international marketplace, trouble brewed red-hot in Kinshasa.

Back in January, widespread protests broke out throughout the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), following the Administration of sitting President Joseph Kabila passing a new law that required a national census to be held before any future elections.

It was the culmination of rampant frustration. Opposition parties, along with most ordinary citizens, were outraged; they rightly foresaw a blatant attempt by the administration, in power since the dawn of this millennium, to extend its rule and continue stifling the freedoms, opportunities and socioeconomic trajectory of a nation with the viable potential to be a true power-player across the continent.

Though we understand that elections loom for November of 2016, we are currently watching with optimism for the future as a crisis of conscience today unfolds through a deficit of leadership, one that has trickled down to the detriment of all walks of life for the Congolese.

I have no doubt that the roughly 75 million citizens that make up the diverse provinces of the DRC are painfully aware of what could have been yet moreover, share my ambitions for a new and exciting future.

With over eighty million hectares of arable land and one thousand minerals and precious metals (including columbo-tantalite or coltan, a crucial raw material for the production of modern electronics worldwide), our nation hosts a potential like no other. Indeed it is truly an “elephant of Africa,” one that can be a leading economic steward throughout the continent and a driver of developing market growth.

Our citizens rightly envision the DRC as an investment opportunity; that, if properly managed, with transparency a priority and sustainable development throughout all social investment projects to compliment corporate gains mutually-beneficial responsibilities, a new, determined generation can reap the rewards of the bounty that our land has to offer. That we can take control of what can be our dynamic future in the global business arena.

Sadly, the present Kinshasa regime has neither the commitment to democratic adherences to regulate its maneuverings nor a roadmap for such reformation to capitalize on what we have been endowed with to the betterment of our people, our nation and indeed Africa’s positioning in the world.

Threats to security and territorial integrity, those that have long gone unabated, should be priorities for any government, as they are matters that have been severely detrimental to investment in the country and continue to pose risks to our citizenry.

In the African Great Lakes region, we remain vulnerable to attack. The susceptibility of our country to armed incursions from neighbors on all sides is reason enough to be concerned, made worse if those states (such as Burundi, Uganda and Rwanda) also suffer from periodic disarray. In the east of the Congo, the remnants of the Rwandan Hutu militias, local Mai-Mai militants, the Ugandan Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), and assorted other fortified groups still pose a threat to our civilians.

Domestic crime remains high, due obviously to present deficiencies in the country. Despite a reduction in our poverty rate to 63% in 2012, the DRC ranks second to last on the Human Development Index (186 out of 187 countries), and our per capita income remains among the lowest in the developing world.

And speaking out against those responsible — the Administration and ruling Kinshasa clique — in this manner at home, in the pages of a newspaper or on-site as a reporter, has never been more dangerous in the DRC. Reporters Without Borders has stated that our country’s journalists, whether State-owned, in opposition or independent, are regularly subjected to all kinds of pressure and intimidation tactics that include direct threats, arbitrary arrests, the seizure of equipment and prolonged detainment.

Our constitution forbids a third presidential term yet controversy swirls with regard to President Kabila’s ambitions and willingness to adhere to the rule of law. Journalists documenting the various campaigns have been subjected to internal and external pressures to promote the government’s activities and, more importantly, have been instructed to refrain from criticizing any government officials.

And there is much to criticize: The current President inherited his position from his father when the latter was assassinated. Four years prior to the ongoing tragedy in neighboring Burundi, our 2011 election results brought their own degree of scrutiny and accusations. There were claims that the Congo’s Supreme Court had not examined electoral results thoroughly enough when it awarded the victory to the incumbent administration.

Indeed if our judiciary is persuaded to play a role in any kind of constitutional crisis in the run-up to the national elections, we would lose even greater credibility as it would not be seen as a neutral institution but as a weapon of the would-be Kabila dynasty.

While acknowledging the problems and the challenges that hold the Democratic Republic of Congo back, as elections approach, I believe there is a pressing need to reveal what can be done to bridge the gap between the few "haves" and the millions of "have-nots."

We must continue to empower and encourage women, comprising over 53% of our population, to play their critical, constructive role in our workforce. We must implement accountable reforms for all corporate and political governance that can propel our economy forward and in doing so, provide much-needed, equal opportunity to a highly capable citizenry, ready for their place in history.

We need to encourage international cooperation in the global fight on terror in all of its forms. We need to invest in our youth, in transparent and bipartisan academic curriculums while ensuring those multi-national corporations actively operating in the DRC provide realistic models for shared growth in effectively and accountably utilizing the God-given benefits of doing business in and residing throughout a truly Democratic Republic of Congo.

We must craft our own legacy by applying democratic principles, meeting and exceeding the standards of the international community. We must establish a rule of law in which everyone is equal before the law and enjoys the same rights and obligations under it. And we must crucially defend the integrity of the Congolese territory by using all available means to protect our national heritage.

I’ve remained close to my community throughout my career, one that often takes me across the continent and the globe, and have tried to be an ambassador for the DRC. I do this out of pride, loyalty — and from a business standpoint, the understanding of the multifaceted, unprecedented capability of our country to take an enormous leap forward by offering incentivizing, trusted conduits for foreign integration with our growing workforce.

It will soon be in our hands to create lasting change. The international community should cast balanced perspective on the DRC and examine how the upcoming national elections, scheduled for November of 2016, will be pivotal to geopolitics and business in Africa and around the world.

The Génération Déterminée movement wants to bring about responsible reform that can clear our conscience and inspire the next generation.

Bernard Katompa is the President of the Génération Déterminée Movement in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The views expressed are his own.

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The 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which a tottering government spurred members of the Hutu ethnic group to slaughter as many as 800,000 of their Tutsi neighbors, has been the subject of numerous books, dramatic films, and documentaries aimed at a general audience.

The atrocity's messy aftermath hasn't inspired quite the same interest.

Rwanda's post-genocide government helped touch off multiple region-wide conflicts in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, as Paul Kagame, the commander of the eventually victorious Tutsi forces in 1994, molded Rwanda into one of the most thoroughgoing dictatorships in Africa.

Rwanda's post-genocide trajectory, and Kagame's construction of a seemingly stable, prosperous and internationally laudedauthoritarian state, is one of the most fascinating and morally vexing foreign-policy stories of the past two decades. But it's largely remained inaccessible to nonspecialists — which is why "Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship," author Anjan Sundaram's recently published book recounting his time in Rwanda, is so important.

Sundaram's first-person account of his experience working as an instructor in a journalism-training program in Kigali, Rwanda's capital, is one of the first explorations of the post-genocide Rwandan dictatorship aimed at a general audience.

From 2009 to 2013, Sundaram watched as his students were swept up in Kagame's crackdown on the independent media — a terrifying decompression of the political and intellectual space that did not trigger any noticeable reduction in western support for Kagame's government.

Sundaram's book will be of interest even to readers who know nothing about Rwandan history, or about Kagame's leading role in the labyrinthine conflicts that have frequently convulsed Africa's Great Lakes region over the past 20 years. The book's details and narrative are solely focused on Rwanda, but its major themes have a tragically universal character.

"Bad News" is a jarringly intimate record of how an oppressive government's distortions of the truth play out on the level of an individual mind. It's a book about the denial of freedom of conscience — about how a dictatorship's wholesale reconstruction of reality corrodes and then co-opts the psyche, molding citizens into timid reflections of their doubts and fears.

As Sundaram told Business Insider, Rwanda under Kagame"was a world in which [people] could trust almost no one, where ... they would disown friends, disown family, isolate themselves" based on even the vaguest perception of danger from an omnipresent government. "And the power of the system was that people did these things to themselves."

Sundaram hopes that his book "will make it more uncomfortable" for foreign governments "to lie about what they know and force them to speak more openly about the cost at which their support to Rwanda’s government comes."

His book ends with an appendix listing scores of journalists who have been harassed, persecuted, or killed by Kagame's regime. Above all, he hopes his book will preserve at least some of their stories, which are little known both inside and outside the country.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

BUSINESS INSIDER: Early on in the book you argue that Rwanda’s vaunted development statistics [see here] are actually badly distorted, noting that they come from the government or are based on surveys of an intimidated citizenry. Do you think the world’s entire view of the development situation in Rwanda is totally skewed by the problems you identify?

ANJAN SUNDARAM: I think the numbers are skewed. I wouldn’t trust any government in a country in which there’s no free press ...

In Rwanda there is no free press, so the government has free reign to say whatever they want and whatever they say becomes the truth. And the problem is that the world has blindly, unquestioningly accepted their word, so that when the Rwandan government says economic growth is at 8% the world believes it and publishes it and without saying “according to the government” …

Almost all of the research projects documenting the economy in Rwanda have proceeded with the explicit approval of the government and have been shaped by the government in important ways. Researchers are talking to government-sanctioned subjects. They’re getting government permission to access the countryside, which is highly controlled.

I also think a lot of the world’s view on Rwanda is shaped on people’s impressions coming in. You arrive in Rwanda and you’ve been told the story of the genocide but you see the roads, the streetlights, the skyscrapers. I think the emotional response is so powerful that people tend to slack off on the actual evidence and the facts.

People want to believe Rwanda’s story, of a successful country rising from the ashes of genocide. And so it’s easy forget that most of the information that we have about the country and most of the survey data comes from one source: the Rwandan government. And it’s a highly repressive government.

BI: One theme of the book is the idea that in such an oppressive country you have to figure out what’s going on based on what you’re not seeing, while figuring out how to interpret what you are seeing — everything’s a code in a way, pointing to stories the government doesn’t want told. When did you get to the point where you could figure out the significance of what you were observing and experiencing?

AS: When I arrived in Rwanda in 2009 I was largely oblivious to the extent of repression and control. I knew about Kagame’s forces’ war crimes in Congo but I had read much of the same positive news that everyone reads about Rwanda. I read nothing almost that told me about the stories of the many journalists and politicians and academics and military figures who had fled the country or been killed because they had opposed the president. These stories are just suppressed. These people are forgotten.

One of the purposes of writing this book was to put on record some of what these journalists stood up for. They saw the country heading in a direction, and they stood up to what they saw was problematic. And they suffered for it. They’re unspoken of in Rwanda today except in extremely derogatory terms.

I wanted to put on record what they stood for, what they saw. They saw clearly, they saw early and they fought for it — and they suffered.

When I began to teach these classes among the first things the students said to me was tell us how your countries won their freedom. Your countries were not always free. How did you win your freedom?

That began this journey of trying to understand my students’ experiences …

I guess the culmination of that process was when Gibson, one of my students … took me outside the house where I was staying in Kigali and he showed me the road across the hill.

And this road was one of Rwanda’s cleanest, best roads, one of the roads that every foreigner and donor would point to as a sign of progress: It was well-paved, the streetlights were all working, they were spaced closer even than in Dubai, which is a resource-rich country and Rwanda is not resource-rich. It gave an impression of a country that was wealthy, calm, orderly, beautiful, and growing.

Gibson showed me that people didn’t use that road. The road was completely empty. People were walking along a different local road, which was unlit and unpaved, and apparently people viewed the well-paved road and well-lit road with fear: They saw it as a place where the government could keep watch on them, and they avoided it.

That raises a question about development. What we see in Rwanda and how the people there see it can be completely the opposite. We see a memorial for the genocide and think it’s commemorating the genocide and ensuring it doesn’t happen again. But they see it as a place where trauma is spread within the country by the government as a means of control.

We see a well-paved road that people can use. They see it as a method for government surveillance and they avoid the road …

My students took me into a country that is completely divorced from what a foreigner or a visitor would experience. And the more I explored that world the more terrifying it seemed.

It was a world in which they could trust almost no one, where people performed a kind of theater in order to please the government. They would disown friends, disown family, isolate themselves. And the power of the system was that people did these things to themselves.

BI: Throughout the book you seem to detect a continuation of the genocide-era mindset in the country, and inevitably your book appears to suggest that Rwanda actually isn’t stable, and that a catastrophic historical pattern is reproducing itself in a way. Is Rwanda actually a powder keg, and will its current stability one day appear fictive?

AS: … There’s a very granular level of government control in Rwanda. If someone comes and stays at your house your neighbors will inform the local chief who lives just two streets down, and that chief will have a direct connection to a line of authority that reaches all the way to the center in Kigali.

This structure was the reason why the genocide began so quickly and proceeded so efficiently in 1994 after the government gave the order to kill.

I don’t think that Kagame has transformed the country from what it was during the genocide. In fact the situation today is extremely worrying. There’s only the government’s voice. People who criticize the government are killed, imprisoned, tortured, force to flee the country fearing for their lives …

When no one confirms what you’re saying you can begin to question what you saw and felt. This is the power of dictatorial system. People question themselves. And truth becomes elusive in your own mind, things that you know to be facts and felt in your skin can come to seem like figments of your imagination. And that’s an experience that I wanted to communicate in the book.

Much of the book is not only to criticize the government but also communicate some of what it feels like to live in a dictatorship and how disorienting and jarring and transformative it can be.

BI: With Kagame recently amending the constitution to be able to stay in power until 2034 [see here], where do you see Rwanda going in the next 20-odd years with no free press and the government as entrenched as it is.

AS: It’s looking very unlikely that power will transfer from Kagame without violence. That’s also the academic consensus. There are competent, intelligent, experienced Rwandan politicians. Unfortunately Kagame has alienated all of them or killed them … he’s directly responsible for building a system in which he holds total power …

And historically — Rwandan included — when countries have leaders whose power is absolute, transitions of power are accompanied by violence.

BI: Yours is one of the first books for a general readership about the dictatorship in Rwanda. What ideally would you like the impact of this book to be, given the ground that it breaks for a general audience?

AS: I wrote this book from a place of affection for my students. It would have been very difficult to write this book without that affection. It’s a very hard place, and a hard topic to write about. The propaganda is so powerful that it’s difficult even to think outside it.

I was writing drafts of this book while my journalists were being harassed. I saw students’ photos in the newspapers with their heads shaved and looking really weak and sad. In those moments I would sit down and write, and I would wake up the next morning and often find that what I had written was less interesting because it was reacting to the repression and I was trying to undo or challenge the Rwandan government’s narrative. And that’s not what I want to do in this book.

What I want to do is tell the stories. I arrived in Rwanda in 2009 to teach a new corps of journalists. None of them are practicing today. One of my students was shot dead on the day he criticized the government. Two women were sent to prison, at the time for 17 years, for insulting Kagame. Two others fled to Europe fearing for their lives. Others joined the president’s propaganda team or simply dropped out of journalism. One of them went mad.

My motivation was to tell the stories of these brave Rwandan journalists who saw where their country was heading, tried to challenge it, tried to do their jobs in a peaceful and largely constructive way and were squashed, crushed by Kagame in his drive for power …

BI: Do you suspect that you’re now barred from entering Rwanda?

AS: I expect people I knew in Rwanda to make up things about my private life, about the private lives of people near and dear to me. I expect the government to produce false documents implicating friends or people that I know. I expect them to just go after me; they might try to find out whom I was associating with, or figure out who my sources are, and I’m pretty sure that those people will feel a need to distance themselves from me. Now, with the release of my book, it’s a problem for people inside Rwanda to say they even knew me or were my friend.

BI: Even not being in Rwanda the book handcuffs you in a way — you don’t want there to be consequences for the people you interacted with when you were living there.

AS: Exactly. I think the physical security of people has to come before any other consideration. I cannot even say that this person was my friend. It would be a problem for them …

This is something I was very aware of when I was writing the book. I knew that in writing this book I would be breaking all my ties with Rwanda.

Rwanda is the place in which I have lived for the longest since I was 10 years old. It’s the closest thing to home that I’ve known in my adult life in some ways, as far as an independent home, a home I made myself.

It hasn’t been an easy decision to know that in writing this book I would be forsaking that — that I won’t be able to go back, that the friends I’ve made will have to be forsaken, and that they might forsake me.

Anyone who criticizes the government of Rwanda has to confront these very serious personal questions, and many people within Rwanda understandably choose not to confront them because the consequence would be so great.

I’m a foreigner. I have a degree of freedom; I’m not totally tied to Rwanda. So I felt I had lived through some of the worst repression in Rwanda in recent times and that there was an obligation to write about it and come to terms with the fact that I’m going to lose friends and am going to continue to lose friends and friends are going to accuse me of things and smear me.

BI: And the idea is that it will have been worth it to get the story out.

AS: Absolutely. As a journalist I feel our job is to hold power accountable. And the Rwandan government has abused its power and almost no one has held it accountable. They praise Kagame, they praise the economy, but the press, both local and foreign, has not held Kagame accountable for his abuses of power.

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For over two decades, cities around the world have used red light and speed cameras to help enforce traffic laws.

Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is betting that giant robots could be more effective (and promote safety in sub-Saharan Africa, where over 2,200 deaths occur from car accidents every year).

The first two bots — which stand over eight feet tall and weigh 550 pounds — were installed on the sides of two intersections in 2013. In 2015, three more bots, named Tamuke, Mwaluke and Kisanga, were planted at three other main traffic junctions, according to The Guardian.

They essentially work like normal security cameras. As cars go by, the bots record them, and Kinshasa's police can monitor the real-time footage. Those who speed or run a red light get tickets (The bots are not equipped with artificial intelligence, so they can't issue tickets themselves). Their chests also rotate and serve as four traffic lights at once.

The new robots are powered by solar panels and cost $27,500 each, while the older prototypes cost $10,000 each. Women's Technologies (Wotech), a Congolese co-op that employs both female and male engineers, created the bots. An entrepreneur named Thérèse Izay Kirongozi spearheaded the design.

The response by Kinshasa residents has been mostly positive, according to the local news outlet CCTV Africa. In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, science fiction author Nnedi Okorafor wrote that the bots keep traffic down and allow pedestrians and drivers to feel safe. 

"These robot traffic cops work around the clock and are beloved by locals — and they don’t accept bribes," she writes.

Not everyone is convinced. As Citylab notes, the bots could be a distraction from the city's more pertinent issues with urban planning, including unpaved roads and lack of public transportation. 

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(Reuters) - Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou plans to meet with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday to discuss the ongoing political turmoil crisis in Libya and other African issues, Sassou's spokesman said on Monday.

Sassou's spokesman Thierry Moungalla, in a post on Twitter, noted that the two men were meeting to discuss ways to the end the Libyan crisis as well other broader issues affecting the continent, according to a statement attached to the tweet. He did not give any other details about the meeting plans.

Representatives for Trump's team did not immediately respond to a request for comment seeking to confirm the meeting with the incoming Republican president, who takes office Jan. 20 and is spending this week at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Libya is grappling with continuing political turmoil as rival governments split the nation's East and West, and other armed factions also compete for power. The United Nations earlier this month also cited an ongoing human rights crisis affecting migrants there.

Trump, a New York businessman who has never held elected office, has been holding an ongoing stream of meetings at his property in Palm Beach as well as Trump Tower in New York City as he prepares to assume the White House from Democratic U.S. President Barack Obama.

Most of his meetings have centered on possible candidates to serve in his administration, including his Cabinet.

In November, Trump met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and, according to a report, the two plan to meet again Jan. 27.

Trump has also fielded numerous calls from a number of world leaders since winning the U.S. presidential election Nov. 8 against his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

(Reporting by Tim Cocks in Senegal and Melissa Fares in Palm Beach, Florida; editing by Diane Craft)

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KINSHASA (Reuters) - The president of Democratic Republic of Congo's electoral commission said on Sunday that a vote to replace President Joseph Kabila will probably not be possible this year, violating a deal that let Kabila stay on past the end of his mandate.

Kabila was required by the constitution to step down at the end of his second term last December but he struck an accord with opposition leaders under which elections would take place before the end of 2017 and he would not stand for a third term.

(Reporting By Aaron Ross; Editing by Mary Milliken)

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Democratic Republic of Congo's President Joseph Kabila has refused to relinquish power for more than a year, and the Catholic Church has emerged as the leader in the fight against him.

Since December, when Kabila again refused to step down, the church and a spiritual group called the Lay Coordination Committee have organized a handful of protests, all of which have ended violently. 

Most recently, anti-government protests in the capital city of Kinshasa on Sunday left four people dead and two more injured, according to the Associated Press.

Kabila's refusal to step down has also aggravated violence between government forces and multiple armed groups in other areas of the country. This includes the Kasai and Kivu regions, where mass atrocities have been carried out by both sides, killing and displacing thousands in the last few years.

Here's what's going on:

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President Joseph Kabila took power of the DRC in 2001 after his father's assassination.

Kabila helped unify the country after the two Congo wars of 1996-97 and 1998-2003, bringing back international business and raising GDP.

But at the same time, his government has been accused of gross incompetence, corruption and human rights abuses. 

Source: AFP

Kabila was supposed to step down after his two-term mandate expired on December 19, 2016, but he stayed on after invoking a controversial law requiring a successor to be elected. This sparked a wave of protests.

In January 2017, the Catholic Church brokered a deal between Kabila's People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy and opposition parties that elections would be held in December 2017 and that Kabila would step down.

In December 2017, Kabila again refused to step down, saying that an election would have to be held at the end of 2018 because the government didn't have enough money.

Election officials have even said that, because of continued financial and logistical problems, the election might be even held later than that. 

The past two weeks have largely focused on investor concerns over Eurozone contagion and the post-election protests in Russia. But the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC's) incumbent president Joseph Kabila is also under pressure after his victory in the December 9 election. Political violence is expected to escalate in the country. 

Here is the map of global emerging risks and an article on the rising governance risk in the Democratic Republic of Congo via Maplecroft:

Event 

Incumbent president Joseph Kabila claimed victory on 9 December 2011 after an election which saw delays and political violence. According to the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), Kabila won 48.97% of the vote. Veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi - who won 32.3% of the vote - rejected the result and declared himself the winner. The resulting political deadlock is likely to further undermine Kabila's legitimacy and potentially prompt an escalation in political violence. 

Significance 

Concerns that the DRC's vast landmass and poor infrastructure might impede a free and fair electoral process proved justified, as logistical problems resulted in the extension of the 28 November election by three days, and delayed CENI's announcement of the results by 48 hours. US NGO the Carter Centre expressed concerns about electoral integrity from the outset, citing major procedural difficulties including transport issues, missing ballots and closed polling stations. While CENI announced implausibly high turnout and support in pro-Kabila constituencies, logistical problems severely disrupted voting and resulted in the loss of over 2,000 polling stations' results in pro-opposition constituencies, including up to 350,000 votes in Kinshasa alone. 

Reports of such electoral irregularities and bias have increased the salience of the opposition's claims of official electoral manipulation. The early 2011 constitutional amendment that abolished the second-round vote appears to have facilitated Kabila's hold on power, as the opposition failed to unite around a single candidate, effectively handing Kabila victory. Concerns regarding the democratic credibility of the Kabila-appointed CENI and Supreme Court have clearly informed Tshisekedi's refusal to submit an electoral appeal to the Supreme Court or pursue a power-sharing agreement, making political stalemate a likely outcome at present. 

International pressure may deter widespread violence – temporarily 

The international community's decision to stop short of calling for the annulment of the results suggests tacit support for a Kabila government – with input from Tshisekedi and the UPDS if possible – rather than risking further deterioration in the country's political stability. Given the DRC's violent history, international organizations such as the International Crisis Group are now pressing for post-election mediation, with input from international stakeholders such as the UN, EU and African Union (AU). However, a peaceful resolution of the impending political impasse will be reliant on both Kabila and Tshisekedi softening their positions, and offering political concessions. 

Tshisekedi has already asked his supporters to refrain from violence, but should UDPS supporters grow impatient at slow or stalling political progress, they are likely to be met with violence, as Kabila deploys DRC security forces in an increasingly authoritarian manner. Since 26 November there have been reports of increasing arbitrary detention, and over ten fatalities, as DRC security forces use tear gas and live ammunition against civilians. The long-term viability of such state repression is questionable, given international scrutiny and pressure for a peaceful resolution. However, progress toward a democratic solution may help minimize the short-term escalation of violence, particularly in Kinshahsa and eastern regions. 

Potential for populist policies and increasing regulatory uncertainty 

Questions surrounding the legitimacy of core state institutions such as CENI and the Supreme Court, and the electoral process itself will negatively impact upon the legitimacy of Kabila's tenure. This is likely to hamper policymaking, while sustained political opposition and low-intensity conflict in eastern and southern regions will challenge the government's ability to implement policy. While Kabila's lack of a clear campaign platform makes regulatory and tax predictions problematic, increased and unsustainable spending may be seen as a way to bolster ailing support in traditional Kabila strongholds such as Katanga and the Kivus. Similarly, the temptation to enact populist policies similar to the 2010 tax on unrefined metal exports from Katanga may increase. Meanwhile poor government effectiveness may continue to impede progress toward international transparency and accountability standards, such as the Extractives Industry Transparency Principle (EITI). 

Forecast 

A Kabila government – with or without input from Tshisekedi and the UDPS – will do little to mitigate investor concern over existing regulatory and transparency risks in the DRC. However, the international community is likely to support Kabila's continuing tenure, albeit with demands for a post-election mediation process, due to the absence of a viable alternative and the underlying potential that the DRC could descend into violence. 

Vitally, the peaceful resolution of the current post-election political deadlock is a pre-requisite of decreasing governance, regulatory and human security risk in the future. In the interim, businesses and investors may face increasing regulatory uncertainty should Kabila embark on populist public spending and tax reform, while achieving the level of transparency required by international transparency standards will continue to be problematic.

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