Democratic Republic of Congo
Congo, Democratic Republic of the (DRC) is a large country in the heart of Africa. A narrow
strip of Congo borders the Atlantic Ocean. But most of the country lies deep in the interior of
Africa, slightly south of the center of the continent. The equator runs through the northern part of
the country.
One of the world's largest and thickest tropical rain forests covers about a third of the DRC. The
mighty Congo River flows through the forest and is one of the country's chief means of
transportation. Many kinds of wild animals live in the country.
The majority of Congo's people are farmers and live in small rural villages. But each year, many
villagers move to the cities. Kinshasa is the country's capital and largest city.
Kinshasa is the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In many
parts of Kinshasa, automobiles and other vehicles and pedestrians often crowd the streets.
Belgians ruled what is now the DRC from 1885 until it became the independent nation of Congo
in 1960. The nation was known as Zaire from 1971 to 1997. Rebels seized power in 1997 and
named it the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The country is sometimes called Congo
(Kinshasa) to distinguish it from the neighboring Republic of the Congo, or Congo (Brazzaville).
The DRC's full name in French, the official language, is République Démocratique du Congo.
Animal life. The DRC has a spectacular variety of wild animals. Baboons,
chimpanzees, gorillas, and many kinds of monkeys live in areas with trees.
Antelope, leopards, lions, rhinoceroses, and zebras roam open areas.
Crocodiles live in swamps and on river banks. The okapi, a forest-dwelling
animal related to the giraffe, lives nowhere else in the world but Congo. It
has become a national symbol of the country. Through the years, European
hunters killed many animals in Congo and endangered some species. The
government set aside large areas of land as part of a national park system
where animals are protected from hunters. Many wild animals also still live
outside the parks, especially in thinly populated areas in eastern Congo.
Source: http://www.worldbookonline.com/student/article?id=ar129340&st=democratic+republic+of+congo
23 October 2012 Last updated at 09:50 ET
Democratic Republic of Congo profile
A vast country with immense economic resources, the Democratic Republic
of Congo (DR Congo) has been at the centre of what could be termed
Africa's world war. This has left it in the grip of a humanitarian crisis. The
five-year conflict pitted government forces, supported by Angola, Namibia
and Zimbabwe, against rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda.
Despite a peace deal and the formation of a transitional government in 2003,
people in the east of the country remain in terror of marauding militias and the
army.
The war claimed an estimated three million lives, either as a direct result of
fighting or because of disease and malnutrition. It has been called possibly the
worst emergency to unfold in Africa in recent decades.
The war had an economic as well as a political side. Fighting was fuelled by the
country's vast mineral wealth, with all sides taking advantage of the anarchy to
plunder natural resources.
The history of DR Congo has been one of civil war and corruption. After
independence in 1960, the country immediately faced an army mutiny and an
attempt at secession by its mineral-rich province of Katanga.
A year later, its prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was seized and killed by troops
loyal to army chief Joseph Mobutu.
In 1965 Mobutu seized power, later renaming the country Zaire and himself
Mobutu Sese Seko. He turned Zaire into a springboard for operations against
Soviet-backed Angola and thereby ensured US backing. But he also made Zaire
synonymous with corruption.
After the Cold War, Zaire ceased to be of interest to the US. Thus, when in 1997
neighbouring Rwanda invaded it to flush out extremist Hutu militias, it gave a
boost to the anti-Mobutu rebels, who quickly captured the capital, Kinshasa,
installed Laurent Kabila as president and renamed the country DR Congo.
Nonetheless, DR Congo's troubles continued. A rift between Mr Kabila and his
former allies sparked a new rebellion, backed by Rwanda and Uganda. Angola,
Namibia and Zimbabwe took Kabila's side, turning the country into a vast
battleground.
Another militia under rebel General Laurent Nkunda had signed a peace deal with
the government in January, but clashes broke out again in August. Gen Nkunda's
forces advanced on government bases and the provincial capital Goma in the
autumn, causing civilians and troops to flee while UN peacekeepers tried to hold
the line alongside the remaining government forces.
In an attempt to bring the situation under control, the government in January 2009
invited in troops from Rwanda to help mount a joint operation against the
Rwandan rebel Hutu militias active in eastern DR Congo.
Rwanda arrested the Hutu militias' main rival, Gen Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi
hitherto seen as its main ally in the area.
But eastern areas remain beset by violence. The UN has accused Rwanda and
Uganda of training and arming the M23 rebels in the east, which both countries
deny, and has announced its intention of imposing sanctions on both M23 and its
foreign supporters.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13283212
Source : http://enoughproject.org/files/conflict-gold-infographic.png
Click on this link to watch a video about a Bonobo
preserve in DRC and to view an interactive map:
http://www.bonobo.org/
Click this link to see a slideshow from a Bonobo Preserve:
http://www.yukiba.com/1276-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-africa-slideshow.html
Bonobos Join Chimps as Closest Human Relatives
Family ties. The genome of this bonobo, Ulindi, shows how closely humans, chimps, and bonobos are related.
Credit: Max Planck Society
Chimpanzees now have to share the distinction of being our closest living relative in the
animal kingdom. An international team of researchers has sequenced the genome of the
bonobo for the first time, confirming that it shares the same percentage of its DNA with
us as chimps do. The team also found some small but tantalizing differences in the
genomes of the three species—differences that may explain how bonobos and
chimpanzees don't look or act like us even though we share about 99% of our DNA.
"We're so closely related genetically, yet our behavior is so different," says team
member and computational biologist Janet Kelso of the Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. "This will allow us to look for the genetic
basis of what makes modern humans different from both bonobos and chimpanzees."
Ever since researchers sequenced the chimp genome in 2005, they have known that
humans share about 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, making them our closest living
relatives. But there are actually two species of apes that are this closely related to
humans: bonobos (Pan paniscus) and the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). This
has prompted researchers to speculate whether the ancestor of humans, chimpanzees,
and bonobos looked and acted more like a bonobo, a chimpanzee, or something else—
and how all three species have evolved differently since the ancestor of humans split
with the common ancestor of bonobos and chimps between 4 million and 7 million years
ago in Africa.
The international sequencing effort led from Max Planck chose a bonobo named Ulindi
from the Leipzig Zoo as its subject, partly because she was a female (the chimp genome
was of a male). The analysis of Ulindi's complete genome, reported online today
in Nature, reveals that bonobos and chimpanzees share 99.6% of their DNA. This
confirms that these two species of African apes are still highly similar to each other
genetically, even though their populations split apart in Africa about 1 million years ago,
perhaps after the Congo River formed and divided an ancestral population into two
groups. Today, bonobos are found in only the Democratic Republic of Congo and there
is no evidence that they have interbred with chimpanzees in equatorial Africa since they
diverged, perhaps because the Congo River acted as a barrier to prevent the groups
from mixing. The researchers also found that bonobos share about 98.7% of their DNA
with humans—about the same amount that chimps share with us.
Source: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/06/bonobo-genome-sequenced.html
Click this link to see a slideshow about a Bonobo in
captivity who has been raised with humans from
childhood:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/8985122/Amazing-photosof-Kanzi-the-bonobo-lighting-a-fire-and-cooking-a-meal.html
Bonobos will share with strangers before
acquaintances
January 2, 2013
You're standing in line somewhere and you decide to open a pack of gum. Do you share
a piece with the coworker standing to one side of you, or with the stranger on the other?
Most humans would choose the person they know first, if they shared at all. But
bonobos, those notoriously frisky, ardently social great apes of the Congo, prefer to
share with a stranger before sharing with an animal they know. In fact, a bonobo will
invite a stranger to share a snack while leaving an acquaintance watching helplessly
from behind a barrier.
"It seems kind of crazy to us, but bonobos prefer to share with strangers," said Brian
Hare, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University. "They're trying to
extend their social network."
And they apparently value that more than maintaining the friendships they already have.
To measure this willingness to share, Hare and graduate student Jingzhi Tan ran a
series of experiments with bonobos living in the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in Kinshasa,
Democratic Republic of Congo.
The experiments involved piles of food and enclosures that the test subjects were able
to unlock and open. Tan and Hare describe their work in a paper in the January 2, 2013
edition of PLOS ONE. In the first series of experiments, a pile of food was placed in a
central enclosure flanked by two enclosures, each of them holding another animal. The
test subject had the knowledge and ability to open a door to either of the other
chambers, or both.
On one side was a bonobo they knew from their group (not necessarily a friend or family
member) and in the other was a bonobo they had never really met, but had only seen at
a distance.
Upon entering the chamber with the food, the test subjects could easily just sit down and
consume it all themselves, or they could let in one or both of the other animals to share.
Nine of the 14 animals who went through this test released the stranger first. Two
preferred their groupmates. Three showed no particular preference in repeated trials.
The third animal was often let in on the treat as well, but more often it was the stranger,
not the test subject, who opened the door for them.
Tan said that by letting the third animal into the enclosure, the stranger voluntarily
outnumbered himself or herself with two bonobos who knew each other, which a
chimpanzee would never do.
In 51 trials of the experiment, there was never any aggression shown, although there
was quite a bit of typical bonobo genital rubbing between the strangers. To isolate how
much motivation the animals receive from social interaction, the researchers ran a
second set of experiments in which the subject animal wouldn't receive any social
contact with another animal.
In the first of these experiments, the subjects couldn't get any food for themselves
regardless of whether they chose to open the door to allow the other animal to get some
food. Nine out of ten animals shared with the stranger at least once. In the final
experiment without social contact, the subject animal was given access to the food in
such a way that opening the door to share with the other animal would cost them some
food.
But they still wouldn't have any social contact as a reward. In this instance, the animals
chose not to share. "If they're not going to see a social benefit, they won't share," Hare
said. This second test is similar to something called the dictator game in which humans
are given the chance to share cash with a stranger, Hare said. Most people will share
anonymously, but they share even more when they aren't anonymous.
Bonobos won't share at all in the anonymous condition if it costs them food. "They care
about others," Hare said, but only in a sort of selfish way. "They'll share when it's a lowcost/low-benefit kind of situation. But when it's a no-benefit situation, they won't share.
That's different from a human playing the dictator game. You really have to care about
others to give anonymously."
The findings, which Hare calls "one of the crazier things we've found" in more than a
decade of bonobo research, form yet another distinction between bonobos and
chimpanzees, our two closest relatives. "Chimps can't do these tests, they'd be all over
each other."
Source: http://phys.org/news/2013-01-bonobos-strangers-acquaintances.html
Latest crisis in Congo DRC underlines link between
hunger and conflict
War is tipping fragile regions in Congo DRC into disaster and making it difficult for aid
agencies to operate
o
o
Mark Tran in Goma
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 January 2013 10.0
O
n the outskirts of Goma, the dusty and scruffy regional capital in eastern Democratic Republic of the
Congo, a flare-up in fighting between underpaid and ill-disciplined government troops and
rebels, allegedly backed by neighbouring Rwanda, has exacerbated the problem of hunger.
Last November's surprise advance by M23 rebels into the city disrupted the planting season as
soldiers from both sides seized food from fields or people's homes. The lost harvest and fear of
renewed fighting prompted many to flee their homes, adding to the already large number of people
displaced by previous conflicts.
"The lost harvest has increased chronic vulnerability in terms of access to food," says Sarah Carrie,
quality assurance manager at World Vision in Goma.
Conflict and war are the wild cards in the campaign against hunger, tipping already fragile regions
into disaster. The famine in Somalia was a deadly combination of the worst drought in the Horn
of Africa for 60 years and the presence of Islamist insurgents al-Shabaab, who at first denied that
there was famine and refused to co-operate with the main western aid agencies. In Congo, conflict in
North and South Kivu provinces has made an already vulnerable population more at risk.
The UN estimates that 130,000 people in the Goma region have fled their homes since November.
On Tuesday, an influx of 1,100 into the Mugunga 3 camp at Goma forced the World Food
Programme to delay distributing supplies to 15,000 people as it had to register the arrivals.
The continued tension has complicated life for relief agencies. World Vision staff no longer spend the
night in Goma, but cross the Rwandan border and stay at Gisenyi, a pretty resort town on lake Kivu,
with villas that would not be out of place in the Mediterranean.
In This Photo: Refugees on the main road to Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after fleeing
fighting in Kibumba.
Source; http://informafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/congo-refugees.jpg
On the surface, Goma has returned to normality. On Tuesday, the main dusty street was lined with
traders and shops selling brightly coloured mattresses, shoes, limes and huge bunches of cassava
leaves. People poured out of mini-vans in the afternoon to shop on the main drag, with lots of
pharmacies and signs for Primus, a Congolese beer. Traders pushed a vehicle that looked like an
outsize wooden scooter to carry sacks of goods or long metal poles.
The only signs that fighting had taken place were a building with a huge blast hole in the front, where
government troops used their firepower for looting rather than against the rebels, and a wrecked
building without the exterior walls with a toilet visible from outside. But there have been reports of
violent and well-planned attacks on foreigners, including aid workers, and there have been car
jackings and burglaries by groups of armed bandits.
The flare-up in an area of chronic instability – a legacy of the 1994 Rwandan genocide – underlines
the deadly link between conflict and hunger as NGOs launch If, the biggest anti-hunger campaign
since Make Poverty History.
The latest bout of fighting in eastern Congo piles on the pressure in a country that ranks last in
the UN's human development index. Despite its abundant natural resources and potential wealth, the
figures on hunger in Congo are appalling. According to Unicef, the UN children's agency, 5.5 million
children in this country of 68 million are affected by chronic malnutrition, which means they are
unlikely to reach their full potential, and will be less productive and healthy in adult life.
UN agencies and humanitarian partners have appealed for $30.5m (£19.3m) to help more than half a
million people displaced by conflict in North Kivu, including those who fled their homes after heavy
fighting in November.
"The response plan is our answer to the loss and suffering endured by thousands of people these
past months," says Barbara Shenstone, head of OCHA, the UN's office for humanitarian affairs. "We
want to provide families with aid to cover their most basic immediate needs while looking ahead to
restoring their livelihoods."
Ivan Lewis, the UK's shadow secretary for international development, who was in Goma to see aid
projects reintegrating child soldiers into society and providing livelihoods for rape victims of soldiers,
said aid alone will not fix hunger or poverty. "In DRC, the scale of the ambition has yet to meet the
scale of the challenge," he said. "It's time we devoted more thought to how we can break the cycle of
conflict and extreme poverty in Congo."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/jan/23/crisis-congo-drc-hunger-conflict
Click this link to see a short video about refugees from the fighting in the
DRC:
http://cleanvideosearch.com/media/action/yt/watch?videoId=ilVZx_af27c
Click this link to see a short video about the cholera outbreak in
Congolese refugee camps:
http://cleanvideosearch.com/media/action/yt/watch?videoId=H1AkqFbuxPY