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  • Motivating Africa - Mickey Mouse on Speed

    This is one that Disney would probably prefer was forgotten: Mickey Mouse takes Peppo to Africa. Conforming to all the racist stereotypes of Africans with the addition of blatant drug dealing. I'm writing about this but for now click on the pictures to see the comic More

  • Secret mining deals in the DR Congo

    Secretive mining deals left unchecked by the international community are a major factor in the Congolese people's enduring misery. Failure of the UK and the IMF to enforce existing transparency obligations on the DRC Government is wasting taxpayers' money and political capital. More

  • Does this make it better?

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  • I want to design my own icons

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Digital Djeli

Digital journalism that goes beyond the headlines and steps outside the boundaries

Alexis Sinduhije: responds to allegations in UN Experts Report

Alexis Sinduhije responds to the allegations made by the UN Group of Experts Report and demands an investigation into their methods

Since his release from a Tanzanian jail in February, Alexis Sinduhije has been keeping a low profile in France. As I wrote previously, his temporary custody in Dar es Salaam was mired in confusion as the Burundian government seemed to struggle with the extradition papers. They initially denied having anything to do with his arrest and then a week later claimed they had an international arrest warrant.   His lawyers sprung him on a procedural point and Tanzania has remained silent on the matter.  Burundi, meanwhile, claimed he was still a wanted man although this seemed to fall on deaf ears when Sinduhije passed through Uganda on his way back to France.   Although Burundi claimed he was wanted for a murder, when he was released from his Tanzanian cell they also belatedly raised the allegations made against Alexis Sinduhije by the UN Group of Experts.  Read more

Writing Rwanda: cognitive dissidents

Writing about Rwanda is a perilous exercise, tweeting about it more so. Does the reporting of the Trevidic investigation signify the triumph of PR in journalism?

 

Rwandan Proverb: The truth goes through fire but never burns.

I run a digital news desk that is dominated by my long term interest in African stories so when the French government announced the pending release of Marc Trevidic’s investigation into the shooting down of Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane – the incident that sparked the Rwandan genocide – it was an obvious issue to report. Or so I thought….

Marc Trevidic’s report, based on visits to Rwanda and ballistics research, follows a previous report by French magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière that resulted in charges against 9 of Paul Kagame’s colleagues – Kagame, as a head of state, was exempted.

Days before the publication of the report I made one small comment about it on Twitter and suddenly my Rwanda connected ‘followers’ increased. Many of them seemed very confident in their knowledge of the contents of the report long before it was published, some of the accounts were new, all of them took exactly the same stance in their tweeting. This fascinated me so I began to investigate who they were. It was an interesting if somewhat monotone cast.   Read more

Disturbing the ghosts of San Rafael: the politics of memory in Malaga

Seventy years after the Spanish civil war divided a nation and initiated Franco’s dictatorship, the Andalucian city of Malaga is still haunted by the past

In a nondescript suburb of Malaga alongside an industrial estate, the Cementario San Rafael has none of the decorative charm of a typical Spanish cemetery. Breeze block walls six meters high enclose a rough, uneven field peppered with trees, a solitary official memorial and a few simply hewn crosses. Broken fragments of religious artefacts, small bunches of plastic flowers and roughly scratched names and dates are the only clues to the tragedies that lie beneath the dry red Andalucian soil. Read more

Secret Mining deals in the DR Congo

Professor Willy Vangu, International Spokesperson for the UDPS – DRC Opposition Party

It is absurd that a country with more forests than Brazil, more minerals than Australia, more oil than Norway and more hydro-power potential than Finland can be home to over 52 million people (70 per cent of the population) who live on less than 80 pence a day. The Democratic Republic of Congo is a country with vast natural wealth and it suffers this paradox.

Secretive mining deals left unchecked by the international community are a major factor in the Congolese people’s enduring misery.

Why does this happen? Who is behind it? Why does it matter to the UK and what can we do to stop it? Using evidence gathered from the Congo, and from off shore tax havens, Professor Willy Vangu, will explain to the world over the next few weeks the detailed workings behind BVI shell companies.

Failure of the UK and the IMF to enforce existing transparency obligations on the DRC Government is wasting taxpayers’ money and political capital. As a result, the opposition party of the DRC is calling on aid and loans direct to the DRC Government to be cancelled in return for renewed focus on tackling secretive mining deals, which keep the Congolese people poor and make a few within the DRC very wealthy.  Read more