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#democraticrepublicofcongo — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #democraticrepublicofcongo, aggregated by home.social.

  1. Reuters: Belgian museum, US mining company at odds over colonial-era Congo archive. “A U.S. mining company backed by billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates is in a tangle with Belgium’s AfricaMuseum over who should digitise antique maps of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo ‌in the museum’s archive.”

    https://rbfirehose.com/2026/04/04/reuters-belgian-museum-us-mining-company-at-odds-over-colonial-era-congo-archive/
  2. #SodiumIonBatteries offer an alternative to tricky #lithium

    Oct 26th 2023

    Excerpt: "Fortunately, lithium is not the only game in town. As we report this week, a clutch of firms are making batteries based on sodium, lithium’s elemental cousin. Since sodium’s chemical properties are very similar to those of lithium, it too makes for good batteries. And sodium, which is found in the salt in #seawater, is thousands of times more abundant on Earth than lithium and cheaper to get at. Most of the companies using sodium to make batteries today are also Chinese. But pursuing the technology in the West might be a surer route to energy security than relying heavily on lithium.

    "Besides its abundance, sodium has other advantages. The best lithium batteries use #cobalt and #nickel in their electrodes. Nickel, like lithium, is in short supply. #Mining it on land is #EnvironmentallyDestructive. Proposals to grab it from the #seabed instead have caused rows. A good deal of the world’s cobalt, meanwhile, is extracted from small mines in the #DemocraticRepublicOfCongo, where #ChildLabour is common and working conditions are dire. Sodium batteries, by contrast, can use #electrodes built from #iron and #manganese [and wood #lignin], which are plentiful and uncontroversial. Since the chemical components are cheap, a scaled-up industry should be able to produce batteries that cost less than their lithium counterparts.

    "Sodium is not a perfect replacement for lithium. It is heavier, meaning sodium batteries will weigh more than lithium ones of an equivalent capacity. That is likely to rule them out in some cases where lightness is paramount. But for other applications, such as #GridStorage or #HomeBatteries, weight is irrelevant. Several Chinese carmakers are even beginning to put sodium batteries in #ElectricVehicles."

    Read more:
    economist.com/leaders/2023/10/

    Archived version:
    archive.ph/7x6JX

    #SolarPunkSunday #EnergyStorage #SodiumIon #NewTechnology #GiantLeap #Reuse #WasteReuse #NoLithiumMining #NoMining

  3. Vijay Prashad: How the IMF Underdevelops Africa
    consortiumnews.com/2025/05/27/
    After being plundered of both its wealth and people by colonial powers, Africa now faces IMF-imposed austerity, obscene debt and forced underdevelopment. By Vijay Prashad Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research At the start of 2025, Sudan registered an alarming debt-to-GDP…
    #Politics #Africa #Colonialism #Commentary #Economy #HumanRights #Sudan #AfricanUnion #Botswana #DemocraticRepublicOfCongo(drc) #Development #Diamonds #EquatorialGuinea #GrieveChelwa #Imf #KwameNkrumah #LouisRwagasore #M23 #PatriceLumumba #PresidentBassirouDiomayeFaye #SubSaharanAfrica #TransparencyInternational #VijayPrashad

  4. Ummmm... From #wikipedia:

    The #WagnerGroup (Russian: #ГруппаВагнера, romanized: Gruppa Vagnera), officially known as PMC Wagner (ЧВК «Вагнер»), is a #Russian state-funded private military company (#PMC) controlled until 2023 by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former close ally of Russia's president Vladimir #Putin, and since then by Pavel Prigozhin. The Wagner Group has used infrastructure of the Russian Armed Forces. Evidence suggests that Wagner has been used as a proxy by the Russian government, allowing it to have plausible deniability for military operations abroad, and hiding the true casualties of Russia's foreign interventions.

    "The group emerged during the war in #Donbas, where it helped Russian separatist forces in #Ukraine from 2014 to 2015. Wagner played a significant role in the later full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, for which it recruited Russian prison #inmates for frontline combat. By the end of 2022, its strength in Ukraine had grown from 1,000 to between 20,000 and 50,000. It was reportedly Russia's main assault force in the Battle of Bakhmut. Wagner has also supported regimes friendly with Russia, including in the civil wars in #Syria, #Libya, the #CentralAfricanRepublic, and #Mali. In Africa, it has offered regimes security in exchange for the transfer of diamond and gold mining contracts to Russian companies. Wagner operatives have been accused of #WarCrimes including #murder, #torture, #rape and #robbery of #civilians, as well as #torturing and killing accused #Deserters.

    [...]

    "Early in 2020, #ErikPrince, founder of the #Blackwater private military company, sought to provide military services to the Wagner Group in its operations in Libya and #Mozambique, according to The Intercept. By March 2021, Wagner PMCs were reportedly also deployed in #Zimbabwe, #Angola, #Guinea, #GuineaBissau, and possibly the #DemocraticRepublicOfCongo."

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_G
    #ErikPrinceColonialism #PutinsArmy #CorporateColonialism #Oligarchy

  5. [12:30] Embassies attacked in Congo's capital amid unrest

    The French, US, Rwandan, Ugandan and Kenyan embassies in Democratic Republic of Congo's capital Kinshasa were attacked by protesters, a European diplomatic source said.

    rte.ie/news/world/2025/0128/14

    #French #US #Rwandan #Ugandan #Kenyan #DemocraticRepublicofCongo's #Kinshasa #European

  6. [12:30] Embassies attacked in Congo's capital amid unrest

    The French, US, Rwandan, Ugandan and Kenyan embassies in Democratic Republic of Congo's capital Kinshasa were attacked by protesters, a European diplomatic source said.

    rte.ie/news/world/2025/0128/14

    #French #US #Rwandan #Ugandan #Kenyan #DemocraticRepublicofCongo's #Kinshasa #European

  7. [12:30] Embassies attacked in Congo's capital amid unrest

    The French, US, Rwandan, Ugandan and Kenyan embassies in Democratic Republic of Congo's capital Kinshasa were attacked by protesters, a European diplomatic source said.

    rte.ie/news/world/2025/0128/14

    #French #US #Rwandan #Ugandan #Kenyan #DemocraticRepublicofCongo's #Kinshasa #European

  8. [12:30] Embassies attacked in Congo's capital amid unrest

    The French, US, Rwandan, Ugandan and Kenyan embassies in Democratic Republic of Congo's capital Kinshasa were attacked by protesters, a European diplomatic source said.

    rte.ie/news/world/2025/0128/14

    #French #US #Rwandan #Ugandan #Kenyan #DemocraticRepublicofCongo's #Kinshasa #European

  9. Why is violence against #EnvironmentalDefenders getting worse? Five things to know

    Maxwell Radwin
    11 Sep 2024

    "In January 2023, two men mysteriously disappear after speaking out against pollution from a controversial iron ore mine in Michoacán, Mexico.

    "The following March, climate change protesters in Austria and Germany are beaten and pepper sprayed, and some have their homes raided by law enforcement.

    "In September, a pair of youth environmental advocates are abducted by armed men and interrogated for days about their work fighting construction of a new airport in the Philippines.

    "All across the world, environmental defenders continue to experience censorship, threats, physical attacks, kidnappings, disappearances and even death because of their work fighting climate change, deforestation, pollution and other environmental issues.

    "Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, more than 1,500 environmental defenders have been killed for their work, according to Global Witness, a human rights and environmental NGO. The figures for 2023 look like more of the same. At least 196 people were killed last year defending the environment, up from 177 in 2022. And those figures are considered a low-end estimate."

    Read more:
    news.mongabay.com/2024/09/why-

    #EnvironmentalActivists #WaterDefenders #EnvironmentalJustice #GlobalWitness #Mongabay #ReaderSupportedNews
    #IACHR #ExtractiveIndustries
    #Mining #Logging #LandDefenders #WaterIsLife #HumanRights
    #Capitalism #Greed #Corruption
    #CorporateColonialism #LatinAmerica #Phillipines #India #Indonesia #Honduras #DemocraticRepublicOfCongo #PublicOrderAct #SilencingDissent #HR9495 #CriminalizingDissent

  10. #WaterConvention has facilitated 1st round of Negotiations between #DemocraticRepublicofCongo & #Zambia of Draft ‘Agreement on the Establishment of Luapula River & Lake Mweru Authority', concerning a #transboundary #Lake & #River they share.
    Water Convention & Protocol on Water and Health @UNECE_Water
    More details: unece.org/media/news/390489