LaNUBlog™

RPF leader and President, Paul Kagame,has been hailed for overseeing rapid economic growth in the tiny country. He has also tried to turn Rwanda into a technological hub and is very active on Twitter. But his critics say he does not tolerate dissent and several opponents have met unexplained deaths.

There are numerous memorials around Rwanda to those killed in the genocide In just 100 days in 1994, some 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda by ethnic Hutu extremists. They were targeting members of the minority Tutsi community, as well as their political opponents, irrespective of their ethnic origin. Why did the Hutu militias want to kill the Tutsis? About 85% of Rwandans are Hutus but the Tutsi minority has long dominated the country. In 1959,

The United Nations says more than half a million people have now been displaced by violence in southeastern Congo. Yvon Edoumou, the spokesperson for the UN humanitarian agency in Congo, said on Wednesday that

The World Bank is to raise its lending capacity to about $300 billion Amid plans by the Federal Govt. to release the figures of the country’s newly rebased Gross Domestic Product, the World Bank on Tues classified Nigeria among the world’s five extreme poor countries. Nigeria’s GDP is expected to be boosted based on a current nominal value of about $305 billion by 40%, to 60%, to surpass that of South Africa, which currently stands at $350 billion.

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. At a glance *.DR Congo is struggling to recover from Africa's ...

Civil wars and militia conflicts have plagued the Republic of Congo, which is sometimes referred to as Congo-Brazzaville. After three coup-ridden but relatively peaceful decades of independence, the former French colony experienced the first of two destructive bouts of fighting when disputed parliamentary elections in 1993 led to bloody, ethnically-based fighting between pro-government forces and the opposition. A ceasefire and the inclusion of some opposition members in the government helped to restore peace. Civil war But in 1997 ethnic and political tensions exploded into a full-scale civil war, fuelled in part by the prize of the country's offshore oil wealth, which motivated many of the warlords. The army split along ethnic lines, with most northern officers joining President Denis Sassou Nguesso's side, and most southerners backing the rebels. These were supporters of the former president, Pascal Lissouba, and his prime minister, Bernard Kolelas, who had been deposed...