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The “Friends of the Congo” and the Kabila System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Jean-Claude Willame
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Extract

After at least five years of international isolation— almost 10 years in Belgium’s case—the Congo (formerly Zaire) is once again “visitable.” The “friends of the Congo” conference sponsored by the World Bank last December 3-4 sanctioned the beginning of normalization. Those attending were cautious since the meeting did not take place at the ministerial level and since the only help considered urgent concerned currency, transportation, and health. The Congolese government obtained a total of $120 million, the majority from the European Union (E.U.). This represents only about 10 percent of Kinshasa’s assessed reconstruction needs. For the rest, there will be another meeting in six months.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , 1998 , pp. 27 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1998 

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References

Notes

1. The number of Belgian Blue Helmets in Rwanda was about 400 men.

2. “Improving African and International Capabilities for Preventing and Resolving Violent Conflicts” in The Great Lakes Region Crisis: Executive Summary and Recommendations, 2nd International Workshop, Berlin, July 3-5, 1997 (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SFP), 1997), 15.

3. I was myself the direct witness to this American incomprehension throughout a briefing at the State Department in early 1997.

4. Smith, Stephen and Glaser, Antoine, Ces Messieurs Afrique: Des reseaux aux lobbies (Paris: Calmann-Levy), 16 Google Scholar.

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6. “Improving African and International Capabilities for Preventing and Resolving Violent Conflicts,” in The Great Lakes Region Crisis: Executive Summary and Recommendations, 2nd International Workshop, Berlin, July 3-5, 1997 (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SFP), 1997), 15.

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12. The image of the air-conditioned room and the verandah is taken from the anthropologist Terray, Emmanuel (“Le climatiseur et la veranda,” in Afrique plurielle, Afrique actuelle: Hommage a Georges Balandier (Paris: Editions Karthala, 1986), 37-38)Google Scholar. The first refers to the institutions, codes, and norms of the state, the second to the real confrontations among people not participant in the impersonal mechanisms “of a machine that encloses them and projects them everywhere.”