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2013 Global Hunger Index | International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
The 2013 Global Hunger Index (GHI) report—the eighth in an annual series—presents a multidimensional measure of national, regional, and global hunger. It shows that the world has made some progress in reducing hunger since 1990, but still has far to go. World hunger remains “serious,” and 19 countries suffer from levels of hunger that are either “alarming” or “extremely alarming.”
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Kieran Holmes: the toughest taxman in Africa – By Magnus Taylor | African Arguments
Kieran Holmes exudes an understated confidence when discussing his job as head of the Office Burundais des Recettes (OBR). And well he might, having just rolled out wide-ranging reforms in a country that in 2008 he says had “close to zero capacity for tax collection”. In the last five years the OBR has increased government revenue from 300 to 560 billion Burundian francs. Holmes asserts that they should be able to double this again in the next 5 years. Before he came to Burundi Holmes spent 8 years reforming the tax system in Rwanda. And whilst the 2 countries have less in common than their geographical proximity might suggest, Holmes states that the process has been pretty much the same in Burundi as in its neighbour. “In every country you do this reform in you get a steep projection of revenue” says Holmes – well illustrated by that fact that when it was carried out in Lesotho revenue improved by 2000 percent in 6 and a half years.
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Comment les Africains, et plus particulièrement les citoyens du Rwanda et du Burundi ont ils vécu le fait colonial ? Comment ont ils ressenti la mise à l’écart d’Imana, le dieu unique qui garantissait l’équilibre de la société, vécu la dépréciation voire la négation de leur culture, le travestissement des relations interethniques devenues antagonistes, comment ont ils subi les corvées, les innombrables travaux obligatoires qui leur furent imposés au nom du « progrès » et «pour leur bien »…A vrai dire, l’histoire ayant été essentiellement écrite par les conquérants, les coloniaux et même les anthropologues venus du Nord, on ignore à peu près tout du « vécu » et des sentiments des populations concernées.
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This article describes discursive processes by which inhabitants of the Congolese border town Goma attribute new indexical values to Lingala, a language exogenous to the area of which most Goma inhabitants only possess limited knowledge. This creative reconfiguration of indexicalities results in the emergence of three “indexicalities of the second order”: the indexing of (i) being a true Congolese, (ii) toughness (based on Lingala's association with the military), and (iii) urban sophistication (based on its association with the capital Kinshasa). While the last two second-order reinterpretations are also widespread in other parts of the Congolese territory, the first one, resulting in the emergence of a Lingala as an “indexical icon” of a corresponding “language community,” deeply reflects local circumstances and concerns, in particular the sociopolitical volatility of the Rwandan-Congolese borderland that renders publicly affirming one's status as an “autochthonous” Congolese pivotal for assuring a livelihood and at times even personal security.
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Des commerçants rwandais développent l'agriculture du Sud-Kivu
La production agricole augmente au Sud-Kivu depuis deux ans que des commerçants rwandais fournissent aux paysans des semences et des produits phytosanitaires. Ils achètent ensuite leurs récoltes qui reviennent sur les marchés de Bukavu sous forme de farines dont les prix sont depuis lors en baisse.
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Kuchunda a ‘godsend’ for Goma pastors | Radio Netherlands Worldwide
A ritual not unlike exorcism has become widespread among many so-called ‘born again’ churches across Goma, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. During kuchunda, a person supposedly possessed by evil spirits is roughed up. At the same time it is an interesting source of income for the pastors.
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Since 2009, mineral development and trade strategies in the Great Lakes region of central Africa have been tied more closely to security rather than to economic development agendas. This shift has resulted largely from the emergence in 2009 of a ‘conflict minerals’ label coined by Western advocacy organizations, aimed at limiting armed groups access to mineral resources. The ‘conflict minerals’ debate perpetuates a dual single-story narrative to do with mining, namely: firstly, the single story of the region – one in which minerals, particularly those from artisanal and small-scale mining, are a source of capital for armed conflict and outside state building; and secondly, the single story of Rwanda – one in which the country compensates for its lack of significant mineral wealth by sourcing from neighbouring countries. This paper looks at Rwandan mining history prior to the genocide, and reforms since 2000, challenging the dual single-story narrative, and showing how a focus on the security imperative to delink mining from conflict poses severe limitations to the long-term growth of the these economies.
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Charles Taylor préférerait purger sa peine au Rwanda | Fondation Hirondelle
L’ancien président du Liberia, Charles Taylor, condamné à 50 ans de prison par le Tribunal spécial pour la Sierra Leone(TSSL), préférerait purger sa peine au Rwanda et non au Royaume –Uni, apprend-on lundi.
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Ibrahim Index African Governance 2013 | Mo Ibrahim Foundation
Five post-conflict countries - Liberia, Angola, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Burundi - top the league of the table for most improved performers since 2000. Two countries, Angola and Rwanda, have, remarkably, shown year-on-year improvement in overall governance, coming from their lowest point in 2000 and reaching their highest peak yet in 2012. However, both of these countries have room for continued improvement, with Rwanda ranking 15th in overall governance, and Angola ranking 39th (out of 52 countries).
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Letter from Africa: Red tape and visas | BBC News
In our series of letters from African journalists, BBC Africa's Komla Dumor takes issue with the frustrations of the continent's bureaucracy.
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Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa, founder of Rwanda's largest shopping center, the Union Trade Center (UTC), on Thursday accused the Rwandan government of amending its laws to justify illegal seizure of his property.
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Rwanda : Un parlement au féminin pluriel | Syfia
Près des deux tiers des députés rwandais sont des femmes. Un chiffre record qui doit beaucoup aux "actions affirmatives" du gouvernement qui favorisent leur élection. Un chiffre dangereux pour certains car il n'est pas issu d'une saine compétition avec les hommes qui soit fondée sur des compétences.
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Rwanda's IT revolution targets knowledge economy | BBC News
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) programme is one of the pillars of Rwanda's Vision 2020, which aims to turn the country into a knowledge-based economy similar to that of Singapore in South East Asia.
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This study compares risk attitudes of smallholder farmers elicited from two different lottery designs (i) with fixed payoffs and changing probabilities and (ii) with fixed probabilities and changing payoffs. We utilize a combination of experimental and household survey data collected from 332 randomly selected smallholder coffee farmers in Uganda. Both methods reveal high proportions of farmers who are classified as risk averse. However, comparing the different risk categories shows that the two elicitation methods yield significantly different results. Furthermore, we relatively find low inconsistency rates in the response behavior for the two methods compared to other studies in the past. Specific socio-demographic and socioeconomic characteristics also affect farmers’ risk attitudes.
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Despite growing interest in the linkages between taxation, development and governance, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the relationship between taxation and people’s livelihoods, particularly in places affected by conflict. Yet, it is in these contexts that people encounter fierce challenges to livelihood recovery, often finding themselves operating in a political economy environment that is at once complex and shifting, as well as brutal and exploitative. People affected by conflict tend to have urgent service-related needs, and violent conflicts can erode trust in governance actor. Drawing on a recent working paper (Lough et al., 2013), this evidence brief provides an overview of the evidence base when exploring the relationship between taxation and livelihoods in conflict affected situations. It discusses the geographical, methodological and thematic nature of the evidence base, summarises key findings, clarifies what the research means for policy-makers, and provides links to relevant empirical material.
