Sub-Saharan Africa

There is nothing equal about COVID-19. It is now well established that poor and underprivileged social groups have absorbed most of the pandemic’s negative impact. However, the connection between COVID-19 and inequality might run even deeper. During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, one additional point of the Gini coefficient correlated with a 1.34 percentage point higher rate of weekly new infections across countries. This difference in infection rates compounds like interest every week.

With each new year of data, and each new intergovernmental report, it becomes harder to deny the scale and urgency of the energy transition required to prevent catastrophic anthropogenic climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change urges countries to take action to prevent a rise in temperature by more than 1.5°C, and warns of catastrophic consequences of a rise above 2°C. Yet current policies and pledges fall far short of hitting these targets.

Formerly a small local militia, Guidon Shimiray’s Nduma Defence of Congo-Rénové (NDC-R) is today one of the most powerful armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). A new report from CIC's Congo Research Group (CRG) draws on 18 months of fieldwork to provide the first in-depth investigation into the origins of this armed group, showing how it is part of a proxy war led by the Congolese army.