The December 23 elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo are the country’s most important in more than a decade. After delaying a new poll for two years, longtime President Joseph Kabila is stepping aside. Two main candidates are vying to replace him, one is his handpicked successor, the other an opposition leader.

After two decades under the Kabila family, Congolese voters face a stark choice when they go to the polls: Continuity, or change?

Kabila is stepping down two years after his mandate expired. His departure from the top job has opened the door to a flood of 21 presidential aspirants and thousands of people jockeying for lower offices.

But in this crowd, only a handful of names stand out. Little-known former interior minister Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary is Kabila’s choice to become Congo’s next president — and he is campaigning heavily on that relationship.

“I was chosen as candidate for the presidential election by President Joseph Kabila,” he told a crowd at a campaign rally.

But Shadary faces stiff competition from a fractured but passionate opposition, including from the son of the late longtime opposition leader.

Felix Tshisekedi, who is widely seen as the frontrunner, entered the race late, after the opposition chose another man as their coalition candidate.

That coalition candidate is confident voters will back him, said businessman Martin Fayulu. However, an October opinion poll conducted by international and local think tanks only gave him about eight percent of the vote.

“We want to leave after us all the bad things that Mr. Kabila has done in this country,” Fayulu told VOA. “The bad things that the 20 years of Kabilisme have done in this country. Corruption, insecurity — the mass killing. That should be something that we have to make a big cause, so we can move ahead and change things in this country.”

But, he said he’s not sure this election will give him that chance. And on this point, the divided opposition sings in the same key: they believe this poll will not be free, fair or transparent.

Rigging machines

An area of particular concern is the electronic voting machines that opposition figures have, repeatedly, described as “rigging machines.”

Adding to that, the government has refused any foreign assistance to hold this poll, saying they’ll do it all themselves, without foreign interference.

Fayulu, who said he will refuse to use a voting machine and will insist on a paper ballot, added that the elections have been a mess from the start.

“The elections, you know, the organization is the worst organization,” he said. “I’ve never seen a country organizing elections and doing what is being done here in this county. Starting from the electoral register. It was a disaster.”

Shadary’s camp disputes these claims, and says they are confident the poll will be up to standard.

Andre-Alain Atundu, a spokesman for the ruling coalition and a close associate of Shadary’s, said he thinks continuity is important and that it will happen, no matter who wins.

“If it’s Mr. Shadary, he’s saying, ‘I’ll continue with the spirit of progress advanced by Mr. Kabila.’ He’s honest,” said Atundu. ‘The other will take advantage of what Mr. Kabila has left. … It’s a question of honesty. And every next president will want to continue what Mr. Kabila has had the opportunity to achieve.”

As the poll nears, election paraphernalia is everywhere in the capital, with Shadary’s impassive face beaming from billboards and promising economic development, security and better infrastructure.

Tshisekedi and Fayulu are far less visible on posters, but Kinshasa is an opposition stronghold, where their rallies are packed and where historically they have performed well.

The visual clutter of faces and names and promises has almost become invisible to residents of the bustling capital, who declined to stop and talk about politics when asked.

But as December 23 edges ever closer, everyone is wondering: In which direction will Congo go?
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Wood consumption — including logging and the production of charcoal — is a leading cause of forest degradation in Africa. In some of Kenya’s coastal regions, recurring droughts have made the problem even worse.  Now, farmers in those regions are planting trees, putting their once-barren land to use in a venture that enables them to earn a living and conserve the environment at the same time. 

At Be Sulubu Tezo, in Kilifi county, Kenya, Kanze Kahindi Mbogo tends to her tree farm. She thins out the trees whose wood is now strong enough for her to sell for home-building and making fences.  

The money she makes is for her six children. 

A better life

Kahindi says she has been able to educate her children, pay a couple of debts and do lots of other things. She adds she was also able to take one of her sons to college and right now he is a driver.

Before growing trees, putting food on the table was difficult in this land where droughts are common and crops often fail.

With the help of NGOs and entrepreneurs, farmers are learning how agroforestry can make them money and at the same time save the environment. One of those firms is Komaza, a Kenyan firm that is working with 14,000 farmers to plant drought-resistant trees for harvest, reducing the drive to deforest. 

Help with the harvest

“Farmers are able to nurture the seedlings into trees, and then the trees become fully grown trees ready to harvest,” said Allan Ongang’a, a manager at Komaza.  “Once they are ready for harvest we have the operations team from the forestry department that identify trees that are ready for harvest, agree with the farmers on a fair price, the trees are marked and harvested.”

The firm trains farmers on cultivation and selective harvesting.  

But not all farmers have the resources to plant a tree and wait for it to grow, so some farm subsistence crops among the trees.  Researchers say this arrangement counters the effects of climate change. 

Everybody benefits

“Trees end up absorbing carbon dioxide when they making their food and therefore essentially the trees are actually getting to bring carbon from the atmosphere into the tree stem and therefore on land,” explained researcher John Recha with the Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security Program, a private entity in Nairobi.. “That means there is the benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emission through more enhanced agroforestry systems.”

For these Kenyan farmers, environmentalism begins to make sense when it starts to translate into a sustainable income. 
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Environmentalists have long reported that wood consumption – including logging and the use of charcoal – is a leading cause of forest degradation in Africa. In some of Kenya’s coastal regions, recurring droughts have made the problem even worse. Now, farmers in those regions are now planting trees, putting their once-barren land to use in a venture that enables them to earn a living and conserve the environment at the same time. For VOA, Rael Ombuor reports from the coastal region of Kilifi.
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As heads of state and government jetted out of Morocco on Tuesday after formally adopting a UN deal on migration, NGOs raised doubts about its implementation on the ground and the high seas.

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration — finalized at the UN in July after 18 months of talks — was formally approved in Marrakesh on Monday in a ceremony attended by representatives of 164 governments.

A host of European politicians including German Chancellor Angela Merkel have firmly endorsed the deal, even as the US and a string of other countries have shunned it amid a wave of anti-immigrant populism.

While welcoming the agreement, the medical charity MSF and the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) pointed to policies by EU states that sit uneasily alongside the pact’s commitments to save lives and “eradicate trafficking in persons.”

“What we see right now is that months of government policies on migration are … deepening the suffering of migrants by basically offering them on a plate to criminal organization networks,” said Joanne Liu, international president of MSF.

Last week, her organization was forced to abandon its search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean — a key crossing for migrants and refugees traveling from Africa to Europe.

The charity’s vessel Aquarius has been blocked at the French port of Marseilles since losing its Panamanian registration and flag in September, amid what it has called a smear campaign led by Italy.

Both Liu and the IFRC charged that European powers have facilitated the detention of migrants in Libya.

“We have been very vocal in saying Libya is not a safe place,” Liu told AFP on the sidelines of the Marrakesh conference.

But “European governments have basically been using public money to … finance detention centers in Libya.”

IFRC president Francesco Rocca hit out at the EU for policies he said pushed migrants back to the highly unstable North African country, including the training of a nascent Libyan coastguard.

“Nobody should be sent back to Libya. This is unacceptable. You cannot send anyone back to a place that is not safe, and we know perfectly well that Libya is not safe,” he told AFP.

‘Feels like a balance’

Billed as the first international document on managing migration, the compact lays out 23 objectives to open up legal migration and discourage illegal border crossings.

Many NGOs have raised concerns that it is non-binding, raising further questions about whether its provisions will be implemented.

“States are not obliged to respect” the deal, said Michel Prieur of the International Centre for Comparative Environmental Law.

Prieur was also disappointed that environmental factors feeding into migration — including climate change, natural catastrophes and industrial disasters — merited only three paragraphs in the 35 pages of the pact’s text.

He and others said civil society could have been better consulted.

The agreement has been hit by a string of withdrawals by UN member states, with some claiming it infringes national sovereignty.

The US disavowed the process late last year.

Australia, Austria, the Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia all pulled out in the weeks and months ahead of the pact’s adoption, while Chile withdrew the night before the conference and Brazil joined the defectors on Monday.

Rows over the accord have erupted in several EU nations, hobbling Belgium’s coalition government and pushing Slovakia’s foreign minister to tender his resignation.

Italy falls into a group of countries that UN migration chief Louise Arbour has said is still engaged in “internal deliberations” over the pact.

For Sarnata Reynolds of Oxfam, the pact has been an achievement in a challenging global environment.

It was a case of “governments getting together at a time that is quite heated for migration policies… to ultimately find something that feels like a balance,” said the charity’s global head on displacement and migration.

“There are some places in the contents of the compact where for example we would have liked to have seen the principle of non-refoulement, which basically means that a person can’t be returned to a country if they’re going to be harmed,” Reynolds said.

“But the global compact from Oxfam’s perspective is a chance to push further and get governments to do better,” she added.

The pact is due to be ratified by the UN General Assembly on December 19.
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