Word: congo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...beset the continent, Africa still enjoys the lowest smoking rates in the world, largely because most people just can't afford it. In Ghana, the male smoking rate (which in most places in the world is higher than the female rate) is only 8%; in the Democratic Republic of Congo, it's 14%; in Nigeria, it's 12%. Compare that with 31% in India, 56% in Malaysia and a whopping 61% in China. But the tobacco industry abhors a vacuum, and in recent years, industry players - principally London-based British American Tobacco, Switzerland-based Philip Morris International...
...Spreading the Scourge Big Tobacco's footprint in Africa has been hard to miss for a while. British American markets its wares - which include Dunhill and Pall Mall - in a vast crescent sweeping from South Africa to Congo and west to Ghana, as well as throughout North Africa. In 2003 the company planted its stakes deeper, building a $150 million factory in Nigeria. Philip Morris, whose brands include Marlboro and Chesterfield, has a smaller presence on the continent. "We are a minor, minor player," says spokesman Greg Prager. But that could change. The company does no business in Nigeria...
...report released earlier this week, Global Witness claims that multinational companies are furthering a trade in minerals at the heart of the hi-tech industry that feeds the horrendous civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). (Global Witness is the same nongovernmental organization that helped expose the violence that plagues many of the sources of diamonds.) However, the accused companies, with varying degrees of hostility, deny any culpability, saying Global Witness oversimplifies a complex economic process in a chaotic geopolitial setting. (See pictures of diamonds set on onyx and black enamel...
That's changing. Africa still has too many catastrophes, places like Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia. But in other parts of the continent - Ghana, Rwanda, Tanzania and much of southern Africa - a new generation of African leaders has embraced democracy and the rule of law, and is making clear a preference for business and self-reliance over aid. Despite the global downturn, the International Monetary Fund predicts sub-Saharan Africa will grow by an average of 1.5% this year. Seven African countries will grow by 5% or more, with Liberia expecting 4.9% growth...
...civil aviation officials don't enforce international security standards," Hubert argues. "Targeting individual carriers is often overly subjective, and inefficient in remedying the original problem of insufficient oversight by national aviation authorities." The E.U. blacklist already effectively bans all airlines from nations such as Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Croatia and Paraguay, in addition to individual carriers from countries whose safety oversights the E.U. considers sound. Even that, though, can't prevent disaster from striking some of the largest and most reputable airlines on earth, whose accidents often account for the industry's highest death tolls...