2024 was the hottest year on record, scientists say

KIGAIL: Rwandan truckers and exporters say they are paying a steep price for the conflict in the eastern region of neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, having to deal with angry locals and fearful customers.

Olivier Munyemana, a Rwandan lorry driver, knows the route from the Indian Ocean port of Dar Es Salaam to the DRC by heart, having driven it for eight years.

But as fighting has escalated in DRC in recent months, with the Rwandan-backed M23 armed group seizing large areas of the east, including the border towns of Goma and Bukavu, he is too afraid to cross.

He says drivers face attacks from locals angry at Rwanda’s involvement in the conflict.

“I can’t risk my life or lose my truck,” he said. 

“We have had cases of trucks being burned and drivers attacked.”

Rwanda says the M23’s takeover in eastern DRC is necessary to eradicate a Rwandan militia formed initially by those who committed the 1994 genocide and which threatens to attack its borders.

The DRC claims that Rwanda seeks regime change and control of the east’s vast mineral wealth.

Whatever the motives, it has been bad for business.

According to the National Institute of Statistics, DRC is Rwanda’s second-biggest trading partner, buying $156 million worth of goods in the first nine months of 2024.

Anjia Prefabricated, a $100 million Chinese-owned cement factory in Rwanda’s Muhanga district, gets all its clinker — a key ingredient for cement — from DRC by truck and boat.

“This stopped shortly before the war reached Bukavu. All our trucks ... are now parked,” said Israel Byiringiro, its head of procurement.

Although the Rwanda-allied M23 now has considerable control along the border region, their vehicles must still pass through hostile and precarious areas.

“We’ve been using our clinker stocks, but they are drying up fast,” said Byiringiro, adding that they now had to use a much costlier route through Tanzania that adds some 800 km.

Firms are also losing customers after construction companies in Bukavu and Goma were targeted in the unrest or fled the violence, said Davis Twahirwa, head of sales for Cimerwa, another Rwandan cement company, which typically sold a third of its output into DRC.

“Some of my customers have lost millions,” he said. 

“One lost two brand-new trucks in Gomab ... stolen by government forces apparently, and also his depots were looted.”

He said local banks were cut off by the Congolese government, making it hard to access dollars, and many traders fear the government will punish companies who resume business under the M23.

However, he added that relative calm was returning now that the group had consolidated control over the region.

“Normalcy is returning, and we have resumed selling in both markets, primarily in Goma. Bukavu is also slowly returning, and we hope to ramp up by mid-March fully,” said Twahirwa.

As demand increased in the hinterland countries of East Africa in the last decade, many Rwandans invested in lorries to ply routes from the coastal ports of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam.

They now have large loans to repay, and the conflict’s impact is taking a toll.

“When it is a war zone, no one wants to enter there,” said Abdul Ndarubogoye, president of the Rwanda Transporters Association.

“This has cost transporters and traders a lot of money; some truckers were trapped there in the war zone, which caused major delays,” he added.

He said Rwandan-registered lorries account for 40 percent of those entering eastern DRC, but they don’t want to risk being attacked by anti-Rwandan groups.

HOUSTON: The US energy secretary vowed Monday to reset federal energy policy to favor fossil fuels and deprioritize climate change as industry leaders gathered at their biggest event since President Donald Trump returned to office.
In the conference’s opening session, Energy Secretary Chris Wright cited the Trump administration’s moves to cut red tape that is delaying oil projects and promote liquefied natural gas exports as examples of a pivot away from policies pursued under former president Joe Biden.
“The Trump administration will end the Biden administration’s irrational quasi-religious policies on climate change that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens,” Wright told a packed auditorium for the annual Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) conference.
Since returning to Washington seven weeks ago, Trump and his team have overhauled the existing economic order at a dizzying pace, launching trade wars against allies and hollowing government agencies the president and his allies dislike.
Trump made energy policy a central part of his agenda with his day-one “Unleashing American Energy” executive order, promising during his inaugural address to “end the Green New Deal” in favor of “that liquid gold under our feet.”
But Mark Brownstein, senior vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, said Wright’s tone was “long on rhetoric,” adding, “at some point the administration needs to get off the campaign stump speech and get on with the business of governing.”
Brownstein described many CERA attendees as uncertain about investments, not only because of Trump’s shifting position on energy and climate change, but also the nearly daily pivots on tariffs.
“The energy industry is a capital-intensive business and what they need to deploy capital at scale is certainty and consistency,” Brownstein told AFP.
CERA’s opening day coincided with deep stock market losses after Trump over the weekend refused to rule out a US recession.
Protesters held boisterous demonstrations outside the event in Houston. Advocacy group Oil Change International blasted the oil industry for pollution near industrial facilities and for fossil fuel investments that are worsening climate change.
Energy played a key supporting role in Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, in which he pointed to higher gasoline prices as a reason more production was needed, embodied by his slogan: “Drill, baby, drill.”
Trump’s January 20 executive order represents a potentially wide-ranging attack on tax incentives which had been embraced by energy companies to advance billions of dollars of energy transition projects.
These projects were connected to laws enacted under Biden to mitigate climate change.
Some pundits think Trump will stop short of actions canceling existing projects where workers have been hired, including many in conservative districts.
Appearing just after Wright, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth warned that “swinging from one extreme to the other” on policy is “not the right policy approach in a long cycle industry like this.”
Wirth welcomed Trump’s executive orders on permitting reform, but said “we need to see some of this stuff put into legislation so that it’s more durable and it’s not at risk of being swung back in another direction by a future administration” with different priorities.
Wright downplayed the upheaval on trade policy after his remarks, noting Trump dropped many of his most impactful tariffs in his first term.
It’s “too early to say on tariffs, but I feel quite confident having a smart businessman every day working for America writ large, not an interest group or a particular industry,” Wright said. “I’m pretty optimistic about the outcome.”
Wright said there were “vigorous” closed-door debates about tariffs within the administration, rejecting the idea that there was ideological uniformity on the issue.
He also suggested the Trump administration wouldn’t challenge all Biden administration renewable energy projects, saying that while he wouldn’t have picked some of the same projects for loans, “we inherit a loan book... and we follow the rule of law.”