Yearbook 2004
Central African Republic. In July, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a US $ 8.2 million loan intended to support restructuring of state finances and facilitate foreign investment. The total population in Central African Republic is 4,829,778 people in 2020. The IMF loan was seen as a recognition that the military-led regime had made some efforts to deal with the corruption in the state administration and the illegal extraction of diamonds and timber.
However, the situation in the Central African Republic was described as precarious after years of internal conflicts, and 95% of residents were referred to try to survive on less than the equivalent of SEK 10. per day. The countryside is ravaged by armed groups and health care has collapsed. In March, Sweden – with a grant of $ 700,000 – was said to be the only country to obey a UN appeal of $ 16.8 million in emergency aid.
In a December referendum, a large majority said yes to a new constitution that would pave the way for presidential and parliamentary elections in early 2005. Then the transition regime that has ruled since the March 2003 military coup will end.
On January 6, 2015, Ugandan soldiers and U.S. military advisers captured Dominic Ongwen inside the Central African Republic. He was chief of the Ugandan Lords Resistant Army (LRA) and had an ICC arrest warrant since 2005. The ICC wants to put Ongwen on trial for war crimes.
In April, the United Nations suspended senior UN official Anders Kompass after it published detailed reports of French UN soldiers’ sexual assaults on children in the Central African Republic. Compass had then tried for over a year to get the UN to intervene, after an internal report in 2014 revealed extensive and systematic sexual assaults against children committed by French troops. The UN explained its suspension of Compass with the publication of secretly stamped UN documents. The suspension and publication of the French assaults sparked international scandal. It was only after 9 months of internal investigations that Kompass was acquitted by the UN of all charges. No immediate action was taken to investigate and prosecute the guilty French soldiers. (UN aid worker suspended for leaking report on child abuse by French troops, Guardian 29/4 2015, UN whistleblower who exposed sexual abuse by peacekeepers is exonerated, Guardian 18/1 2016)
In May 15, the transitional government conducted a national reconciliation conference: Bangui National Forum. The conference adopted a Covenant for Peace, National Reconciliation and Reconstruction and 9 of the 10 armed groups also signed a Disarmament, Demobilization, Rehabilitation and Repatriation (DDRR) agreement. But tensions in the country continued to be latent. In September, at least 42 were killed and 400 wounded in Bangui after Muslims attacked a predominantly Christian district. Acc. the government because a Muslim man had been killed and thrown on the streets. Under the chaotic conditions, 500 prisoners managed to escape from the Nagaragba central prison – including members of both Christian and Muslim militias.
CENTRAL AFRICAN, Republic
Internal state (622,984 km 2 and 2,255,536 residents in 1968) of Central Africa, independent since 1960 and associated with the EEC, formerly a French colony with the name of Ubanghi-Sciari, which later became one of the four overseas territories in which French equatorial Africa was divided in 1946, independent since 1958 under the name of R. Central African. It is divided into 14 prefectures and has Bangui as its capital.
It occupies an area of plateaus that are found in a central zone in the EW sense, which has an average altitude of 600-800 m and is connected, to the east, to the edge of the Bahr el Arab basin, and to a group of massifs (Bongos, 1400 m) and, to the west, to the highlands on the border of Cameroon, and forms the watershed between the broad Chari basin, to the NE, and the right tributaries of the Ubangui, whose valley groove coincides with the border of the state.
It is a territory formed mainly of ancient rocks (granites), which assumes great hydrographic importance, as it is interposed between the basins of three great African rivers and has two very different slopes for climatic conditions, for population distribution and for economic activities: the one in the South much rainier (over 1500 mm per year) and with a short dry season, and the one in the N less rainy and with a prolonged dry season, especially in the NE. The temperatures, rather stable throughout the year in the southernmost area (25-26 ° C), record significant excursions on the high lands and in the northern area, while the vegetation loses its luxuriance from S to N, passing from the equatorial forest into the savannah less and less rich.
The population, which undergoes a significant annual growth (2.2%) is mainly of Sudanese origin (Banda, 31%; Baya, 29%), devoted to hunting and agriculture, but there are also less developed groups (pygmies), the first residents of the region. It is distributed in a very irregular way, depending on the climatic and altimetric conditions. The most populous area is the central-southern one, where the capital is also located, which is by far the main urban agglomeration (301,800 residents), While the density of the eastern lands is less than 1 residents per km 2.
The distribution of the population reflects that of the resources. The subsoil essentially offers diamonds, W of Bangui, and modest quantities of gold; the forest, which covers vast areas in the south-western part of the country, produces large quantities of precious wood (ebony, mahogany); breeding is of modest importance, also due to the presence of the tsetse fly. Agriculture is the basis of the country’s economy, although it affects less than a tenth of the land area, and finds better conditions in the low-lying central-southern lands. Apart from modest quantities of cereals (millet, rice, corn), the main products are cassava, yam and bananas, and for export coffee and cotton.
The industry concerns almost only the processing of agricultural products and some textile plants, present in the capital. The production of electricity from a hydroelectric plant on the Ubangui is also modest. The country is subject abroad for most of its industrial products and uses the port of Bangui and a few rolling roads that cross it in a north-south and east-west direction, also connecting it with neighboring countries. Over half of the foreign trade takes place with France and the rest mainly with the Federal Republic of Germany, the Netherlands and the United States. Bangui Airport absorbs heavy passenger traffic. The socio-cultural conditions have registered considerable progress, thanks to external aid, as evidenced by the diffusion of radio.