Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

-
Image
  By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen
Post a Comment

DRC: State-owned diamond company, MIBA, hopes to rebound

-

 

news

DRC: State-owned diamond company, MIBA, hopes to rebound

Volume 90%
 
MIBA- the Bakwanga Mining Company remains a pale shadow of its former glory.  -  
Copyright © africanews
Photo captured from AFP video.
By Rédaction Africanews 

and AFP

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

The city of Mbuji-Mayi, the capital of the Kasai-Oriental province in south-central DR Congo is once home to the country’s state diamond company, MIBA- the Bakwanga Mining Company.

Poor management, crumbling infrastructure, embezzlement and looting, especially during the two Great Congo Wars between 1997 and 2003, left MIBA crippled by debt and at the mercy of plummeting commodity prices.

The facility was closed at the height of the 2008 financial crisis.

From an annual output averaging six million carats, mainly of industrial diamonds, in the early 2000s, production was no more than 500,000 carats in 2008 and half that in 2011.

Despite a resumption of operations, a decade ago, the company is still a shadow of its former glory.

"Mining has resumed with a view to relaunching with the help of the government. Five million dollars, a payment that Gécamine gave to Miba. The mine is operational, exploitation is under way, but at a minimal level", said Raphael Mukadi Tshindundu, technical director of Miba.

That $5 million dollars was released in August last year by President Felix Tshisekedi, who hails from the Kasai region.

Managers of the facility say the inadequate capital injection was to help MIBA become profitable.

But buyers like Ilunga want to see much more from the government.

"If MIBA's activity had really resumed, we would have felt it, life would have resumed, money would flow. The government owes Miba a lot of money. It does not have the will to pay this debt. If they pay Miba, Kasai will be much better off", said Alphonse Ilunga, a diamond buyer.

Set up in 1961, MIBA is 80% state-owned, with a 20 % stake by a Belgian company.

A government audit published in May 2020 revealed "serious dysfunction".

RELATED ARTICLES

    FROM THE SAME COUNTRY

      View more

      Comments

      Post a Comment

      Popular posts from this blog

      Inside Xanadu 2.0: Take a sneak peek into Bill and Melinda Gates’s Washington mansion

      -
      Image
        LIFESTYLE HOME GARDEN HOME Bill Gates and Melinda’s 27-year-old marriage has come to an end. Picture: Anthony Bolante/Reuters Inside Xanadu 2.0: Take a sneak peek into Bill and Melinda Gates’s Washington mansion By Staff Reporter   May 11, 2021 Questions have been asked as to who is likely to get Bill and Melinda Gates’ 6 100² lakeside mansion in Washington State once their divorce is settled. But it would seem Melinda doesn’t really want it. In a profile in Fortune magazine published in 2008, she said when she arrived in Gates’ life the house caused her to have “a mini sort of personal crisis”. It was partly built when she married Gates in 1994. She described it as “a bachelor’s dream and a bride’s nightmare… with enough software and hi-tech displays to make a newlywed feel as though she were living inside a video game”. So with the help of interior designer Thierry Despont – who has worked on the Palm Court of New York’s Plaza Hotel, and the Ritz in Paris – she helped create a home
      Read more

      Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

      -
      Image
        By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen
      Read more

      Are there any planets outside of our solar system?

      -
      Image
        Academic rigour, journalistic flair COVID-19 Arts  +  Culture Business  +  Economy Education Environment  +  Energy Health  +  Medicine Politics Science  +  Technology In French Artist illustration of an exoplanet.  dottedhippo/iStock via Getty Images Are there any planets outside of our solar system? July 19, 2021 2.06pm SAST Author Jean-Luc Margot Professor of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles Disclosure statement Jean-Luc Margot receives funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, and philanthropists. Partners University of California  provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US. The Conversation is funded by the National Research Foundation, eight universities, including the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Rhodes University, Stellenbosch University and the Universities of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Pretoria, and South Africa. It is hosted by the
      Read more