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

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

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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".

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