World Bank gives $1.2 billion to Congo

The World Bank is to give the Democratic Republic of Congo 1.2 billion dollars (765 million euros) in development aid, its managing director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said Friday.
"The World Bank has granted 1.2 billion dollars over the next three years to help finance projects in the fields of agriculture, forestry, water, energy, mining and infrastructure," she said at a news conference in Kinshasa at the end of a three-day visit to the country. Three hundred million dollars will be handed over this year, she said.
The World Bank is helping Congo as part of its Emergency Demobilisation and Reintegration Project to aid formerly war-torn countries make the transition to peace. In 2003, Congo began slowly emerging from a five-year war in which some 2.5 million people lost their lives, either directly in combat or through disease and hunger, and which left the infrastructure of the vast, resource-rich country in shambles.