Dominic asked Tim Butcher:

Tim - I'm a great admirer of "Blood River", and the lengths to which you went in order to obtain the story. Despite having a vast array of resources, the DRC seems to have remained horribly underdeveloped and locked in a cycle of misery. As such, what do you think is the best way forward for the DRC?

Tim Butcher Dominic – thank you for such a direct and powerful question. Not sure there is a direct and powerful answer but what follows is my best effort. The best way forward for DRC lies in the hands not of outsiders (diplomats, aid workers, UN types, writers) but its own people. While many readers of Blood River ask if I am pessimistic about the future for DRC, I prefer to say I am realistic: the problems are immense but the human capital of the people I know from there is so magnificent that I am sure they have the ability to turn it round.
History tells us that dark places can move towards light, acute problems can be solved. Dickensian London is not a place you or I would like to have lived as a normal person (not middle class, not propertied, not privileged), indeed Britain was, as Marlow tells us in Heart of Darkness `once a dark place’. And yet today, London is not as Dickens describes it, David Cameron’s brutal efforts notwithstanding.
So once the Congolese take the leap forward themselves, I see great grounds for progress. But only when they are good and ready and not before outsiders have stopped kidding themselves of an easy fix.

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