Peoples Daily Highlights LaRouche in Transaqua Coverage

In a long, Aug. 21 report on the newly increased prospects for the long-planned “Transaqua” great infrastructure project, to transform Lake Chad and sub-Saharan Africa, China’s Peoples Daily highlighted the role of Lyndon LaRouche and his movement. It also placed this crucial water and power project in the context of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, or “New Silk Road,” in which Helga and Lyndon LaRouche’s historic role was highlighted Aug. 20 by China Daily.

“Hopes have been revived for the 40 million people who depend on Lake Chad for their livelihoods,” People’s Daily wrote, “following the signing last June in Hangzhou, China, of a deal between Chinese construction giant, PowerChina, and the Italian firm, Bonifica Spa. However, the news was only made public at the beginning of this month.

“The agreement concerns the carrying out of feasibility studies on transferring 100 billion cubic metres of water per annum from River Congo in the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, to replenish the fast shrinking Lake Chad, a distance of 2,500 km. The project is also known as Transaqua. According to the website of Executive Intelligence Review, EIR magazine, the letter of intent was signed at a meeting between the executive of the two companies in the presence of the Italian Ambassador to China, Gabriele Menegatti.”

Under the headline, “Role of LaRouche”, China Daily said, “Thanks to the fight taken up by LaRouche organization over the years and the initiators of Transaqua, the project is today becoming reality within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative. Executive Intelligence Review magazine and Schiller Institute in 2015 arranged the first meeting between LCBC [the Lake Chad Basin Commission—ed.] and the brains behind Transaqua. This was followed in December 2016 by the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between LCBC and PowerChina, and subsequent contacts between Bonifica Spa and the Chinese company.”

The paper also notes that “The Lake Chad Basin Commission resolved the issue of funding studies on water transfer by creating a new Silk Road to Lake Chad. PowerChina, one of the country’s largest multinationals that built the Three Gorges dam, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with LCBC last December.”

Peoples Daily‘s article, by Kimeng Hilton Ndukong, is far too thoroughly illustrated and too extensive to review here; it presents the existential sub-Sahara problem of the 50-year shrinkage of Lake Chad in detail; its results in terms of economic destruction and the rise of terrorism in the region; and the extraordinary scope of the Transaqua project to transform the region. This is potentially one of Lyndon and Helga LaRouche’s greatest works.