DRC Country Director Rachel Boketa speaks to Vox about the ripple effects of rising fuel prices.
Lack of reliable energy pervades all areas of life and makes people reliant on suboptimal sources of power, which affects people and businesses even more as energy prices spike. “Being a DRC national, I’ve witnessed all my life that whenever fuel prices increase, the prices of everything else increase too,” said Rachel Boketa, the country director for the DRC office of the nonprofit Women for Women International. “Leading an office in an area which has so many electricity-related problems, we rely on generators and we use fuel for that. Now it’s affecting our budget because we have to cover all these unplanned increases in price.”