PREVIEW
French officials, Total and ExxonMobil are scrambling to retain Rwanda’s security role in Afungi after EU ended payments
French officials and TotalEnergies are looking at ways to maintain a military mission led by Rwanda in north-east Mozambique, after TotalEnergies and United States major ExxonMobil secured an exemption from the US’s sanctions against the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) that allows them to keep working with Kigali’s military.
The RDF mission has been deployed since 2021 with a mandate that includes protecting a US$25 billion liquefied natural gas project in Cabo Delgado led by TotalEnergies and US counterpart ExxonMobil.
Eyes were raised at the ‘Africa Forward’ summit in Nairobi on 12 May when French president Emmanuel Macron rowed back against new sanctions against Rwanda over its capture of territory in eastern Congo-Kinshasa since last December’s peace accord was signed in Washington (AC Vol 67 No 10, Ruto strengthens hand as Nairobi summit marks Macron’s African swansong).
‘If everyone rushes to isolate Rwanda because the United States has done so, the chances of encouraging Rwanda to adopt a cooperative approach would be significantly reduced,’ he said.
Rwanda threatened to withdraw troops if the European Union and US did not pay for the mission after the RDF was sanctioned as an entity by Washington (AC Vol 67 No 5, More pressure on Kigali & Vol 67 No 6, Kigali threatens to stop guarding gas project in Cabo Delgado). But that threat appears to have been forgotten.
Kigali says that the mission’s short-term future has been secured after the EU ended its €20m annual funding in May, and that Mozambique has agreed to pick up the bill. That seems unlikely unless the cash is being routed via TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil.
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