As well as announcing new deals on mining and infrastructure development, Chinese companies are also moving into Congo’s much depleted agriculture sector. Palm oil is the attraction for Zhongxing Telecom (ZTE),...

Losing Chad has been a big setback for Taiwan’s plans in Africa. Chad had resumed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1997. Merchandise trade had not been important for either...

Belgium and the United States are still reeling from Kinshasa’s mid-September announcement that China is to invest more than US$8 billion in Congo-Kinshasa.

The Cameroonian army is again in turmoil, after the dismissal last month of the head of the Delta Force, deployed in the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula on the border...

At last there is hope of negotiation to end one of Africa's least known calamities and the multiple rebellions against President François Bozizé's regime. Armed bandits and two...

A daring raid on two banks in Bata, Equatorial Guinea's commercial capital, on 5 December has prompted a sharp breach in relations with neighbouring Cameroon, an overhaul of...

The crisis in North Kivu is worsening sharply, with over 500,000 people displaced in the past year, and is one of the key factors holding back Congo-Kinshasa's attempts...

Mining companies were dismayed and share prices wobbled after draft copies of Congo's mining contracts review started circulating in Kinshasa last week. The leaked document is a damning...

Commercial rivalries and contractual disputes over oil reserves in Lake Albert, which runs along the Congo-Kinshasa/ Uganda border, are heating up. Tensions between their two armies have ebbed...

President Joseph Kabila and his cabinet are much in demand as access to Congo-Kinshasa’s minerals is again contested.

The trial of nine French and seven Spanish citizens accused of abducting 103 children from the Chad/Sudan border region on 25 October will damage France’s relationship with Chad...

Gabonese are outraged at the terms of a US$3 billion iron ore project at Bélinga and the likely damage to the country’s national parks. We hear that the...

The government Commission reviewing up to 60 of Congo's mining contracts has quickly come under fire. Politicians, lobbyists and companies question its claims of objectivity, rigour and, indeed,...

Some of the companies mentioned on the list of 60 contracts under review - and some that weren't

Former England cricketer Phil Edmonds’s roller-coaster ride in Africa is going up again after a 19 September court ruling in Kinshasa recognising the legality of his Central African...

Theories abound about who is funding and arming the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) in the eastern provinces of Congo-Kinshasa. General Laurent Nkunda, the Congolese Tutsi...

After its landslide win in fraudulent parliamentary and local elections on 22 July, President Paul Biya promised that his ruling Rassemblement Démocratique du Peuple Camerounais (RDPC) would 'modernise'...

The pursuit of repayments from the poorest economies has made the debt-collection agencies known as 'vulture funds' a target for antipoverty campaigners. These firms buy up debts at...

The first round of Congo-Brazzaville's legislative elections, on 22 June, displayed haste, corruption and ineptitude. There was a stark lack of voting materials and at some polling stations...

President Omar Bongo Ondimba, a close ally of Beijing, appears to have literally clipped the wings of Taiwan's African diplomacy.

From a farmhouse in the Masisi Hills, dissident General Laurent Nkunda has told Africa Confidential that he is ready to fight to the bitter end to prevent what...

On 22 June, a judge in Bordeaux, France, found Gabon's President Omar Bongo guilty of accepting a bribe to free French citizen René Cardona from gaol in 1996.

Fears are growing of a confrontation between the forces of General Laurent Nkunda and the government's Forces Armées Congolaises in North Kivu Province next month. We hear that...

Back-room dealing is habitual in Congo-Brazzaville, where President Denis Sassou-Nguesso and his Parti Congolais du Travail lead a coalition of 30 parties, the Forces Démocratiques Unies. The latest...

President Denis Sassou-Nguesso's government is neither clean enough nor competent enough to qualify for aid. A Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) agreement with the International Monetary Fund...

The government's announcement last month that it will investigate about 60 mining contracts, agreed while civil wars raged from 1996 to 2003, risks disappointing everyone. Mining companies, especially...

Key to the contracts investigation in Congo-Kinshasa will be the role of the World Bank and the legacy of the anti-corruption policies pushed by its outgoing President, Paul...

An unexpected blast from the past has hit President Joseph Kabila with the victory of Léon Kengo wa Dondo in the 11 May poll for Senate President. This...

In late 2006, Congo-Kinshasa elected a parliament of 608 members. It includes 69 political parties, 31 of them with just one member in the National Assembly, along with...

The bloody shoot-out in Kinshasa on 22-23 March confirmed President Joseph Kabila's grip on the country. His troops decisively defeated the guard of Jean-Pierre Bemba, who had lost...

The war of words between two non-governmental agencies and French nuclear energy company AREVA escalated last week, with public accusations of malpractice in the extraction of uranium in...

A high-powered Angolan delegation visited Kinshasa on 14 March. It included Foreign Minister João Bernado de Miranda, Interior Minister Leal Monteiro 'Ngongo', Chief-of-Staff General Francisco Furtado, National Police...

Congo has its uranium scandal, and the International Atomic Energy Agency is investigating. New Minister for Scientific Research Sylvanus Mushi Bonane opened up the affair on 15 March...

Congo's rainforest covers 110 million hectares, twice the size of France. Cutting it down, as the Amazon jungle across the Atlantic is being cut down, could transform the...

The logging companies: of Congo's 156 concessions, 107 were awarded after May 2002, when the government banned new grants. The loggers' organisation is the Fédération des Industriels du...

The new government, formed by Prime Minister Antoine Gizenga on 5 February, began in deep trouble. President Joseph Kabila's Alliance de la Majorité Présidentielle (AMP) grabbed all the...

The overstuffed government has 60 members: six ministers of state, 34 ministers and 20 deputy ministers. The presidential alliance takes 18 places, 15 of those for President Joseph...