China’s billion dollar contracts in Congo are at the centre of a new propaganda front in rebel General Laurent Nkunda’s war against President Joseph Kabila’s government in Kinshasa....

No one in the Kinshasa government wanted to talk to the rebel General Laurent Nkunda. So the talks which began in Nairobi on 8 December were a big...

The world’s financial crisis threatens the mining deals that were meant to finance Congo-Kinshasa’s post-war recovery. The big mining companies are finding it hard to raise funds as...

Twenty-six years in power do not explain the grip on Cameroon of Paul Biya and his ethnic clique. The tight circle of praise-singers who marked the President's 26th...

The former first lady Germaine Ahidjo, widow of Cameroon's first President, recently admitted in a rare interview that her Muslim husband Ahmadou Ahidjo made mistakes during his 26...

Twelve government soldiers were killed on 13 November at Kabo in the north and the Central African Republic's long march towards peace halted again. The government of President...

The International Monetary Fund has given Kinshasa a stark choice: the Bretton Woods financial institutions or the Chinese. On a visit in September, an IMF delegation led by...

The strategic blunders of both the Kinshasa government and the Kivu rebels leave Congo's government facing military defeat, the rebels facing political isolation and the people of Kivu...

Most of the Kivu belligerents profit, one way or another, from the two provinces' precious reserves of gold, cassiterite and colombo-tantalite (coltan). Gold and coffee smuggling has been...

A row has broken out between Cameroon and its neighbour Equatorial Guinea after the abduction on 7 October in Yaounde of Cipriano Nguema Mba, apparently by Cameroonian police...

Kinshasa's Commission Ministérielle Chargée de la Revisitation des Contrats Miniers has revised the terms of China's biggest contract in Congo-Kinshasa, signed with the joint venture Sicomines, as part of a wider...

When China evacuated 400 construction workers from Mongomo in Equatorial Guinea in early April, it marked the culmination of a labour dispute with a difference. In several African countries, notably Zambia...

Beijing's multi-billion dollar plans for Congo-Kinshasa are hitting new obstacles as questions are being asked about the transparency of the new deals and the behaviour of Chinese companies on the ground....

Indian peacekeepers in the United Nations' troubled mission in Congo-Kinshasa face a new investigation - this time into claims that a senior officer has publicly declared his support for Tutsi rebels....

Confidential reports by the United Nations contain 44 allegations against the Indian battalion based in Congo-Kinshasa's North Kivu province and known as INDBATT. The main report, dated 7 February 2008, describes...

Three Indian officers'would not be spared' if they were found to have smuggled gold while serving with the United Nations in Congo-Kinshasa, India's Defence Minister A. K. Antony said after ordering...

Chinese peacekeepers in Southern Sudan have been awarded United Nations Peacekeeping Medals two months early to coincide with the Lunar New Year Spring Festival, celebrated on 7 February. Events in Chad...

The career of Gabon’s consummate diplomat owes its success less to the impact he made as President of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2004-05 than his accomplishments as head...

India's defence minister A. K. Antony has ordered 'prompt and time-bound' investigations into charges of child sexual abuse by 60 of its soldiers deployed to the Mission des Nations Unies en...

China's activities in Congo-Kinshasa began with mining, moved into infrastructure and are now more ambitious still: they are diversifying into national development planning. Relations were strengthened by President Joseph Kabila's visit for...

Foreign Ministers Bernard Kouchner of France and Karel de Gucht of Belgium want the European Union to send forces to take on General Laurent Nkunda and his rebel...

As the crisis around Goma intensifies, conditions further north are deteriorating, opening up the possibility of more regional intervention. In the mineral-rich Orientale, Ugandan Joseph Kony’s Lord’s...

It could be another three years before China launches its US$3 billion investment into Katanga’s vast reserves of copper and cobalt, according to Congolese mining officials who met their counterparts...

President Omar Bongo Ondimba’s anti-corruption drive has produced unexpected results.As Harvard University and the Mo Ibrahim Foundation announced that Gabon was among the top ten best governed African...

Admission of failure The resignation of Prime Minister Antoine Gizenga Fundji on 25 September launches a battle for succession that will probably strengthen President Joseph Kabila in the...

Congo-Kinshsasa's government is to reform the controversial forestry sector. On 30 July, an interministerial commission, Le Commission Interministérielle de Conversion des Anciens Titres Forestiers, began reviewing 156 concessions,...

The commanders of Congo’s army, the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo, are mining cassiterite (tin ore) and gold in league with the majority Hutu Forces...

The 19 August murder trial of veteran oppositionist John Fru Ndi and 22 of his Social Democratic Front members will further sideline the leader of the SDF, Cameroon's...

Cameroonian security forces in the disputed oil-rich Bakassi peninsula are on maximum alert after fatal attacks by the Niger Delta Defence and Security Council. The NDDSC, a little-known,...

Some of Cameroon's biggest political names are at risk as the Police Judiciaire de Yaoundé continues investigations into the biggest and most complex corruption case in President Paul...

Companies drilling on the Ugandan side of Lake Albert, which straddles the border with Congo-Kinshasa, had a rude shock in mid-June when President Yoweri Museveni announced that Uganda...

On 26 June, Malabo quietly dropped a three-year campaign to pursue some of the alleged architects of the 2004 mercenary coup plot for civil damages in England (AC...

Troops from Nigeria and Cameroon were put on high alert in the Bakassi Peninsula, following the unexplained slaughter of five Cameroonian soldiers and a local government official on...

Britain's tenuous relations with Equatorial Guinea are likely to be the other casualty - alongside natural justice - after this week's show trial in Malabo of former Special...

At least a couple of months must pass before Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo can be transferred from Belgium, where he was arrested on 24 May, to prison in the...

Corruption scandals have become a handy way for President Paul Biya to brighten his image ahead of the 2011 presidential election. They allow him to boost his...

On 24 May, Kinshasa recalled ‘for consultations’ its Ambassador in Brussels, Jean-Pierre Mutamba, and (to the horror of the diamond trade) closed its Antwerp consulate. Later, it closed...

Belgium has lost a diplomat and the George Forrest Group, which dominates parts of Congo-Kinshasa's mining industry, has lost a valuable senior executive. Pierre Chevalier, Belgium's Special Representative...

Talks to resolve the intermittent border disputes between Kampala and Kinshasa have been called off after Congolese troops seized a tract of disputed territory between Arua district and...

The habitual politeness between Belgium and its former colony grew thinner still during a five-day visit to Kinshasa in late April by three ministers from Brussels, Karel De...

The halting of United Nations' investigations into allegations of abuses by Indian and Pakistani peacekeepers in Congo-Kinshasa raises new questions about UN accountability and the legal responsibilities...

Coup plot claims, a lucrative oil deal and a plane crash are enlivening the desultory campaigning ahead of parliamentary and municipal elections in Equatorial Guinea due on 4...

The election season has started with the usual components of fraud, corruption and attempts by the government to co-opt any credible opposition candidates. A review of the national...

Congo-Kinshasa and Uganda still disagree about their shared border, but the scraps in which soldiers and civilians were killed on Lake Albert late last year have faded away,...

As international attention focused on Zimbabwe, Cameroon's President Paul Biya has quietly made plans for his own life presidency, largely free from foreign scrutiny. After nationwide protests by...

Once again, the political-religious cult Bundu dia Kongo has set off a bloody conflict in the province of Bas-Congo, near the mouth of the Congo River. The United...

The sacked director of South Africa's National Intelligence Agency, Billy Masetlha, is at the centre of fresh claims about the agency's collusion with plotters against Equatorial Guinea's government....

Having ruled for 25 years, President Paul Biya wants to go on ruling until 2018, when he will be 85. The constitution decrees that he cannot stand for...

President Paul Biya's 25 years in power have been disastrous for what was once a rather prosperous state. His critics blame its decline on the excessive powers he...

At last, the bargaining can begin. The government has given the private mining companies details of the terms of the new and renewed contracts that they will be...

Peace has not broken out in the Kivus yet. In Goma diplomats are trying to organise follow-up meetings to the accord signed last month between the Congolese government,...

The 4 February attack on Ndjamena was carefully timed. The rebels and their sponsors in Sudan's National Congress (National Islamic Front) regime in Khartoum had spotted growing dissent...

Chad and Sudan have been meddling in each other's politics for 30 years, and the semi-nomadic peoples who straddle the border (including President Idriss Déby Itno's Zaghawa) complicate...

Simon Mann, former Special Air Service officer and mercenary, was extradited on 1 February from Zimbabwe to Equatorial Guinea, where he is to face charges of coup plotting...

The European Force in Chad and Central African Republic (EUFOR Chad/CAR) is due to be deployed between March and May, to protect refugees from Sudan's Darfur region and...

Newspapers in Paris and Brussels have been full of accusations about Chad. French, Belgian and South African companies cooperated in supplying armoured vehicles to President Idriss Déby Itno's...

A ceasefire in Congo's eastern war was agreed on 23 January by the Kinshasa government and armed factions from North and South Kivu after a three-week conference in...

President Joseph Kabila, by an order dated 12 January, massively increased his economic power and political patronage. He replaced the heads of 37 state enterprises with his own...