Millions of Congolese question the spending of more than US$300 million on national elections on 28 November – if the true results aren't released. There is a broad...

• September 2011: The International Crisis Group reported that the registration of electors by the Commission électorale nationale indépendante (CENI) showed 'surprising results', with higher rates in areas...

The development of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) has been on the agenda of Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso’s government since 2009, but the details are only now becoming clear....

Calls for the election results, due on 6 December, to be annulled have revived fears of violence. More than a score of people died on 26-28 November, five...

Mining companies stripped of valuable concessions have been sounding out the opposition before the presidential election, which is expected to take place on 28 November. President Joseph Kabila’s...

Potential investors in Congo-Kinshasa worry not only about opacity and corruption but also about the boundaries of concessions. Trinity Oil and Gas, of Houston, United States, wants the...

China is withholding money that is needed to rehabilitate 700 kilometres of railway in Katanga and Kasai, leading the Congolese government to call on mining companies to raise...

The award of the copper and cobalt mines at the Lonshi and Frontier sites to the Hong Kong company Fortune Ahead Limited is causing concern at the International...

The pre-election atmosphere is deteriorating. The government claims that the opposition is preparing an uprising and the government of neighbouring Congo-Brazzaville has accused President Joseph Kabila of looking...

President Paul Biya’s sixth – and surely final – election on 9 October was marked by a dearth of congratulatory messages from fellow heads of government. Neighbour President...

On 19 October, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo nominated his son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue (‘Teodorín’) as his new deputy envoy to the Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific...

An atmosphere of apathy clings to Cameroon’s presidential election on 9 October. In power for 28 years now, Paul Biya, 78, will once again present himself for re-election,...

At dawn on 29 September, a group of soldiers shot into the air on the bridge across the River Wouri that links central Douala with the industrial suburb of Bonabéri....

Publication of Simon Mann’s memoirs have been delayed until the end of October. The former Special Air Service officer was released 33 years early in 2009, after conviction...

President Lee Myung-bak’s government faces another corruption scandal linked to its African resource diplomacy after a little-known mining company claimed to have made a record-shattering diamond discovery in eastern Cameroon. A parliamentary...

C&K Mining has been operating in Cameroon since 2007 and has been working on production plans for the Mobilong and Limokoali diamond mines ever since. President Paul Biya signed a...

South Korean company Samsung C&T has become a collateral victim of the dispute between Belgian company George Forrest International and Congo-Kinshasa’s state mining company, Gécamines. GFI and Gécamines are vying for...

The 25 November presidential and parliamentary elections were always going to be difficult but the violence has already begun. On 5 September, a crowd of supporters of President...

Chad’s President Idriss Déby Itno has had a crucial influence on the regime of President François Bozizé Yangouvonda and he has let him know that the armed Chadian...

While the armed groups in the Central African Republic boast grandiose titles including words such as ‘front’ and ‘people’, extortion is usually their raison d’être. Most are led...

Ahead of national polls scheduled for 28 November, the Kinshasa government has decided to sell off state assets to a Hong Hong-based company for a fraction of their...

Smuggling is one of the biggest open secrets in Gabon’s forestry sector. Ever since the government began trying to mandate more local value-added processing of logs, the raw...

In a fit of unusual state zeal on 2 August, police in Bangui arrested a Frenchman working for local telecommunications company Telsoft Gateway Centrafrique and charged him with...

After rigging the January elections and colonising the state apparatus with his relatives and members of a Gbaya elite, President François Bozizé Yangouvonda is applying the brakes after...

Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo is not letting his status as a prisoner on trial at the International Criminal Court get in the way of standing in the presidential election,...

Mystery surrounds a sale by the state-owned Générale des Carrières et des Mines to a company linked to Dan Gertler, a close friend of President Joseph Kabila. Just...

Relations between Luanda and Kinshasa could deteriorate sharply after a series of disputes. Angolan border police expelled about 15,000 Congolese in April and May after rounding them up...

The Congolese authorities have signalled yet another revision to the historic US$6 billion mines-for-infrastructure deal between the government and a Chinese consortium. China Railways Engineering Corporation, Sinohydro and...

Unemployment among artisanal miners is rising as nervous electronics manufacturers, such as Apple and Intel, source fewer imports from them. Many companies are acting on a precautionary basis...

The latest twist in the long dispute between Angola and Congo-Kinshasa came with the arrest in Kinshasa of Cabindan human rights activist Agostinho Chicaia in late June. Tension...

Regional antagonisms and logistical problems are overshadowing presidential and parliamentary elections due on 28 November. After much delay and after constitutional reform pushed through by the presidency, the...

President François Bozizé emerged strengthened from an aid-pledging conference in Brussels on 16-17 June when European Union states promised more than 400 billion CFA francs (US$870 million) for...

A United Nations group of experts on Congo-Kinshasa broke new ground in its twice-yearly report of 7 June by offering those it criticises the right to reply. In...

Three days of clashes in Bangui sparked by the discovery of the corpses of two young boys on 31 May, believed to have been ritually murdered, show the...

On 1 June, President Ali Ben Bongo Ondimba sacked Housing Minister Blaise Louembe – who has only had the job since January – and the entire staff of...

New technical studies have found that the Bélinga iron ore mine in northeastern Gabon contains almost four times the original estimated resources and the Libreville government is actively...

The Katangese Mines Minister, Juvénal Kitungwa Lugoma, was in Paris on 5 May assuring nervous electronics and automotive company representatives that cassiterite and colombo-tantalite (coltan) from Katanga was...

President Idriss Déby Itno has been winning presidential elections since December 1990 and the 25 April poll is likely to prove no exception. With the opposition boycott, turnout was expected...

President Joseph Kabila and his supporters will restrict democratic representation only to the rich, if a bill sponsored by Kabila-stalwart Evariste Boshab goes through. The law will double...

Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal will decide this month whether FG Hemisphere, a United States-based vulture fund, is entitled to seize US$100 million from payments due to the Congolese...

Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno is choosing the same political strategy as Congo-Kinshasa’s President Joseph Kabila: he has opened the country’s doors to numerous development projects financed by...

Concerns are rising over the opacity of the US$6 billion Sicomines deal between the Congolese government and a group of Chinese companies. Congolese civil society groups and oppositionists,...

Chinese construction companies are not just carrying out Beijing-backed projects, they are also winning contracts from international donors. The first phases of telecommunications projects funded by China Export-Import...

Addax, a British-listed oil and gas company controlled by China’s Sinopec, may benefit from this month’s decision by the Nigerian and Cameroonian governments to collaborate in the Bakassi...

The government called it a terrorist attack but what actually happened is still not clear. The raid on one of President Joseph Kabila’s homes came in the early afternoon of...

Congo-Kinshasa’s armed forces comprise about 150,000, including 2,500 in the Navy, 3,000 in the Air Force and 15,000 in the Republican Guard. Military observers believe that most of the naval and...

The 28 February Conseil supérieur de la défense brought together President Joseph Kabila’s top security team.

On 27 February, Sammy Kum Buo, Africa Director in the United Nations Secretary General’s office, helped negotiate the dissolution of Andre Mba Obame’s short-lived republic, which he had set up...

Opposition candidates declared the first round of the presidential election on 23 January tainted (‘vicié’), putting President François Bozizé’s 64.7% share of the vote in doubt (AC Vol 51 No...

André Mba Obame is in no hurry to leave the small offices of the United Nations Development Programme in Libreville, where he has been holed up since 29...

Since coming to power in 2009, President Ali Ben Bongo Ondimba’s government has asked only for patience and delivered only promises. Holding a cabinet meeting in Tchibanga in...

Katanga’s separatists are on the march again. Fifty years ago, they threatened the unity of the new-born Congo state at Independence. On 4 February, at around 3 a.m.,...

After more than a year in power, President Ali Ben Bongo Ondimba faces rising popular discontent. Spending more time abroad than at home hardly gives the impression of...

President Joseph Kabila has virtually ensured his re-election on 27 November by getting Parliament to eliminate the inconvenience of a second electoral round (AC Vol 52 No 1)....

Ayah Paul Abine, the Rassemblement démocratique du peuple camerounais member of parliament for Akaya, Manyu Division of South West Region, has quit the ruling RDPC, claiming he fears...

In power for the last 28 years, President Paul Biya, 77, will face his old rival in the presidential election scheduled for October. This is John Fru Ndi,...

Congo’s approaching elections are already entangled by lawyers. The main opposition party, Jean-Pierre Bemba’s Mouvement de libération du Congo (MLC), supported by several local non-governmental organisations, claims that...

President Ali Ben Bongo Ondimba has maintained a dignified silence over the claim, contained in a United States State Department cable of June 2009 and leaked by WikiLeaks,...