As French President François Hollande flew to Bangui on 10 December, it was already clear that the religious and ethnic divisions that spawned most of the killing will...

Congo-Kinshasa is bidding to host the 2019 African Cup of Nations, the continent’s most important football tournament. The Kinshasa government is counting on China’s help to win that...

Congo-Kinshasa has a small port, Matadi, while Congo-Brazzaville has a much larger one, at Pointe-Noire. The Kinshasa government needs to decide between them. There are rival views on...

The Direction Provinciale des Eaux et Forets du Woleu-Ntem shut down the sawmill of the Société Linshen Gabon on 18 October. Inspectors found that the Chinese company was...

After 20 months of intermittent fighting and stalled negotiations, the rebellion of the Mouvement de 23 mars in eastern Congo-Kinshasa could soon be at an end (AC Vol...

Angola has been flexing its military muscles to remind Congo-Brazzaville exactly who is boss. In a security operation beginning on 13 October, Angolan forces seized 40 Congolese soldiers...

President Paul Biya saw Pope Francis on 18 October to re-affirm, Biya’s officials said, ‘the longstanding perfect communion between Yaoundé and Rome’. Yet harmony between the various Christian...

More than 440,000 people are currently displaced due to attacks by the Lord's Resistance Army across Central and East Africa. This is despite increased United States and African...

What the world is going to do about the Central African Republic’s slide into violent anarchy is not much clearer after the unanimous United Nations Security Council resolution...

The Speaker of Parliament, Aubin Minaku, shocked the country on 11 October when he announced in an interview on Radio France Internationale that President Joseph Kabila would leave...

Throughout September violence has been on the increase in Central African Republic. In one week alone about 100 people were killed in skirmishes and many properties were destroyed...

Two weeks before the legislative and local elections on 30 September, the ruling Rassemblement démocratique du peuple camerounais (RDPC) has caused a shock by recruiting Aminatou Ahidjo, youngest...

Establishing national unity under a modified constitution is President Joseph Kabila Kabange’s main concern just now, because that would give him the best chance of winning the elections...

Tension between Rwanda and Congo-Kinshasa has escalated almost to open war after two weeks of renewed fighting in eastern Congo. The national army, the Forces armées de la...

Ever since a major attack in mid-July at Kamango, in the Beni area of North Kivu, observers have wondered why the Allied Democratic Front-National Army for the Liberation...

Chad has frozen the activities of China National Petroleum Corporation after inspectors found the company was dumping waste oil in holes dug in the ground in the Bongor...

Two weeks of sometimes brutal fighting between the Mouvement du 23 mars and the national army have ramped up the pressure on Kinshasa and Kigali to negotiate a...

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo’s argument that the Spanish government under Prime Minister José María Aznar may have supported the 2004 ‘wonga coup’ gained new credence in July.

Twice postponed, the elections are now scheduled for 30 September, President Paul Biya announced on 15 July. Election timetables are set in law but it is the President...

Cameroon is adopting biometric technology for its new electoral register and the upcoming polls now set for 30 September will be different from previous ones. President Paul Biya’s...

The elections on 26 May showed just how far President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo will go to stifle democratic opposition. The leading opposition party, the Convergencia para la...

At international conferences on Equatorial Guinea, oilmen often praise its Mines Minister, Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima. However, his recent spate of contract-signing could be undone in the succession...

India and China are offering to help President Joseph Kabila’s government secure its eastern borders following a series of bilateral meetings in June in Kinshasa. These offers follow...

‘Mining operations in the DRC have resulted in decades of abuse against artisanal miners and the neighbouring communities,’ according to Audrey Gaughran, Director of Global Issues at Amnesty...

Punitive action against a Chinese oil company following a tax dispute has not undercut Libreville-Beijing ties. Although the government revoked Sinopec-owned Addax Petroleum’s oil permit in Obangue in...

China Dalian International Economic and Technical Cooperation Group (CDIG) is the primary beneficiary of the close ties between Beijing and Malabo. With no debate about costs or transparency,...

China stands accused of cooperating with the government of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo to limit civil rights in Equatorial Guinea and to suppress the political opposition....

A meeting of officials and investors in Kinshasa, hosted on 17-18 June by Energy Minister Bruno Kapandji Kalala on financing the Inga III Dam signals the government’s new...

South Africa’s financial and political commitment to the Inga III Dam and the international support has galvanised and given new life to this pet project of successive Congolese...

In early May, Prime Minister Augustin Matata Ponyo Mapon sent shockwaves through Kinshasa when he told the United Nations-backed Radio Okapi that the partnership between Congo-Kinshasa and China...

Chinese, South Korean and Spanish companies are among those competing for the contract to construct Inga 3 after Congo-Kinshasa announced on 18 May that it has clinched a...

Pressure is mounting on international mining companies in Congo-Kinshasa to reveal more about their dealings with offshore companies linked to Dan Gertler International. This follows the start of...

Recently, Idriss Déby Itno has spent more time in the international spotlight than at any time in his presidential career. Widely praised for a major military commitment in...

Despite a wealth of knowledge about those named, no one has been able to work out if the men arrested on 1 May were genuinely conspiring to mount...

President Paul Biya has now appointed 30 Senators, bringing the new parliamentary upper house to its full complement of 100. Elections on 14 April – by an electoral...

Thanks to a contract signed in Kinshasa on 18 March by Anhui Foreign Economic Construction Corporation’s Vice-President Bai Ziangqian, State Assets Minister Louise Munga Mesozi and Mines Minister...

On 26 April at the Libreville headquarters of Oil India Limited, Paul Maurice Tomo lay shirtless on the ground in front of a painted sheet that read:...

President Jacob Zuma puzzled his central African interlocutors and CAR politicians by claiming they had made a ‘passionate plea’ for South African troops to return to the troubled...

Military movements in eastern Congo-Kinshasa are increasing while the peace talks in Kampala between the government and the rebel Mouvement du 23 mars have stalled. On 22...

The Ndjamena summit called to resolve the crisis in Central African Republic was nearly as chaotic as Bangui itself. Members of the Communauté économique des états de l’Afrique...

Despite its troubles with the Congolese authorities last year, the Chinese group Fametal has now established a dominant position in Ituri’s gold belt. In March, Fametal President Wang...

One of the longest and most problematic Chinese takeover sagas is finally drawing to a sorry end for Sichuan-based Hanlong Mining and Australia’s Sundance Resources. The main attraction...

Addax Petroleum, the Swiss-based oil company acquired by China’s Sinopec in August 2009, is the latest firm to enter into a dispute with Gabon as President Ali Bongo...

In his first official visit since the initiation of diplomatic relations between Equatorial Guinea and Thailand in 1991, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and his wife Constancia Mangue...

The end, when it came, came quickly. On 24 March, the Séléka rebels fought a fierce battle with South African troops before overwhelming them and invading the capital,...

President Joseph Kabila has something to be thankful for. The most troublesome faction of the rebel Mouvement du 23 mars (M23) is now housed in camps in Rwanda...

As Jean-Bosco Ntaganda begins his likely lengthy stay in the Hague, attention at home has turned to his former allies in what is left of the Rwandan-backed Mouvement...

After 17 years, President Paul Biya has now decided to hold elections for a national senate on 14 April. The new body will have no real powers but...

The Mouvement du 23 mars appears close to a peace agreement with President Joseph Kabila, Africa Confidential has learned. A violent split in M23 at the end of...

Sticking to the plan that he set out on taking the helm at Gécamines in 2011, Chief Executive Officer Albert Yuma Mulimbi travelled to China in February to...

On 17 February, a gang of Mai-Mai militia fighters arrived at Kinsevere village, some 40 kilometres from the Katangese capital, Lubumbashi. They slaughtered three officials and drove out...

• The best-known of Katanga’s Mai-Mai leaders is Gédéon Kyungu Mutanga, a warlord who presided over a reign of terror between 2003 and 2006. He was condemned to...

Gabriel Kyungu wa Kumwanza, 75, Muluba from Katanga. Elected to Parliament in 1980, he opposed the late President Mobutu Sese Seko’s regime alongside Étienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba, veteran...

The deal designed to bring peace to Congo-Kinshasa’s troubled east is finally done. Doubts may abound but none were visible in Addis Ababa as South African...

Technologie et Système d’Information/Korea Telelcom of South Korea has cried foul after Vietnam’s Viettel won Cameroon’s third mobile telephone licence in December 2012. TSI/KT claims that the tender...

The parties to the 11 January agreement, signed in Gabon, are now at loggerheads over ministerial posts. While leading opposition figure Nicolas Tiangaye is to lead the Government...

Peace, however fragile, reigned in Central African Republic as Africa Confidential went to press. The government and the Séléka rebels signed a peace agreement in Libreville, Gabon, on...

The presence of 400 South African soldiers in Bangui, backed by a group of mercenaries, does not mean that President Jacob Zuma is trying to take over France’s...

In November, President Paul Biya was conspicuous by his absence from any of his supporters’ nationwide celebrations of his 30 years in power. In this way, he kept...

One person who is never spoken of as a successor to President Paul Biya is his son Franck Biya, who is not a member of the ruling...

As President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo’s government rails against foreign influences seeking to destabilise Equatorial Guinea, it is none too pleased with the latest decisions by prosecutors in...

This could well be the year in which Kinshasa’s hard-won but only half-complete institutions start to break up. Since 2006, the state has proclaimed that the President,...