Congo-Kinshasa

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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.

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.,...

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)....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...