Defeat for Odinga would be an embarrassment for Kenya's President William Ruto who has positioned himself as the heir to Rwanda's Paul Kagame as the next champion of pan-Africanism and AU integration and has campaigned heavily for his former rival...

Congo-Kinshasa Foreign Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner took a quiet detour to London on 9-11 February to persuade influential football fans to pressure President Paul Kagame to pull his troops out of eastern Congo-K and halt support for the Tutsi M23 militia that recently captured of the city of Goma where thousands died (AC Vol 66 No 3 After seizing Goma Kigali's rebels head south)...

Aside from Germany and Belgium whose new Foreign Minister Bernard Quintin was vetoed as EU Special Envoy for the Great Lakes region by President Paul Kagame the Tshisekedi government has few reliable or influential allies...

Given Gen Muhoozi's close ties to Rwanda's President Paul Kagame this operation looks to be a pre-emptive move to protect borders and trade routes...

He then vowed to visit his ‘big brother' Félix Tshisekedi Congo-K's president and called Rwanda's Paul Kagame his ‘uncle' and a ‘man of peace' a reference to the collapsed peace talks between the two over the Kigali-backed M23 militia's incursions in eastern Congo-K...

This was the background to President Emmanuel Macron's attempt to reconcile with Touadéra at their summit in Paris in August last year which was mostly about repairing Macron's damaged ego and giving further room to Paul Kagame's continental ambitions...

But the political record of President Paul Kagame's government – the growing critiques of its human rights abuses and backing for the M23 militia in Congo-Kinshasa – could still undermine that growth record which has been heavily fuelled by western aid flows...

The prospects are not good following the cancellation of a summit designed by Angolan President João Lourenço to bring Tshisekedi and President Paul Kagame face to face to negotiate a ceasefire plan (Dispatches 17/12/24 Dispute on M23's status derails latest peace talks)...

On 15 December another attempt by Angola's President João Lourenço to mediate between Kinshasa and Kigali failed when Rwanda's President Paul Kagame insisted that Tshisekedi should negotiate directly with the M23 leadership...

Russia has been trying to capitalise on anti-French sentiments driven by the close ties between Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Tshisekedi's nemesis Paul Kagame (Dispatches 8/10/24 Macron fails to broker Kinshasa-Kigali talks at Francophone summit AC Vol 65 No 15 Kinshasa urges sanctions on Kigali citing damning UN report & Vol 64 No 20 Security threats multiply ahead of polls)...