标签： Africa

For decades, hundreds of children born near the British Army Training Unit in Kenya (Batuk) have grown up without answers about their paternal heritage, many left in poverty, socially ostracized, and told their British military fathers were deceased. Now, an unprecedented cross-border legal and genetic initiative has identified 20 missing fathers, secured paternity confirmation for 12 cases through the UK’s highest Family Court, and unlocked life-changing access to British citizenship and child support for dozens of Kenyan people.

One of the cases at the center of this breakthrough is nine-year-old Edward, a pseudonym to protect his identity. From early childhood, Edward has faced relentless bullying over his lighter skin tone, with peers taunting him as a “British coloniser” – a reference to the United Kingdom’s 68-year colonial rule of Kenya that ended in 1963. Edward’s mother, Nasibo, a Kenyan woman who entered a relationship with a British contractor stationed at Batuk, was cast out by her family after her partner left Kenya abruptly when she was four months pregnant. She says the man promised to return, gave her an engagement ring before leaving, and never contacted her again. For years, she and Edward have lived in extreme poverty, with no way to trace the man who fathered her son. Now that paternity has been confirmed, Edward is eligible for formal child support payments, though his father has refused to share contact information, forcing legal teams to pursue court action to secure maintenance payments.

Another story that underscores the years of misinformation surrounding these cases is 18-year-old Yvonne. Orphaned as an infant after her mother’s death, Yvonne was raised by her grandparents and told by Batuk soldiers that her British military father had died. Through genetic matching with her father’s maternal cousin, who had uploaded their DNA to the commercial genealogy platform Ancestry.com, the legal team confirmed Yvonne’s father is alive and currently residing in the UK. After ignoring five court orders to appear for paternity proceedings, he finally attended his hearing, requested a DNA test, and the results confirmed he is Yvonne’s father. Like Edward’s father, he has declined any contact with Yvonne at this time, though extended family members have expressed interest in building a relationship with her.

Not all outcomes have involved estrangement, however. Twenty-year-old Cathy grew up believing her father, a former British soldier named Phill stationed at Batuk in 2004, was dead. Her mother Maggie told her this after Phill lost contact when his phone was stolen following a deployment change. As a teenager, Cathy tracked Phill down on Facebook, but he did not recognize her name and blocked her messages. Struggling with the loneliness of growing up without a father and lacking answers about her mixed heritage, Cathy made a suicide attempt. Meanwhile, Phill had left the military, struggled with poor mental health, and experienced homelessness after transitioning to civilian life. When paternity was confirmed through the project, Phill called the discovery a “very happy surprise.” He has already begun providing financial support to Cathy and Maggie, and the two are rebuilding their relationship, with Cathy planning to visit the UK in the near future. To date, Phill is the only confirmed father who has voluntarily provided financial support to his Kenyan child.

The project was launched in 2024 after UK-based solicitor James Netto was approached by families in Nanyuki, the Kenyan market town 185 kilometers north of Nairobi that has hosted Batuk since the base opened in 1964. More than 5,000 British military personnel pass through the training base each year, and the facility has long been mired in controversy over allegations of abuse and misconduct. In December 2024, a two-year Kenyan parliamentary inquiry concluded that British personnel at Batuk operated within a “culture of impunity,” resulting in sexual violence, two murder allegations, widespread environmental damage, and the systemic abandonment of children fathered with local women.

To address the longstanding issue of unacknowledged paternity, Netto partnered with Kenyan lawyer Kelvin Kubai, who runs the charity Connecting Roots Kenya to support these children, and leading genetics professor Denise Syndercombe Court. The team traveled to Kenya with hundreds of DNA testing kits, collected samples from claimants ranging in age from three to 70 years old, and cross-referenced the results against the nearly 30 million genetic profiles available on commercial genealogy platforms – a large enough dataset to make familial matches even with distant relatives. Netto says the scale and methodology of this project are unprecedented in UK legal history, and the team was stunned by how successful the process was, with matches ranging from distant cousins all the way to direct identification of the fathers themselves. To secure official contact information, the courts ordered UK government agencies including the Ministry of Defence, Department for Work and Pensions, and HM Revenue and Customs to release the identified fathers’ names and addresses.

Netto says his team has already documented nearly 100 active cases of children born to British soldiers and contractors near Batuk, and he estimates the true number is far higher. In the 12 cases that have received formal paternity confirmation from the UK Family Court, most claimants are now eligible to apply for British citizenship, and all minors and students are eligible for court-ordered child support.

Rejecting calls for a ban on relationships between British soldiers and local Kenyan women as inherently racist, Kubai argues the only just solution is to hold men accountable when they father children during their deployment. Netto and Kubai plan to bring dozens more cases before the UK High Court over the coming months, continuing their work to connect claimants with their heritage and secure the financial and legal rights they are owed.

In response to questions about the allegations and the paternity project, the UK Ministry of Defence stated it “deeply regrets those issues and challenges which have arisen in relation to the UK’s defence presence in Kenya” and said it continues to take action to address concerns where possible. It noted that consensual relationships between personnel and local women do not violate MoD policy, and that the ministry does not investigate cases where no criminal allegations have been filed by local authorities. Brigadier Simon Ridgway, commanding officer of the British Army’s Collective Training Group, added that the MoD works with Kenyan children’s services to address paternity claims as they are received. The December 2024 Kenyan parliamentary inquiry has called on the Kenyan government to create formal new systems to hold Batuk soldiers accountable for child support, including mandated DNA testing and long-term psychosocial support for affected children.

On a historic stop of his African pilgrimage in Luanda, Angola, Pope Leo XIV kicked off Sunday with a rousing call to action for Angolans to root out the pervasive “scourge of corruption” by embedding a culture of justice and collective sharing across the nation. The visit, which later brought the first U.S.-born pontiff to one of the trans-Atlantic slave trade’s most significant remaining sites, weaves together calls for national reconciliation in Angola with overdue reckoning over the Catholic Church’s centuries-old complicity in human trafficking.

Speaking to a crowd of roughly 100,000 worshippers gathered in Kilamba, a large residential development constructed by Chinese partners 15 miles outside the Angolan capital, the pontiff used his homily to lift up the aspirations of the Angolan people, while calling out the continued exploitation of the nation’s abundant mineral resources and its most vulnerable citizens. Decades after the end of a brutal post-independence civil war that left deep, unhealed scars across the country, Leo urged an end to old sectarian divides, hatred, and violence. “We wish to build a country where old divisions are overcome once and for all, where hatred and violence disappear, and where the scourge of corruption is healed by a new culture of justice and sharing,” he told the assembled crowd.

By Sunday afternoon, the pontiff traveled to the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima, a revered contemporary Catholic shrine located 70 miles south of Luanda on the banks of the Kwanza River. But the site’s origins stretch back to the late 16th century, when Portuguese colonizers built the Church of Our Lady of Muxima as part of a colonial fortress. For decades, it operated as a central hub of the trans-Atlantic slave trade: enslaved African people were held at the site, forcibly baptized by Portuguese clergy, then marched overland to the port of Luanda to be loaded onto slave ships bound for the Americas.

Today, the shrine’s layered history serves as a stark reminder of the Catholic Church’s institutional role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, from the forced conversion of enslaved people to the Vatican’s long refusal to issue a full, formal acknowledgement and atonement for its complicity. The visit carries particular personal weight for Pope Leo XIV: genealogical research has confirmed the pontiff’s Creole ancestry includes both enslaved African people and white slaveholders in his family line that traces its North American roots to Louisiana.

For many Black Catholics across the globe, the trip to Muxima represents a long-awaited moment of reckoning and healing, according to Anthea Butler, a Black Catholic scholar and senior fellow at Oxford University’s Koch Center. Butler explained that millions of Black Catholics trace their connection to the faith directly to the era of slavery, when France’s Code Noir required all enslaved people owned by Catholic slaveholders to receive baptism, while many other enslaved Angolans brought their existing Catholic faith with them when they were trafficked to the Americas.

Scholars have long documented that 15th-century papal directives from the Vatican emboldened Portuguese colonizers to expand their slave trading operations across Africa. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull *Dum Diversas*, which granted the Portuguese crown and its successors formal permission to “invade, conquer, fight and subjugate” non-Christian peoples across the globe, seize their lands and possessions, and “reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.” A second bull, *Romanus Pontifex*, issued three years later, alongside *Dum Diversas* formed the legal and ideological foundation of the Doctrine of Discovery, the framework that legitimized European colonial seizure of land across Africa and the Americas and justified the enslavement of Indigenous and African peoples.

While the Vatican formally repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery in 2023, it has never formally rescinded or rejected the original 15th-century papal bulls that authorized the slave trade. The Holy See has argued that a 1537 bull, *Sublimis Deus*, later reaffirmed that Indigenous peoples should not be stripped of their liberty, property, or enslaved, but scholars note this directive did not explicitly reverse or cancel the earlier authorization for the enslavement of African peoples.

Jesuit priest and slavery historian Christopher J. Kellerman, author of *All Oppression Shall Cease: A History of Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Catholic Church*, acknowledges that most of the 12.5 million Africans trafficked across the Atlantic were initially sold into slavery by African intermediaries, rather than captured directly by European traders. Even so, he notes, when the Muxima fortress and church were constructed, Portuguese forces both conducted independent slave raids and purchased enslaved people, openly relying on the papal permissions granted by the 15th-century bulls. “The popes repeatedly authorized Portugal’s colonization efforts in Africa and Portuguese participation in the slave trade, but the Vatican has never fully admitted this,” Kellerman said in comments to the Associated Press. “It would be so powerful if at some point Pope Leo were to apologize for the popes’ role in the trade.”

This is not the first time a sitting pope has addressed the harm of the slave trade during a visit to Africa. During a 1985 trip to Cameroon, St. John Paul II asked for forgiveness from African peoples for the crime of the slave trade, and during a 1992 visit to Goree Island, Senegal, West Africa’s largest historical slave trading center, he denounced the injustice of slavery, calling it a “tragedy of a civilization that called itself Christian.”

The connection between Pope Leo XIV and this painful history runs deeper than institutional responsibility. Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., host of the popular genealogy series *Finding Your Roots*, published research confirming 17 of the pope’s American ancestors were Black, recorded in census records as mulatto, Black, Creole, or free people of color, with the pope’s family tree including both enslaved people and slaveholders. Gates presented his findings to Pope Leo during a private audience at the Vatican on July 5, and the Harvard Gazette reports the pope asked specifically about both his Black and white ancestors who held people in bondage. The pope has not yet spoken publicly about his family heritage or Gates’ findings, and some Black Catholic scholars say it would be inappropriate to impose a public narrative about the pope’s identity before he chooses to speak on the matter.

“It’s important that we tell our own stories,” said Tia Noelle Pratt, a sociologist of religion at Villanova University, Pope Leo’s alma mater, and author of *Faithful and Devoted: Racism and Identity in the African-American Catholic Experience*. “We haven’t heard anything from him about what he thinks about it, and so to impose anything on him, I think would be completely inappropriate.”

Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the retired first African American archbishop of Washington, who helped facilitate the meeting between Gates and Pope Leo, said he was delighted to support the encounter. “It’s one of the things that I think for many African Americans and people of color, they identify with great pride the pope has roots in our own heritage,” Gregory said. “And I think he’s happy about that too, because it’s another link to the people that he tries to serve and is called to serve.”

Three years after Sudan’s brutal civil war erupted, tearing one of the nation’s most beloved musical groups apart, members of Aswat Almadina – which translates to Sounds of the City – remain scattered across the globe, clinging to a shared mission: keeping the flame of hope for peace burning through their art. The conflict that broke out in April 2023 has left more than 150,000 people dead and displaced an estimated 12 million Sudanese, creating what the United Nations has labeled the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian catastrophe. For the members of Aswat Almadina, the war shattered their lives and careers, but it could not break their bond or their commitment to their homeland.

Founded in Khartoum in 2014 by Mohammed Almustafa – known publicly as Timon – and lead vocalist Ibrahem Mahmoud, the band carved out a unique space in Sudan’s music scene from its earliest days. Blending the rich traditions of Middle Eastern folk with the energy of urban pop and the improvisational spirit of jazz, their sound was rooted entirely in the capital city they loved. “We called ourselves Sounds of the City because Khartoum is our inspiration,” Timon explained in an interview with BBC’s *Focus on Africa* podcast. “Our music comes from the atmosphere of Khartoum, the natural sounds of the city, the voices of the people, the rhythm of the streets.”

The band quickly amassed a loyal, widespread following, particularly among young Sudanese, and made history as the first Sudanese group to tour across the entire country. Their lyrics, which openly addressed systemic corruption, social inequality, and the daily hardships facing the nation’s youth, earned them widespread respect and a prestigious appointment as United Nations Development Programme Goodwill Ambassadors in 2017. For Mahmoud, music and activism have always been inseparable. Long before the 2019 uprising that ousted longtime authoritarian leader Omar al-Bashir, Mahmoud was repeatedly detained by state security forces for his politically critical work. “I got arrested a lot by national security because of what I was doing – singing the truth,” Mahmoud says. “Thank God I’m still alive.”

When anti-government protests erupted across Sudan in late 2018, sparked by austerity measures and cuts to bread and fuel subsidies that exacerbated a already crippling economic crisis, Aswat Almadina’s music became a soundtrack for the revolution. Protesters chanted the band’s lyrics in streets across the nation during the months-long movement that ultimately ended Bashir’s 30-year rule.

That peaceful transition of power was cut short, however, when full-scale civil war broke out in April 2023. Mahmoud and Timon still vividly recall that day: the entire band was gathered in a small Khartoum recording studio, surrounded by their instruments, writing and recording new material, when the crackle of gunfire echoed through the city streets. “At that time I didn’t believe it was a war,” Mahmoud says. “It was a confusing moment. We didn’t know what was going on. We had never been in this situation before. It was very, very confusing.”

Convinced the fighting would end quickly, Mahmoud sheltered in the studio and kept creating, even as explosions and gunfire rang out around him. He wrote and recorded *Give Peace A Chance* remotely, collaborating with another musician based in central Sudan even as unstable, flickering internet connections and constant shelling made exchanging files a struggle. “The sounds of the weapons were loud, but there was always music going on,” Mahmoud recalls. “Music is my survival mechanism, it’s always saving my life.”

Within two months of the war’s start, most band members had fled the country. Timon, who now lives in Cairo Egypt, escaped through the United Arab Emirates, and endured a two-year separation from his family that caused him to miss the birth of his second child. Today, he looks back at pre-war photos of the band’s final Khartoum concert – held just one month before fighting began – with quiet longing. “It was a month before the war. When you look at this, there was a Khartoum. There were very lovely nights in Sudan.” Mahmoud, who previously lived in Nairobi Kenya, now resides in Jeddah Saudi Arabia, but refuses to consider the kingdom his home. “I don’t consider myself based in Saudi Arabia. I’m just visiting. My journey is still going on, and I don’t know when it will end,” he says.

Though scattered across multiple countries, the band’s connection remains unbroken. They continue to collaborate remotely, and are set to release a new single titled *Sudan* later this April, a track the members say honors both the deep beauty of their homeland and the immense suffering it has endured. They believe their music carries unique weight for millions of Sudanese caught up in the crisis. “The arts have a power,” Mahmoud says. “It carries a lot of emotion for people.”

For Aswat Almadina, the core mission that defined their work from the start remains unchanged: to inspire a movement of peace for their war-ravaged nation. The band holds onto unshakable hope that one day, all members will stand together in a Khartoum studio again, making music as they once did. “Being part of this band is a dream come true for us,” Timon says. “There’s always hope. I want everyone, not just me, to speak about peace and love. That’s what will make things better, more than speaking about war.”

Pope Leo XIV touched down in Angola on Saturday, the latest stop on his multi-nation tour of Africa, and used the opportunity to clear up widespread misinterpretation of recent comments he made about global authoritarianism and military spending. The pontiff told reporters traveling with him that his earlier remarks criticizing world leaders he labeled “tyrants” for pouring billions of dollars into conflict were drafted two weeks before former U.S. President Donald Trump launched a high-profile public attack on him. There was never any intention, he stressed, to enter into a public debate with the American leader.

The back-and-forth between the two figures began earlier this month, after Pope Leo publicly voiced criticism of the U.S.-Israeli military campaign in Iran and pushed back against Trump’s warning that an entire civilization would be destroyed if Tehran did not accept Washington’s demands to end the conflict and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. That critique prompted Trump to unleash a scathing social media attack on the first American-born pope, calling him “terrible for foreign policy,” “WEAK on crime,” and saying he was “not a big fan” of the pontiff. Trump also briefly shared an AI-generated image that depicted him as a Jesus-like figure before removing it, and later told reporters that while he accepted the Pope’s right to his own views, he retained the right to disagree.

Days after Trump’s initial attack, Pope Leo delivered a speech in Cameroon, another stop on his African tour, that drew immediate scrutiny. In that address, he condemned leaders who “turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation, yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are nowhere to be found.” He added, “The masters of war pretend not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy, yet often a lifetime is not enough to rebuild.” The pontiff also used the speech to denounce the nearly decade-long insurgency that has left a bloodstained trail of destruction across parts of Cameroon, decrying what he called “an endless cycle of destabilisation and death.”

Many political analysts and media outlets quickly framed that speech as a direct response to Trump, a narrative the Pope pushed back on firmly Saturday. “A certain narrative that has not been accurate” has taken root, he told reporters, fueled by the political tension that emerged after Trump’s original criticism. “Which is not in my interest at all,” he added, emphasizing that entering political sparring matches with the U.S. leader was never his goal.

The four-country African tour, which includes stops in 11 cities, marks Pope Leo’s second major international visit since his election to the papacy in 2024. The trip underscores the outsized importance of the Catholic faith across the African continent: 2024 Vatican data shows that more than 20% of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics – approximately 288 million people – currently reside in Africa, a share that is projected to grow steadily in coming decades.

As the third stop of his ambitious four-nation tour of Africa gets underway, Pope Leo XIV has wrapped up his visit to Cameroon, leaving behind a wave of joyful devotion and a clear call for collective action to lift marginalized communities across the continent. On Saturday, the pontiff celebrated an open-air Mass at Yaounde’s international airport, drawing tens of thousands of worshippers — including 93-year-old Cameroonian President Paul Biya, the world’s oldest sitting head of state. Accounts from the scene describe a vibrant, crowded gathering, where even worshippers with limited mobility were carried to the service in wheelbarrows by loving family members, a testament to the deep impact of the pontiff’s visit on the majority-Christian nation.

Cameroon, a former French colony where Catholics make up roughly one-third of the population, is just the second stop on Leo’s African journey. Throughout his time in the country, the pope centered his message on two core themes: encouraging disillusioned young people to hold onto hope for the future, and calling out wealthy and powerful elites for exploiting the continent’s land and people for private gain. In his final homily in Yaounde, delivered in French, Leo framed respect for human dignity as the non-negotiable foundation of a functional society.

“For this reason, every community has the obligation to create and sustain structures of solidarity and mutual aid in which, when faced with crises — be they social, political, medical or economic — everyone can give and receive assistance according to their own capacity and needs,” he told the gathered crowd. He doubled down on earlier criticisms of systemic graft, denouncing the “chains of corruption” that block inclusive development across the continent, and condemning the “handful of tyrants” who fuel conflict and exploitation that leaves millions of Africans trapped in poverty.

After closing the Cameroon leg of his tour, the pontiff departed Saturday for Luanda, the capital of southwestern Angola, where his visit will confront the nation’s layered, often painful history on multiple fronts. Angola won its independence from Portugal in 1975, but almost immediately descended into a 27-year civil war that only ended in 2002. Fought as a Cold War proxy conflict — with the U.S. and apartheid South Africa backing one faction, and the Soviet Union and Cuba supporting the other — the war claimed an estimated 500,000 lives and left deep physical and social scars that persist today.

Today, Angola is one of Africa’s most resource-rich nations: it ranks as the continent’s fourth-largest oil producer, among the top 20 global oil producers, the world’s third-biggest diamond exporter, and holds substantial reserves of gold and other in-demand critical minerals. Yet despite this abundant natural wealth, 2023 World Bank data shows more than 30% of Angola’s 38 million people survive on less than $2.15 per day. Much of this inequality is tied to decades of systemic corruption: former long-time president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled the nation for 38 years until 2017, was accused of siphoning an estimated $24 billion in public funds — most from oil revenues — to his family and inner circle, while ordinary Angolans faced widespread poverty. Current President Joao Lourenco, who took power after dos Santos stepped down, has made anti-corruption campaigns and recovery of stolen public funds a central policy pledge, but critics argue his actions have largely targeted political opponents to consolidate power, leaving deep-rooted systemic graft unaddressed.

For many ordinary Angolans, the pope’s visit carries expectations of messages that speak directly to the nation’s ongoing struggles. “I would like to hear a message of peace, a message of reconciliation,” Luanda resident Sergio Jose told reporters. “I would also like to hear good political messages and I would also like to hear that the pope would also talk about the upcoming elections in Angola.”

Observers expect the pontiff to echo the themes of anti-corruption and equitable development he laid out in Cameroon during his time in Angola. The most anticipated event of his visit will be a trip Sunday to Muxima, a coastal town south of Luanda that is home to one of Angola’s most important Catholic shrines, the Church of Our Lady of Muxima. Built by Portuguese colonizers in the late 16th century as part of a fortress complex, the site was a central hub of the transatlantic slave trade, a tangible reminder of how the spread of Catholicism was intertwined with the colonization and exploitation of the African continent. As a former Portuguese colony, Angola was the epicenter of the transatlantic slave trade: more than 5 million enslaved Africans were shipped across the Atlantic from Angolan ports, more than from any other region on the continent.

The visit to Muxima carries unique personal meaning for Pope Leo, the first U.S.-born pope in history. Genealogical research has confirmed the pontiff has both Black and white ancestors, including people who were held as enslaved people and people who owned enslaved people. He will pray the Rosary at the shrine, which has been a popular pilgrimage site since reports of an apparition of the Virgin Mary there in 1833.

This report includes contributions from Imray, reporting from Cape Town, South Africa. The Associated Press’ religion coverage receives support through a collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP retains sole responsibility for all content.

In a major milestone for the Donald Trump administration’s hard-line campaign against unauthorized mass migration, the first group of 15 South American migrants expelled from the United States has touched down in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, marking the start of a controversial third-country deportation agreement between the two nations.

The plane carrying the deportees landed at Kinshasa’s N’djili International Airport in the early hours of Friday. While the Congolese government released only limited details about the group in its official statement, an anonymous airport source speaking to the BBC confirmed most of the 15 are Colombian and Peruvian citizens — making them third-country nationals, meaning they hold no citizenship in either the United States or DR Congo.

Kinshasa has moved quickly to clarify the terms of the arrangement, emphasizing that the migrants’ stay in the central African nation is strictly temporary. The Congolese government also explicitly stated Washington is covering all costs related to the migrants’ reception, support, and care during their stay, and that the deal does not represent a permanent relocation scheme or an outsourcing of U.S. migration policy. When the agreement first came to light earlier this month, Congolese officials framed the decision to accept the deportees as aligned with the country’s commitments to human dignity, migrant rights protection, and international solidarity. Migrants are being admitted under short-stay permits that comply with DR Congo’s existing foreign entry and residence laws, the government added.

This deportation operation is part of a broader, long-running push by the Trump administration to expand third-country deportations as a core tool of its immigration crackdown. Prior to this arrangement with DR Congo, the U.S. has already sent expelled migrants to other African nations including Ghana, South Sudan, and Eswatini. Since Trump took office in January 2025, dozens of migrants have been relocated to third countries under this policy. A minority report from the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has raised new questions about the cost of the program, estimating that the Trump administration has likely spent more than $40 million (£30 million) on third-country deportations as of January 2026. The report notes the full total expenditure remains unknown, but confirms the U.S. has disbursed more than $32 million in direct funding to five partner countries: Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, El Salvador, Eswatini, and Palau.

When approached for comment, the U.S. State Department declined to discuss diplomatic communications with foreign governments, but reaffirmed the administration’s unwavering commitment to ending illegal mass migration and strengthening U.S. border security.

Beyond the migration deal, the U.S. maintains multiple overlapping policy priorities with DR Congo. Washington is currently negotiating a critical minerals agreement with Kinshasa that would grant American companies greater access to DR Congo’s extensive reserves of strategically important metals, including cobalt, tantalum, lithium, and copper — all key inputs for electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy technology. The Trump administration also previously brokered a landmark peace deal between DR Congo and neighboring Rwanda to resolve years of conflict in eastern DR Congo, though full implementation of the agreement has remained an ongoing challenge.

Most recently, following a new round of peace talks in Switzerland mediated by the U.S. and Qatar, both the Congolese government and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group have announced key confidence-building steps ahead of a permanent ceasefire. The two sides committed to allowing unimpeded access for humanitarian aid, protecting civilian populations and critical infrastructure, and launching formal monitoring of a permanent ceasefire. Negotiating delegates from both sides expressed cautious encouragement over the progress made toward ending the years-long conflict. Rwanda has consistently denied international evidence of its support for M23, claiming any military presence near the border is a defensive measure to counter threats from armed groups based in DR Congo.

This report includes additional contributions from journalist Richard Kagoe.