The Congo Basin and the states around it: the DRC, Congo-Brazzaville, the Central African Republic, and the politics of minerals, rivers, and borders.
Félix Tshisekedi has signed a referendum law, read with the court ruling that shaped it. Under Article 219, the state of siege that MPs voted to renew the same day bars any revision of the 2006 constitution, but a 250,000-signature petition and a 30-day constituent assembly could produce a new one, while much of the east cannot vote.
A court sitting in Walikale convicted almost an entire group of soldiers from the army's 3415th regiment of mutiny, disobedience and cowardice. It is the second mass death sentence against Congolese troops in five weeks, and it points to deeper strains inside an army still fighting the AFC/M23.
The outbreak in Ituri and North Kivu is now the largest Ebola epidemic ever recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with nearly half of confirmed patients dying. New vaccines designed for the Bundibugyo strain are about to be tested, but WHO warns that results are months away and the response is still struggling to find cases early.
At 93, Paul Biya remains Cameroon’s president after more than four decades in power, but his prolonged stays in Geneva and the growing uncertainty over who will eventually succeed him are exposing the deeper fragility of Cameroon’s political system.