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Ballot year 2026 DR Congo
Patrice Lumumba in glasses and a bow tie, in a black-and-white portrait from 1960
Unknown photographer / Anefo, Nationaal Archief · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

Lumumba said history would speak — in Congo this week, two men grabbed the pen

On 13 October Joseph Kabila — president from 2001 to 2019, sentenced to death in absentia for treason by a military court in 2025 — launched the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation (FRN) at a news conference in rebel-held Goma, taking the head of a coalition that includes the Rwanda-backed M23, with the AFC's Corneille Nangaa among his deputies (Al Jazeera, 13 October). Two days later Interior Minister Jacquemain Shabani banned the activities of 13 political parties across the country, including Kabila's PPRD and Augustin Matata Ponyo's LGD, in a notice that states no legal ground, duration or dissolution (Actualité.cd, 15 October).

Patrice Lumumba · 1960–1960Félix Tshisekedi · conduct 2.5* · limits in force · 2019–Mobutu Sese Seko · conduct 0.0 · no term limits · 1965–1997

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Pretoria peace · Mozambique · Ethiopia · Mozambique's Rome peace turns 34 — it held by turning an army into a party On 4 October 1992 in Rome, President Joaquim Chissano and Renamo's leader Afonso Dhlakama signed the General Peace Agreement that ended 14 years of civil war; a UN mission of some 6,500 troops and observers then oversaw the demobilisation of more than 76,000 soldiers and Mozambique's first multiparty elections, held from 27 to 29 October 1994, in which Renamo won 37.8% of the legislative vote and Dhlakama 33.7% of the presidential one (United Nations, ONUMOZ). Renamo returned to arms in October 2013 after a government raid on its camp, and a new accord was signed in Maputo on 6 August 2019 by President Filipe Nyusi and Renamo's leader Ossufo Momade (Mail & Guardian, 8 August 2019). 3 sources Pretoria peace · Ethiopia · Eritrea · · updated October 5 Ethiopia and Eritrea cut ties — the Nobel peace was signed by two men, not two states Ethiopia's foreign ministry declared ten Eritrean diplomats in Addis Ababa persona non grata on 1 October, gave them 48 hours to leave and announced the closure of its embassy in Asmara, citing “direct and indirect acts of hostility and belligerence” (Addis Insight, 1 October); the same day Eritrea's foreign ministry severed “all diplomatic ties”, saying Ethiopia had pursued for three years “a publicly pronounced declaration of war” over sovereign access to the sea (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Asmara, 1 October). The two governments had restored relations in declarations Abiy Ahmed and Isaias Afwerki signed in Asmara and Jeddah in July and September 2018, which the Norwegian Nobel Committee cited when it awarded Abiy the 2019 Peace Prize (Nobel Committee, 11 October 2019). 5 sources Minerals deals · Burkina Faso · Burkina opens a 164-tonne gold refinery — in a country that mines 94 Captain Ibrahim Traoré inaugurated RAFFINOR-BF, Burkina Faso's first gold refinery, in Ouagadougou on 28 September: it cost more than 11 billion CFA francs, financed mainly by the state through the National Company of Precious Substances (SONASP) with private partners, and can refine 164 tonnes a year, rising to 515 tonnes in a second phase (Sidwaya, 28 September). The country produced 94 tonnes of gold in 2025, 43 of them from artisanal and semi-mechanised mining, Prime Minister Jean-Emmanuel Ouédraogo told the Transitional Legislative Assembly on 30 January (Mines Actu, 30 January). 3 sources Pretoria peace · Ethiopia · Continental · Ethiopia seats its new parliament on 5 October — with Tigray's 38 seats empty Ethiopia's newly elected House of Peoples' Representatives opens on 5 October, when the government for a new five-year term will be constituted, Speaker Tagesse Chafo announced (Fana, 23 September); the National Election Board gave the Prosperity Party 438 of the 486 seats declared from the 1 June election, while 38 constituencies in Tigray and eight in Amhara did not vote (The Reporter, 21 June). Earlier in the week the Security Council holds its fourth straw poll for UN Secretary-General on 29 September, with Senegal's Macky Sall and Uganda's Olara Otunnu the only African candidates (United Nations), and Botswana turns 60 on 30 September, Lesotho on 4 October. 3 sources Minerals deals · Botswana · Botswana turns 60 in a diamond slump — Khama's rarest number was never the mine Botswana marks 60 years of independence on 30 September with its economy shrinking: the Ministry of Finance estimates GDP fell 2.8% in 2024 and 0.4% in 2025, and mineral revenue for 2025/26 was revised down 23.4% to P12 billion on weak diamond sales (Bank of Botswana, Monetary Policy Statement, February 2026). Government debt is projected at 38.8% of GDP by the end of 2025/26 and 44.7% by the end of 2026/27, above the 40% statutory limit — two years after voters, on 30 October 2024, removed the Botswana Democratic Party that had governed since 1966 (Al Jazeera, 1 November 2024). 3 sources Pretoria peace · Ethiopia · Tigray seizes three airports — Ethiopia's growth did not buy the Pretoria peace Tigray forces seized the civilian airports of Mekelle, Axum and Shire and detained federal personnel, the African Union said on 23 September, as fighting spread across Tigray, Afar and Amhara three days after seven armed movements, among them the Tigray People's Liberation Front, formed an alliance to overthrow Abiy Ahmed's government (Al Jazeera, 24 September). AU Commission chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf called the seizures inconsistent with the Pretoria Agreement signed on 2 November 2022, which ended a war that killed hundreds of thousands, and asked Olusegun Obasanjo, the AU's High Representative for the Horn of Africa, to engage the parties urgently. 2 sources Ballot year 2026 · Morocco · Continental · Morocco votes Wednesday — four fixtures this week, none that can change a head of state Morocco votes on 23 September for the 395 seats of the House of Representatives, with 15,801,162 registered voters, 28 parties and 7,288 candidacies on 1,850 lists (Maroc.ma, the government portal, 21 September). The same day the South African Reserve Bank announces its Monetary Policy Committee decision with the repo rate at 7.00%; the ECOWAS Court of Justice sits in Dakar for its international conference until 25 September; and the UN General Assembly's general debate runs from 22 to 28 September. 3 sources Ballot year 2026 · DR Congo · Tear gas in Kinshasa — Tshisekedi's third term runs through a locked clause Police fired tear gas in Kinshasa on 15 September, the day the parliamentary session opened, as the opposition C64 coalition marched on the National Assembly against a constitutional revision that could let Félix Tshisekedi run again; at least 10 people were arrested, and marches were also broken up in Lubumbashi and Uvira (Al Jazeera, 15 September). The Constitutional Court validated the referendum law on 30 July, and on 13 September Tshisekedi signed an ordinance creating a national-dialogue committee placed under his direct authority (Radio Okapi, 13 September); his second term ends in 2028. 3 sources One market · Nigeria · South Africa · Nigeria's parliament boycotts South Africa — four weeks into Pretoria's SADC chair On 11 September Nigeria's National Assembly suspended all official visits to South Africa and ordered lawmakers and staff to boycott South African-hosted legislative events, in person or online, until further notice, citing Nigerians “killed, injured, displaced”; Nigeria's foreign ministry counts at least 98 Nigerians killed there since 2022. South African government figures put the people deported or voluntarily repatriated since the tensions began at almost 90,000, while migrants' home governments put the number at about 178,000 (Al Jazeera, 11 September). 3 sources One market · Kenya · Ruto orders foreign hawkers out — and puts East Africa's common market on trial On 2 September William Ruto told traders at State House that foreign-run hawking and small shops should close within the week; by the 7 September deadline hundreds of Burundians were queuing at their embassy in Nairobi for papers to go home. On 8 September State House turned the order into a 90-day regularisation window and a wider Local Content Bill reserving categories of small trade for Kenyans — while the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights reported Burundian-run stalls attacked and looted in the interval. 3 sources Ballot year 2026 · Zambia · · updated September 2 Zambia re-elects Hichilema — then tests its own democratic reflexes President Hakainde Hichilema won a second term with about 60% of the vote against Brian Mundubile's 38%. But the Constitutional and Supreme Courts closed on 24 August — the last day to file a challenge — citing security, narrowing the opposition's legal options. 3 sources One market · Southern Africa · South Africa takes the SADC chair with regional trade faltering At the 46th summit in Durban, Cyril Ramaphosa assumed the SADC chair pledging to lift intra-regional trade to 50% — while at home unemployment rose to 33.6% in the second quarter, with nearly half of young South Africans out of work. 3 sources Sahel confederation · West Africa · · updated August 24 The Sahel alliance now has a passport, a bank and an army — but not yet peace The Alliance of Sahel States has built a confederation at speed: a rotating presidency, a joint biometric passport, an investment bank capitalised at 500 billion CFA francs and a unified force planned at 5,000 troops — while trading travel bans with Washington and fencing diplomatically with Algiers. 3 sources One market · Continental · AfCFTA bets $3.1 billion on making borders digital The AfCFTA Secretariat signed a 20-year, $3.1 billion concession with Bergmans to digitise customs across participating states, financed by the concessionaire — even as the African Union's free-movement protocol sits at just four ratifications. 2 sources Minerals deals · DR Congo · The DRC's minerals-for-security bargain faces its first audit Scrutiny is mounting over Kinshasa's Washington Accords of December 2025, which trade privileged access to copper, cobalt and lithium for American security support in the east — as a vetted shortlist of state mining assets, from Gécamines to Sakima, is opened to US investors. 3 sources Ballot year 2026 · Continental · 2026's ballot year is a referendum on how leaders leave From Museveni's seventh term — won in January with 72% after term and age limits were removed — to December's legislative vote in Cameroon, this year's crowded election calendar is testing the continent's longest-serving incumbencies, several with no succession in sight. 3 sources

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