On 11 September a presidential ordinance reconducted Joseph Kazibaziba as director general of the state gold trader. Since February that company has been the declared upstream of the Banque Centrale du Congo's monetary gold strategy. A two-year investigation documented what its immediate predecessor's supply chain contained, and no due diligence report has been published since. Reserve quality is now a provenance question, and it runs through one office.
A draft decree creating the Congolese task force was taken by the Council of Ministers on 11 September. It is being read as the partnership entering execution. It is not. Three separate bodies are being collapsed into one. The bilateral committee that sits between a Congolese asset and American development finance has not reconvened since February. The copper already arriving in the United States is not moving through any of them.
Washington still calls Chemaf its flagship investment in Congo. Five and a half months after a USD 30 million equity close, Etoile had not restarted as of late July, creditors had agreed to forgo as much as USD 475 million of an USD 804 million stock, about USD 330 million remains, and the additional USD 260 million the owners told investors they need has not been shown as raised. Anyone holding residual debt, offtake, a Gécamines-linked right or another partnership-labelled distressed thesis is marking a restructuring, not a mine.
For eleven months, Louis Watum Kabamba has made Chinese capital the same proposal in three cities: come to Kolwezi, build processing plants, obey the Mining Code. On the opening day of the 28th China Mining Conference in Tianjin, he made it a fourth time. The record shows what he offered, what he withheld, and what a treaty signed in Washington now forbids him to give.
The uranium was Congolese. The war on terror's newest front should be too.
The money moves through three doors. The decisions wait behind one. Every US institution on the Congo, what each controls, and how to position for what comes next.
Subscribe for full access to weekly briefs, gated analysis, reference registers, and flagship dossiers.
