One agreement, read properly.
Ascendance Strategies is a Paris-based advisory firm and subscription publication working exclusively on the US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement and the investment framework it created.
Not African markets. Not critical minerals broadly. One agreement, its mechanisms, and the assets and institutions it governs.
A firm covering twelve jurisdictions cannot know which article of this treaty a specific ownership structure will fail. A firm working on one can. That is the whole basis on which we ask to be engaged, and it is why we decline work outside the framework rather than stretch to meet it.
We do two things. We publish analysis, dossiers and registers on the partnership, read by subscribers before it is read anywhere else. And we advise principals with live exposure, under signed scopes of work. The publication exists so the advice can be judged before it is bought.
The wall runs in both directions.
Nothing a client tells us is published.
Confidential information provided under a mandate never appears in published work. Every published finding is built from identified public sources, and states them.
Nothing we publish is a client's to approve.
An engagement confers no right of review, no priority of access, and no right to delay or withdraw a publication or a rating. A client cannot see a piece before publication, cannot soften it and cannot stop it. Where that is a condition of the mandate, we are the wrong firm.
- Professional fees only. No equity, no success fees, no performance-linked compensation.
- No remuneration from rated entities. No publication, rating or schedule is subject to any consideration.
- No government or party affiliation, in Washington, Paris or Kinshasa.
- We analyse where the public record ends. We do not run investigations of individuals, place sources, originate deals or facilitate transactions.
Every piece carries a name.
A small desk across three cities. Each analyst's profile lists the pieces they signed, so the record is checkable rather than asserted.
Some pieces carry the desk collectively rather than an individual, where a finding rests on sourcing several analysts contributed to, or where naming one would narrow the protection we extend to a source. Desk pieces meet the same evidentiary standard.
Three cities, three reasons.
Washington
Where the American side of the partnership is decided: the agencies, the appropriations, the designations and the congressional record.
Paris
The firm's legal seat and its editorial desk. European capital, multilateral institutions, and the francophone record.
Kinshasa
Where implementation is either happening or not: the ministries, the cadastre, the registers and the operators.
On the record.
Our principals appear at policy conferences and industry panels on US-Africa trade, critical minerals and the partnership, and speak to press on the framework and its implementation.
For a speaking request or a press enquiry, including deadline work, write to the desk directly.
Contact the deskNamed in something we published?
Write to [email protected], identifying the content and the passages you contest. We acknowledge receipt and respond within the applicable legal time limits.
Where a correction is established, it is published visibly and dated. We do not quietly amend. A right of reply is available on the same terms, and it does not require a lawyer to invoke.
Right of reply, in full →Read the work, or commission it.
The publication tells you what is happening and on what evidence. An engagement answers your question, on your asset, on your timeline.