People on the streets reckon petty crime is down. Women selling vegetables say they stay open later. At a mosque Muslims say they feel safer attending the last prayer of the day. But there is still fear. Several women say their sons or nephews have been forcibly recruited by M23. NGOs are understood to be under pressure to minimise reporting of sexual violence. (Amnesty International has documented gang rape by all sides in the conflict.) The economic situation is dire. Banks remain closed, leaving locals without access to credit or savings. The airport—a source of cash and imports—is shut, which makes it hard for aid workers to reach remote areas. Fewer expats and tourists means fewer shoppers. Fighting in the Kivu hinterland has left people unable to farm or to reach markets. “We are selling in a cleaner city but we don’t sell as much,” says a market trader. “There is no money in Goma any more because we are isolated,” adds an electrical shop’s manager, who says her average daily revenues have fallen from $800 to $150. “More tax, less money,” is a money-exchanger’s pithy summary. “Regarding security, life is good,” a motorbike-taxi driver says. “Economically life is not good.” Freddy Kaniki, deputy co-ordinator of M23’s political wing, agrees that local people face a “medieval” situation. But he says that Félix Tshisekedi, Congo’s president, is engaging in “collective punishment” by refusing to reopen banks. He claims that M23 has eliminated dozens of taxes imposed by the Congolese government while better enforcing the remaining ones. The group is also trying to build an alternative financial system. A small building next to a launderette on a side street is, in effect, the central bank of the Kivus. Inside, Cédric Fiéma Punduyange, a dapper man with high- waisted black trousers and books by Joseph Schumpeter on his desk, presents two formula-filled papers with plans to manage exchange rates and boost the money supply. “Sometimes financial regulation here can be more complex than military strategy,” he says. He claims new lenders—one called IMF Kivu (no relation to the one in Washington, DC)—show some are willing to upset Congo’s government in Kinshasa, its capital, by setting up financial institutions.
Mr Fiéma Punduyange declines to say who these entrepreneurs are. But the business elite in Goma has changed. Trade with Rwanda, always robust, seems to have strengthened. Supermarkets stock more Rwandan cheese and less of the Gouda-like Congolese stuff. One Rwandan tycoon says he has “a huge interest” in seeing M23 succeed “from a DNA perspective but also from a business perspective”. The militia has seized around 45 mining assets, according to the CRG report. The most important is Rubaya, a town north-west of Goma, with deposits amounting to 15% of current global tantalum supply. Congo has put the mine on a list of assets for potential American investment, even though it is under M23 control. “Ever since they [Congo and the Trump administration] signed the mineral deal, we don’t feel the same reception,” says Mr Kaniki. “We realise the game has changed; it’s now transactional.” So he hands out the pitch deck listing the five main mining assets under M23 control that he wants to discuss with America. In a line that is more MBA than M23, the deck says the group’s plan “represents a more deliverable pathway to the same US supply-chain objectives” than Congo’s. Mr Kaniki adds that some assets Congo is offering away from the Kivus are privately owned or under
litigation. “America is making the same mistake they are making in Iran: going in without an end-game strategy.” There are problems. M23’s leaders (though not Mr Kaniki) are under American sanctions. It does not run a sovereign state. Congo thinks it can retake Rubaya with the help of mercenaries. What happens in the war will depend in part on whether American pressure exacerbates tensions within M23. Military leaders are not always aligned; generals compete over business as well as strategy. The military and political wings diverge, too. The latter cares more about gaining power in Kinshasa; the former about control of the Kivus. America hopes its sanctions on the Rwanda Defence Force will prompt Rwanda to distance itself from M23. Westerners have already cancelled or paused investments in firms owned by the Ministry of Defence. Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president, may struggle to pitch his country as Africa’s Singapore when his army joins North Korea on America’s naughty list. After M23 previously took Goma, in 2012, Rwanda eventually withdrew support under Western pressure. Mr Kagame has also in the past cut deals with Congo over the heads of M23. Yet there is still genuine concern in Kigali that, with Mr Tshisekedi emboldened, Congo and the FDLR represent an enduring threat. Eventually, there will have to be a political deal. For all their flaws, the two diplomatic tracks are keeping the sides talking. While that goes on, M23 will become more embedded in the Kivus. “This is home,” says Mr Kaniki. “If it takes 20 years, we will wait.” ■ Sign up to the Analysing Africa, a weekly newsletter that keeps you in the loop about the world’s youngest—and least understood—continent. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//middle-east-and-africa/2026/05/10/a-congolese-militia- wants-to-sell-critical-minerals-to-donald-trump
Middle East & Africa | France and Africa Macron turns to English-speaking Africa Why France is betting on business to shake off its colonial baggage May 14th 2026 HE COOKED with a Kenyan influencer and ran with Eliud Kipchoge, a long-distance runner. He even danced to a live performance of Jerusalema, a South African hit. Emmanuel Macron’s trip to Kenya from May 10th to May 12th certainly felt different. Indeed it was the first time France has held an Africa summit in an English-speaking country. After bruising recent setbacks in Francophone Africa, the French president is trying to shape a different link between France and the continent. The English-speaking African leaders present seemed happy to join the club. For Kenya the summit offered a chance for William Ruto, the president, to play regional leader. He pushed, as usual, for a permanent seat for Africans on the UN’s Security Council and for credit reforms to encourage
investment in Africa. Mr Macron has invited him to the G7 summit next month in Evian. Instead of focusing on aid, the summit put business at the centre of what Mr Macron and Mr Ruto called a “partnership of equals”. They signed over $1bn in bilateral deals, including an $820m joint venture to revamp a port terminal in Mombasa, on the Kenyan coast. Accor, a French hotel chain, is backing ten Nigerian hotels. Eutelsat, a French satellite company, is expanding broadband in 20 African countries. Other African leaders also went to talk business. Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s president—who has visited France 12 times in the past three years—brought along leading entrepreneurs. Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, hinted at plans for a giant oil refinery in Kenya. In total €14bn ($16.5bn) of French public and private investment and €9bn of African investment were signed off. That includes pledges that may not come to pass and plans that were already public. But it is still significant. The UN puts foreign direct investment inflows to Africa at just $59bn in 2025, despite increasing interest from China and the Gulf. Since he was elected in 2017, Mr Macron has tried to move away from an Africa policy weighed down by post-colonial baggage and widely criticised by a younger African generation. On his watch, France has returned cultural artefacts from museums to Senegal and Benin, reset relations with post- genocide Rwanda and reformed its role in running a currency shared by west African countries. Anglophone alliances seem to be paying off. A new Ipsos poll suggests that 93% of Kenyans and 90% of Nigerians have a good image of France, far more than in French-speaking countries. Yet the shift has been halting, and at times a fiasco. Mr Macron has presided over a forced retreat from the Sahel, where France used to conduct a long- running counter-terrorism operation. After coups had installed hostile regimes that turned to Russia for security instead, France was kicked out of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger (none of which were invited to the summit). In Nairobi Mr Macron claimed that France had felt “no offence”, but that Mali’s coup leaders had “not taken the best decision for their country”. Jihadists recently took control of swathes of the north from Malian and
Russian forces. Yet few seem to regret France’s departure. “It’s not because the Russians have failed that the image of France has improved,” says Ladji Ouattara, head of Observatoire du Sahel, a research body. Mr Macron’s trip this week was about charting a new path. But it also felt like a farewell tour. He cannot constitutionally stand for re-election in 2027. In some African quarters he, and his tendency to scold, will not be missed. But his successor could be Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella from the populist right. Talk of partnership could swiftly give way to diktats limiting visas and migration.■ Sign up to the Analysing Africa, a weekly newsletter that keeps you in the loop about the world’s youngest—and least understood—continent. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//middle-east-and-africa/2026/05/14/macron-turns-to- english-speaking-africa
Middle East & Africa | No war, no peace Gulf states fear irreversible fallout from the Iran crisis If there is no deal by the end of the summer, long-term economic harm is likely May 14th 2026 What began as a temporary ceasefire has now lasted almost as long as the fighting that preceded it. America and Iran are in the sixth week of a truce announced on April 8th. Many in the Gulf had hoped it would bring a swift end to the war, and to the economic disruption it has caused. Instead they find themselves in limbo. The war is paused, despite skirmishes in the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian attacks on the United Arab Emirates (uae). But there is no lasting peace—and thus almost no traffic through the strait. As the talks continue, some Gulf residents are starting to ask the unthinkable: what if this drags on for months? The Gulf Co-operation