Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) President Félix Tshisekedi has chosen to attend the 61st Munich Security Conference in Germany as his country faces a Western-backed conflict over natural resources that has internally displaced 700,000 people since January. A tweet from the official presidential account on 13 February confirmed his arrival in Munich, where global leaders plan to tackle global security challenges over three days.
Tshisekedi’s presence in Germany means he’ll be absent for the 38th African Union (AU) Summit scheduled for 15-16 February in Addis Ababa, which includes a meeting of the AU’s Peace and Security Council focused on the ongoing crisis in eastern DRC. His communications team informed news agency Agence France-Presse that Prime Minister Judith Suminwa would represent him.
This isn’t the first time Tshisekedi has skipped significant regional meetings. He missed the East African Community (EAC) virtual summit on 29 January. On 8 February, he again was a no-show at a crucial meeting in Tanzania involving the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the EAC.
His repeated absence from these key African gatherings raises concerns about his commitment to direct dialogue, with some seeing it as a setback for a Pan-African effort to address the escalating crisis in the Great Lakes region.
Congo’s 30-year resource war had k*lled around 6 million people by 2010, with many more casualties since then. Many have blamed Western corporations that exploit the country’s mineral resources, estimated at $24 trillion, for exacerbating the war. In March 2024, a US court ruled against former child miners in a case against five major US tech companies: Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Dell, Apple, Tesla, and Microsoft.
Sources:
https://x.com/Presidence_RDC/status/1890097466462093689
https://www.barrons.com/news/congolese-president-to-miss-au-meeting-on-eastern-drc-violence-b1db788c
https://chimpreports.com/drcs-tshisekedi-misses-sadc-eac-summit-sends-prime-minister
https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/01/1159541
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/05/tech/big-tech-child-labor-congo-lawsuit/index.html
https://www.caritas.org/2010/02/six-million-dead-in-congos-war