Democratic Republic of Congo
Election in Africa: Congo votes on president
President Félix Tshisekedi has a good chance of being re-elected in the Democratic Republic of Congo. photo
© Samy Ntumba Shambuyi/AP/dpa
President Tshisekedi wanted to make Congo the “Germany of Africa.” Now the country of 100 million people is voting on whether he remains in office. A Nobel Peace Prize winner is also up for election.
The election is made more difficult by violence in the east of the country, where government troops and militias have been fighting for influence for years. Voters in the Central African country, which is the size of Western Europe, also vote on the National Assembly in Kinshasa, the members of the provincial parliaments and the local councils.
Many people in poverty
Despite its enormous wealth of raw materials – including cobalt and coltan, which are needed for the production of cell phones, laptops and electric cars – many people in Congo live in poverty. Some of the mineral resources are located in the conflict-prone east of the country. As a country with the second largest rainforest in the world, the Congo also plays an important role in the global climate.
Tshisekedi was elected in 2018 for a five-year term. His election victory was controversial, but it was the first peaceful transfer of power in the country’s history. At that time he announced that he wanted to make the DR Congo the “Germany of Africa”. Since then, Tshisekedi has been able to expand his position of power with changing alliances. Opponents accuse him of not having improved security in the conflict-prone east of the country.
Elections “on a knife’s sheath”
The entrepreneur Moise Katumbi is considered Tshisekedi’s most promising opponent. The doctor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Dénis Mukwege is probably best known abroad, but he is not given any chances.
There was also violence during the election campaign in the capital Kinshasa, said Jakob Kerstan, head of the office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. It remains to be seen whether the election will take place nationwide under minimum democratic standards due to logistical and security challenges.
Richard Moncrieff from the think tank International Crisis Group (ICG) sees the elections as “on a knife edge”. “There are serious concerns about the distribution of voting materials, and many polling stations may not have enough materials.”