Four months after his first visit, Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot will return to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) this week as part of a tour of four countries in Central and East Africa.
Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-Kinshasa (DRC), Kenya and Ethiopia are the stops on this week-long trip, which will focus on humanitarian issues, the environment and human rights, as well as economic challenges and critical minerals.
After Brazzaville and Kinshasa on Monday and Tuesday, the Belgian foreign minister will travel to Lubumbashi (Haut-Katanga). On Wednesday, he will visit a subsidiary of the Congolese company Gécamines, a partner of the Belgian metallurgical group Umicore in the processing of germanium, a critical metal for new technologies.
Attempts to defuse the conflict in eastern DRC, President Tshisekedi's recent overtures to part of the opposition, the fight against corruption and governance in the mining sector will be at the heart of diplomatic meetings at the highest level, but also with civil society and the opposition.
The conflict in the east of the country will also be discussed in Kenya, which has served as a mediator in the past. In Nairobi, the capital of environmental multilateralism, Belgium is also expected to show its support for environmental and digital projects, as well as for the reception of refugees from neighbouring countries at war. The latter issue will be the focus of the trip to Ethiopia, a country that hosts more than one million refugees, mainly from South Sudan and Somalia. Belgium wants to promote better coordination between humanitarian aid, development and peacebuilding in order to manage migration flows and forced displacement.
