Congo’s President Joseph Kabila will not stand for re-election

President Joseph Kabila will not run in long-delayed elections in December, a decision that ends years of speculation about his intentions and puts Congo on course for only its fourth multi-party polls since independence in 1960.

Uncertainty over whether the 47-year-old head of state would try to stand for president again, in violation of the DRC’s constitution, has loomed over the mineral-rich African country for two years and sparked violent protests. If Mr Kabila had stood again, it could have prompted further conflict and derailed the vote.

Congo is Africa’s biggest copper producer and the world’s largest source of cobalt, an ingredient in the batteries needed to power everything from Apple’s iPhones to Tesla’s electric cars. Since Mr Kabila took power in 2001, the country has received billions of dollars of investment from mining companies such as Glencore, but insecurity and corruption have held back development for decades.

National progress has stalled further since 2016, when presidential elections at which Mr Kabila was due to step down were delayed, leading to demonstrations in the capital Kinshasa and across the country.

That vote is now scheduled for December 23, and Wednesday was the final day for candidates to register.

Speculation had been rife that Mr Kabila would resist international pressure to step down and seek re-election. But a spokesman said on Wednesday that the president’s ruling coalition would instead be represented by Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, the former interior minister.

I think this [Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary] is someone who is close, who he feels he can trust . . . Someone he can control, he can manipulate

Mr Ramazani has been close to Mr Kabila since the president’s father, Laurent Kabila, seized power in 1997, and may have been selected for his loyalty, said Stephanie Wolters, a Congo expert at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, South Africa.

“I think this is someone who is close, who he feels he can trust,” Ms Wolters said. “Someone he can control, he can manipulate.”

The US and the EU have imposed travel bans and asset freezes on senior members of his political and security apparatus since 2016, including Mr Ramazani, but with seemingly little effect.

Until now Mr Kabila had given no public indication of any commitment to stand down and Washington was preparing further sanctions against people close to the president this week.

The US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley welcomed President Kabila’s withdrawal. “The Democratic Republic of the Congo has a historic opportunity to carry out its first peaceful, democratic transfer of power,” she said. “This development is another step, but there is much more to be done.”

Mr Kabila took office in 2001 in the middle of a civil war, aged only 29, after his father was assassinated. He oversaw a peace agreement with international support in 2002, won elections in 2006 and was re-elected in 2011 for a second term.

The announcement sets up a battle between Mr Kabila’s powerful but fragmented ruling coalition and a collection of old rivals.

They include former vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba, who made a triumphant return to Congo last week after his prosecution at the International Criminal Court for war crimes was overturned in an unexpected reversal. Arrested in 2008, he spent 10 years in prison in The Hague for crimes committed by his troops in the Central African Republic in 2002, for which the court had alleged Mr Bemba was responsible.

Mr Bemba finished runner-up to Mr Kabila in 2006, leading to clashes between members of his militia and government troops. Though his supporters have long since laid down their arms, Mr Bemba and his family remain hugely popular in Kinshasa and the west of the country.

“The welcome I received shows that this link with the population, with our population, still exists,” Mr Bemba told the Financial Times after landing in Kinshasa last week.

The outlook looks less certain for presidential hopeful Moise Katumbi, who was unable to return to Congo to register as a candidate by Wednesday’s deadline.

The powerful former governor of copper-rich Katanga province fled the country in 2016 to avoid what he said were trumped-up criminal charges and threats to his life.

He tried to return last week by air and then road but was refused entry, his senior adviser Olivier Kamitatu said.

Though Mr Kabila has finally agreed not to run, free and fair elections are not assured. The refusal to allow Mr Katumbi to return, the restriction of political freedoms and a clampdown on media over the past two years all threatened the credibility of polls, said Ms Wolters, who added: “We are far from out of the woods yet in terms of the legitimacy of the process.”