Behind the display of harmony between Russia and its African allies during foreign minister Sergey Lavrov's recent tour, the war in Ukraine is taking its toll on Moscow's relations with the continent. Traditionally pro-Russia Sudan has agreed to serve as a layover for military equipment heading to Ukraine.
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Defence 
The Congolese government has turned to the Luxembourg firm eProseed to help it digitalise its land register. An undertaking that Kinshasa hopes will bring in much-needed revenues for the public coffers.
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Business The DRC government is keen to offload some its oil portfolio and has issued a tender call for blocks 1 and 2 in the north-east of the country, which were operated for a decade by Dan Gertler's firms, Caprikat and Foxwhelp.
The Ivory Coast-Ghana Cocoa Initiative (ICCIG), based in Accra since September 2021 and headed by the experienced Ivorian Alex Assanvo, is struggling to bring multinationals on board. It is also trying to persuade the two regulatory bodies to radically shift their priorities.
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Commodity traders The president of the Guinean transition has pledged that the oft-postponed trial relating to the terrible repression of 2009 will finally take place by this September. A decision that contrasts with the favourable treatment reserved by the transitional authorities for Colonel Claude Pivi and former president Moussa Dadis Camara.
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Politics 
The leaders of Kenya's main Christian churches called on the two leading presidential candidates to meet and commit to a peaceful election. They have declined the invitation.
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Politics On 25 May, Somalia's recently appointed prime minister Hamza Abdi Barre was given a ten-day reprieve by parliament to form a government. He has very limited room for manoeuvre as he tries to honour campaign promises while at the same juggling the demands of competing clans.
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Politics 
Once the sale of its stock in Angola has been finalised, the small Hungarian-Croatian firm will have no assets left in sub-Saharan Africa and its geographical presence will be limited to Egypt and Croatia.
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Energy 
The Egyptian leader is harnessing the issue of religious freedom to improve his image with the US administration. The head of Egypt's Protestant churches, Andrea Zaki Stephanous, is acting as Sisi's emissary in Washington.
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Diplomacy Russia's state-owned oil company has been invited to dispatch a delegation to Benghazi to visit the head office of AGOCO, the NOC subsidiary that operates the Sarir and Messla fields. This rapprochement, discreetly supported by Khalifa Haftar, is a source of great concern to Washington and other Western nations.
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Energy Sonatrech's announcement at the beginning of July of its discovery of a volume of between "100 and 340 billion cubic metres of gas for condensate" on the Hassi R'Mel perimeter came at a particularly opportune moment for the company, which is under pressure from its clients to increase the volume of its gas exports to Europe.
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Energy 