Pastoralism generates wealth and economic interdependence but also causes tensions, usually over water or pasture. In the last few years, conflicts have intensified because of growing insecurity and small-arms proliferation; climate change and the shift of cattle migration southward; multiplication of transnational herding routes; expansion of cultivated areas into traditional grazing lands; and growing cattle herds.

“With two hundred men, we could get rid of most of the LRA in DRC,” a foreign security official told me in August when I was touring the Uele district, in the far north east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Lord’s Resistance Army has been abusing the population there since at least 2008. But in contrast to the foreign official’s confidence, the striking fact was that the fight against what remains of the LRA is at a standstill. It needs fresh impetus, because the LRA has demonstrated repeatedly its capacity to go underground then surge again more violent than before.

The unexpected occupation of Lubumbashi, the second largest city in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), by 440 Mai-Mai fighters last month is another sign of the central government’s lack of capacity to govern, ensure security or pursue reform. The occupation, which resulted in 35 dead and 53 wounded, serves as a reminder that the country’s crisis is not limited to North Kivu, in eastern Congo, or to warlords.

The mutiny in DR Congo led by General Bosco Ntaganda, a.k.a “Terminator”, who has been wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on war crimes charges since 2006, is not only a rule of law issue; it is symptomatic of deeper, long-term and unaddressed political problems.

everal weeks behind schedule, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has published the results of the legislative elections held on 28 November 2011. They are the outcome of a process that witnessed many violations of the electoral code, disregarded several million votes and experienced vote-counting operations too opaque to make verification possible (See the statement from the Carter Center and statements from European Union electoral observation missions and subsequent statements from Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, the EU and the United States). Yet the INEC president, Daniel Ngoy Mulunda, rejected all the international community’s offers to help with vote counting. The results, which will determine the complexion of the new National Assembly, therefore lack credibility.

Europe is up in the air about how to deal with what is coming out of the ground in conflict zones.

A year ago, the European Parliament asked the Commission to develop a European version of the Dodd-Frank legislation, which establishes disclosure regulations relating to the use of conflict minerals by companies, and was passed by the U.S. Congress in July of 2010. However, in Brussels, skepticism persists as to whether any such measure will be enacted, and many wonder what added value Europe could bring in any case.

On 15 June 2011 the Congolese Parliament adopted, after nearly three months of debate, the new electoral law.[i] The Senate, or upper house, controlled by the opposition, and the National Assembly, or lower house, controlled by the ruling coalition, both voted for an electoral law which ultimately remains very similar to that governing the 2006 elections. Parliament took three months of debate to reject most of the amendments proposed by the ruling party (PPRD). In doing so it demonstrated that the executive could not simply trump its interests.

For many years, it has proved impossible to find a solution to the problem of the illegal exploitation of minerals in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by actors in the conflict. The Kassem Report[i] and others that followed showed that the belligerents partly finance their activities from the sale of gold, wolframite, coltan and cassiterite – minerals very much prized by the electronics industry and valued at around US$60 million per year. Adoption of the Dodd-Frank Act by the U,S, Congress in 2010 resulted in an upsurge of international initiatives to make trade in conflict minerals in the Great Lakes zone transparent and prevent it from financing the warmongers behind the troubles in eastern DRC.

For more than a year and a half, UN peacekeepers have continuously supported military operations conducted by the Congolese armed forces (FARDC) against the Rwandan rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in North and South Kivu.

Election fever has spread across Central Africa. For the second time since the end of the disastrous civil wars in the region, electoral processes have been launched in Burundi, Rwanda, Central African Republic and the Congo.