Afripoli

DR Congo’s Ebola deaths pass 4,000 as violence hits response

3 October 2026

Deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ebola outbreak passed 4,000 on 2 October, with 4,018 deaths among about 8,300 confirmed cases in seven provinces, official figures showed. In Ituri, a patient transit centre burned down after soldiers entered the Kigonze displacement camp, whose roughly 19,000 residents fled, leaving most Ebola contacts there untraced. The outbreak, detected in May and caused by the Bundibugyo strain, is the deadliest in the country’s history. Displaced people carrying the virus into North Kivu, where six cases are confirmed in M23-held areas, would put Uganda and Rwanda at greater risk. The violence threatens the slowdown officials had reported in Ituri.

Security · Tags: Democratic Republic of Congo, M23

Sources

More from the Daily Brief

23 October 2026

Uganda starts building 347-km power line from Karuma dam

Uganda broke ground on 22 October on a 400-kilovolt transmission line that will run about 347 kilometres from the Karuma hydropower plant to Tororo in eastern Uganda.

23 October 2026

DR Congo moves to reclaim colonial-era fuel pipelines

DR Congo has begun taking back the fuel pipelines, pumping stations and storage depots built under a 1910 colonial concession, after the convention with Petro Congo, now Fina, expired on 31 December 2025.

23 October 2026

Togo replaces its free zone with special economic zones

Togo's Council of Ministers on 22 October adopted a bill replacing the free industrial zone regime, created in 1989, with special economic zones that offer time-limited, conditional tax breaks varying by location.

23 October 2026

Senegal nears end of US-funded power grid programme

Senegal's electricity programme of about $600 million, funded mostly by a US government grant, has reached 99% completion five months before it closes in March 2027, the managing agency, MCA Sénégal, said on 22 October.

22 October 2026

Dangote buys quarter of Kenya Pipeline Company

Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote said on 21 October that his group had bought about a quarter of Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC), the listed operator of Kenya's main fuel pipelines and depots.

22 October 2026

Equatorial Guinea moves to make Gepetrol its sole fuel distributor

Equatorial Guinea's Vice-President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue on 20 October gave state oil company Gepetrol 48 hours to present a plan to become the country's sole fuel distributor.

All Daily Briefs