ASINT / Geopolitics & Risks
On June 9, 2026, the DRC’s National Assembly passed a bill organising the legal framework for national referendums. The vote took place without opposition lawmakers, who have boycotted parliament for weeks in protest against the initiative. The legislation is the procedural instrument through which any constitutional revision would be submitted to popular vote. President Felix Tshisekedi’s second and final term under the current constitution expires in 2028. Article 220 of the 2006 Constitution stipulates that neither the number nor the length of presidential terms may be amended. The new bill introduces an exceptional mechanism for constitutional change through a constituent assembly while formally maintaining the protections of Article 220, a structure that opposition leaders describe as a legal subterfuge designed to circumvent term limits without formally abolishing them.
The political sequencing that preceded the vote is specific. On May 6, Tshisekedi held a press conference in Kinshasa in which he stated: “I have not asked for a third term, but I tell you this: if the people want me to have a third term, I will accept.” He first raised the idea of revising the constitution in late 2024, arguing that the current charter was largely drafted by foreign legal experts and required updating. The referendum bill, tabled by MP Paul-Gaspard Ngondankoy, advanced through the legislature throughout May and passed on June 9. The progression from presidential signalling to legislative action took approximately seven months, a timeline that reflects deliberate political preparation rather than spontaneous institutional reform.
The opposition response has been coordinated and public. Moise Katumbi, who placed second in the 2023 presidential election and now lives in exile, stated that “the Constitution is not a shirt that can be changed at will” and warned that Tshisekedi was pursuing “a constitutional coup.” Former presidential candidate Delly Sesanga wrote that “the DRC cannot enter a new cycle of institutional tensions and the personalisation of power.” Former lawmaker Claudel-Andre Lubaya questioned the logical coherence: if elections cannot be held because of the eastern war, as Tshisekedi has suggested drawing comparisons with Ukraine, how can a referendum be held in the same security environment? A new opposition coalition has been formed specifically to resist the constitutional revision process. The boycott of the National Assembly vote means the bill passed without the deliberative legitimacy that a contested vote would provide.
For the mining sector documented across this series, the constitutional crisis introduces a governance risk variable that compounds every commercial and fiscal factor previously analysed. The DRC critical minerals article documented 44 state-owned mining projects on the shortlist delivered to Washington in January 2026, the Glencore-Orion MoU for 40% of Mutanda and KCC signed at the Critical Minerals Ministerial in February, and the US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement linking mineral access to security commitments. These transactions are built on the assumption of institutional continuity. If the DRC enters a prolonged constitutional crisis, with opposition boycotts, potential protests, and a contested legitimacy framework, the institutional basis on which the mineral partnership rests becomes unstable. The question for the Orion Consortium, for DFC-backed investments, and for every operator in the DRC Copperbelt is whether the governance environment in 2027-2028, as the constitutional revision process reaches its critical phase, permits the kind of regulatory predictability that $20 billion mining investments require.
The connection between the referendum bill and the US strategic partnership is direct and uncomfortable. Some analysts have suggested that Tshisekedi feels emboldened by the international support linked to the Washington Accords and the mineral deal. The US invested significant diplomatic capital in the DRC-Rwanda peace process and the critical minerals partnership. The strategic interest in DRC’s cobalt, copper, lithium and rare earths creates an incentive structure where Washington may be reluctant to criticise governance actions by an allied president whose cooperation is essential to the mineral strategy. The constitutional crisis tests whether the US can simultaneously pursue mineral access and governance standards, or whether the mineral imperative subordinates the governance concern.
The Ebola dimension adds a layer of institutional stress that the ConstitutionNet analysis explicitly identified. The Bundibugyo outbreak, documented in both the Ebola PHEIC and World Cup articles of this series, is ongoing. The political elite is focused on the constitutional question while the public health system is managing a PHEIC-level epidemic with no approved vaccine or therapeutic. The opposition has used this juxtaposition to argue that the government’s priorities are misaligned: pursuing power consolidation while a public health emergency is unresolved and while the M23 conflict in the east continues to displace populations and kill civilians. Whether this argument gains political traction depends on whether the Ebola outbreak worsens or is contained in the coming weeks.
The DRC’s mining code framework, analysed in the state participation article, already operates under conditions of institutional unpredictability. The 2018 code revision weakened stabilisation clauses, introduced the super-profit tax, and raised royalties. The cobalt export ban imposed in early 2026 demonstrated willingness to restrict commodity flows for sovereign policy purposes. The constitutional crisis adds political unpredictability to the fiscal and regulatory unpredictability already documented. For a mining investment with a 15 to 25-year horizon, the question is not what the fiscal terms are today. It is what institutional framework will govern those terms in 2030, 2035 and 2040. If the DRC’s constitutional architecture is being rewritten through a process that the opposition has boycotted and describes as illegitimate, the durability of any legal framework, including mining codes, investment agreements and the Washington Accords themselves, is called into question.
The regional precedent is instructive. Across Central and West Africa, constitutional revision to extend presidential terms has been attempted or completed in multiple jurisdictions: Cameroon (Paul Biya, term limits removed in 2008), Congo-Brazzaville (Denis Sassou Nguesso, constitutional referendum in 2015), Guinea (Alpha Conde, referendum in 2020 followed by a military coup in 2021), and Ivory Coast (Alassane Ouattara, contested third term in 2020). The outcomes have ranged from stability (Cameroon, at the cost of democratic regression) to coup (Guinea) to prolonged political tension (Ivory Coast). The DRC’s scale, with over 100 million people, $25 trillion in estimated mineral wealth, and active armed conflicts in multiple provinces, makes the stakes of a constitutional crisis qualitatively different from those in smaller jurisdictions. A destabilised DRC does not just affect the DRC. It affects the copper supply chain, the cobalt market, the Lobito Corridor’s viability and the entire architecture of Western critical minerals strategy.
For the series, the referendum bill connects the DRC’s political trajectory to six documented themes. The critical minerals shortlist depends on institutional continuity. The Lobito Corridor depends on Congolese export flows. The copper deficit is contingent on DRC and Zambian production growth. The Kamoa-Kakula smelter operates under Congolese jurisdiction. The cobalt export ban demonstrated sovereign willingness to intervene in commodity markets. The US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement links American security engagement to mineral access. Each of these is affected, directly or indirectly, by the question of whether the DRC’s constitutional framework holds or is contested through a referendum process that the opposition has rejected.
The structural question is whether the referendum bill is the opening of a constitutional crisis or a political negotiation that will be resolved within institutional channels. If it is a crisis, the investment implications are severe: governance uncertainty, opposition mobilisation, potential sanctions from international partners, and the risk of a contested legitimacy framework that undermines the legal basis for commercial agreements. If it is a negotiation, the implications are more nuanced: Tshisekedi may be using the constitutional revision as leverage for other political objectives, and the process may produce a compromise that preserves institutional stability while adjusting the constitutional architecture. The bill passed three days ago. The opposition has boycotted. The president has signalled openness to a third term. The Ebola outbreak is ongoing. The M23 peace process is fragile. The mineral deals are in negotiation. The referendum bill is not a standalone political event. It is the point where every risk documented in the DRC articles of this series converges into a single institutional question: who governs the DRC after 2028, and under what constitutional framework? The answer will shape the investment environment for the world’s most consequential critical minerals jurisdiction for the next decade.