João Lourenço, in the rotating presidency of the AU, called this Friday the first meeting of the assembly's board with the aim of appointing a new mediator for the conflict between the DR Congo and Rwanda.
According to an AU statement, the President informed the meeting, held virtually, that preliminary approaches to the President of Togo, Faure Gnassingbé, "had obtained a positive response".
However, the heads of state and government of the 55 AU member states will still have to give their approval.
Angola announced on March 24 that it was resigning from its role as mediator, two months after assuming the rotating presidency of the AU.
The conflict in eastern DR Congo deepened in late January when the March 23 Movement (M23) rebel group captured Goma, the capital of North Kivu, and Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu, both on the border with Rwanda and rich in minerals such as gold and coltan, essential for the technology industry and the manufacture of mobile phones.
The armed activity of the M23, a group made up mainly of Tutsis (an ethnic group) that suffered the Rwandan genocide in 1994, resumed in North Kivu in November 2021 with lightning attacks against the Congolese army.
Last January, clashes that erupted in Goma and neighboring areas caused more than 8,500 deaths, according to Congolese Public Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba.
According to the International Organization for Migration, around 1.2 million people have had to leave the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu since the increase in the offensive by the M23 group, which, according to the UN, is supported by Rwanda.
Angola's mediation efforts were systematically frustrated, and João Lourenço announced that he was resigning from this task, which he had been entrusted with by the AU before assuming the rotating leadership of the organization, after the Presidents of the DR Congo, Felix Tshisekedi, and Rwanda, Paul Kagame, met in Qatar, on the same day that a meeting between delegations from the Democratic-Congolese Government and the M23 was supposed to have taken place in Luanda.
This first direct contact between the parties ended up happening this week in Qatar.
João Lourenço had already expressed his desire to hand over the role of mediator in the conflict in eastern DR Congo when he assumed the rotating presidency of the AU.
