India-Africa summit postponed as Ebola spreads to M23-held DR Congo area

The ⁠African Union and India have postponed the ⁠India-Africa ⁠Forum Summit scheduled for next week in ‌New Delhi, due to ⁠the “evolving health situation in parts of Africa”.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs made the announcement on Thursday as health officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are battling a growing Ebola disease outbreak.

The decision was made in recognition of “the importance of ensuring the full participation and engagement of African leaders and stakeholders, and mindful of the emerging public health situation on the continent,” the joint statement said.

The announcement comes as the first Ebola case was confirmed in the DR Congo’s South Kivu province, an area controlled by the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels, the group’s spokesman said on Thursday.

Efforts to stop the latest outbreak of the deadly disease, which the World Health Organization has declared an international emergency, have been affected by the DRC’s longrunning conflicts, including between the Congolese army and the M23.

The armed has never had to manage a response to a serious epidemic of a disease like Ebola, which has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa in the past half-century. M23 said earlier this week that it was committed to working with international partners to contain the outbreak, though the response has been ‌ complicated by the virus’s presence in densely populated urban areas in eastern DRC.

The new case was located ⁠in a rural area near the provincial capital of Bukavu, which fell into M23 hands in February 2025. It marks an expansion of an outbreak that experts believe circulated for about two months in Ituri province, several hundred kilometres to the north, before being detected last week.

According to the M23 spokesman, the case involved a “person coming from Kisangani”, a major city in the eastern Tshopo province where no Ebola infections from the current outbreak have so far been recorded.

“The person concerned, a compatriot aged 28, unfortunately succumbed to the disease before the diagnosis was confirmed,” the spokesman added.

The Congolese authorities are yet to comment on the reported case.

According to the WHO, the latest outbreak in the DRC, the 17th to hit the vast central African country of more than 100 million people, is already suspected of having caused 139 deaths and there are 600 ⁠suspected cases. Two cases have also been confirmed in neighbouring Uganda.

First responders say they lack basic supplies, which some have attributed to by major international donors, .