LUSAKA
Zambia opens its 2026 Mining and Investment Insaka in Lusaka on Monday, and the guest list tells its own story: the Democratic Republic of Congo and Botswana are both sending presidential envoys, with more than 1,000 delegates registered to attend alongside President Hakainde Hichilema. Three of the region's biggest copper and cobalt producers in one room is not a small thing for a corridor that has spent the year arguing about processing levies and transport routes.
ANTOFAGASTA
Minera Centinela's ten-day strike is over. The company, part of Antofagasta Minerals, reached a 36-month deal with its two unions, covering 709 workers, or 22% of its own workforce, after a regional labour mediator brought both sides back to the table on 13 October. The package includes a signing bonus of 24 million pesos per worker. The stoppage began on 7 October; production is understood to have continued throughout under safety protocols.
KIBATI
Fighting between the FRN rebel group and Congolese army units backed by Wazalendo militia has run for a third straight day in Kibati, in Walikale territory, North Kivu. Local sources report heavy and light weapons fire since early Sunday morning, with FRN reinforcements reported arriving from Kashebere on Saturday. Kibati has been a recurring flashpoint for close to two years as government forces try to retake the settlement.
THE BARREL
Brent crude jumped 3.9% to 109.86 dollars a barrel, up from 105.69, while the products complex went the other way: RBOB gasoline fell 3.3% to 3.14 dollars a gallon and ULSD diesel dropped 4.3% to 4.72 dollars a gallon. Crude up, refined products down on the same day is an unusual split, and it squeezes the crack spread that bunker and diesel buyers watch when pricing freight.
THE WIRE
DeepSeek opened its Search and Fetch APIs to all developers at 0.75 dollars per 1,000 calls, built on the search engine it already runs for its own models. Separately, OpenCode confirmed a breach exposing stored Gemini and Claude API keys; Google and Anthropic have both revoked affected credentials and are telling anyone who saved a key in the tool to rotate it.
Open positions
Cobalt sits unchanged at 39,345 dollars a tonne. Urea and DAP are both flat for a second session at 457.5 and 802.5 dollars respectively. The Baltic Dry index has not moved. India's sugar trade press is pushing the government to open a white sugar import window before the global surplus narrows. Zambian police reported a five-day regional crackdown that netted 23.3 million kwacha in smuggled goods and 72 detained foreign nationals near the border.