In November 2023, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s government signed an $8.4 million contract with Trace, the French-headquartered pan-African media group, to build two pieces of software: one to distribute Congolese music, one to register musical works and collect copyright royalties on them. Nearly a year later, Trace’s own legal director confirmed in writing what the contract’s critics had been saying: the distribution platform shipped, nine months behind schedule, and the copyright-collection half, the part actually meant to get artists paid, had not shipped at all.
This is not a story about who owns a Congolese master recording or a Congolese song. No composition changed hands, no catalogue was sold, and Trace has not become anyone’s publisher or rights administrator in the DRC. What changed hands was government money, for a government technology contract, and the most useful primary document on it is Trace’s own account of its own delivery record, written in response to a public allegation about where some of that money went.
What was signed, and by whom#
According to LePotentiel’s report of the signing ceremony, held at the Ministry of Finance in Kinshasa’s Gombe commune, the DRC government side was represented by two ministers: Nicolas Kazadi, Minister of Finance, and Kathungu Furaha, Minister of Culture, Arts and Heritage. Trace was represented by its director general, Olivier Laouchez. The stated purpose was a special software program and digital platform to identify musical works, collect copyright fees from their use, and distribute the proceeds “fairly and transparently” to composers, performers, authors and publishers. Laouchez’s own stated timeline, reported at the signing: Congolese music distribution live before the end of 2023, rights management following in April or May 2024.
LePotentiel’s report does not give a specific signing date, only “recemment,” recently. The 4 November 2023 date used in Afrobeats Wire’s deal record for this contract comes from a different, later document: Trace’s own account of the deal, published nearly a year on.
The reply that confirmed the delay#
That document exists because Trace was publicly accused of something. On 31 October 2024, the Kinshasa outlet Arts.cd carried a formal right-of-reply from Trace, titled “Affaire 2 millions des droits d’auteurs,” signed by Sven Balisson, Groupe Trace’s Legal Director. Arts.cd’s original article making the allegation is not available in this record; what is available, and what this desk read in full, is Trace’s answer to it.
Balisson’s reply puts a number on the contract for the first time in public: USD 8.4 million total, agreed at the DRC government’s request, split 50 percent funded by Trace and 50 percent by the government, covering the two platforms plus communication and training work. As of the reply’s date, Trace said it had invested more than USD 3.5 million of its own money and the government USD 2.2 million.
Then come the delivery facts, stated by Trace about Trace. The music-distribution platform was delivered to Minister Kathungu Furaha on 3 September 2024, and presented to artists the following day at the Pullman hotel in Kinshasa. Measured against Laouchez’s own “before the end of 2023” promise at signing, that is roughly nine months late. The copyright-management platform, the one meant to register works and collect royalties, had started development but was stalled. Trace’s stated reasons: a late payment from the government side, and ongoing internal disputes over the governance of SOCODA, the Congolese collecting society the new platform was meant to work alongside. Trace was explicit that it does not consider itself responsible for the SOCODA dispute. And on the money question specifically, the reply states, in French: “Aucun fonds lie a ce contrat n’a ete detourne.” No funds linked to this contract have been diverted.
What the reply does not settle#
A reply answering an accusation is, by construction, a document written by one side about itself. Several things follow from treating it that way rather than as a neutral account.
First, the figures in it are Trace’s own, not independently verified. No DRC government budget line, procurement record, or audit naming the USD 8.4 million contract, or the USD 3.5 million and USD 2.2 million interim figures, could be located for this record. Second, search-engine indexing of a separate Kinshasa outlet, La Prosperite, surfaces what is reported to be a materially different allegation: that Laouchez personally received a USD 2 million advance against a USD 4 million contract, a claim about money reaching an individual rather than a company’s project account, and about a contract roughly half the size Trace itself describes. This desk could not check that allegation against the original article. Laprosperiteonline.net does not currently resolve, returning a DNS failure on direct connection as of 5 November 2026, and no mirrored or cached copy of the full article text could be found anywhere else. That allegation is not treated as fact in Afrobeats Wire’s deal record for this contract, and it is reported here only because it is the reason Trace’s reply exists at all.
Third, and this is the part that matters most for artists: even accepting every number in Trace’s own account at face value, the half of the contract meant to collect and pay out royalties was the half that had not shipped, fourteen months after signing and six months past its own promised launch window.
Where the SOCODA dispute cuts back in#
Afrobeats Wire has separately documented, in a different record, that SOCODA itself has spent more than three years in a leadership dispute that Kinshasa’s courts have ruled on at least four times, all in favour of the board led by musician Joseph-Roger “Jossart” Nyoka Longo against a rival claimant, Blaise Bula Monga, who has kept operating anyway. In an August 2026 interview, Bula said a 2024 digital rights-management partnership with Trace had stalled amid that dispute. At the time that record was written, Bula’s claim rested on his own account and could not be independently checked.
Trace’s own October 2024 statement, read in full for this record, closes that gap. It confirms, in Trace’s own words and well before Bula made his public claim, that the copyright platform was stalled, and that SOCODA’s governance fight was one of the two reasons Trace itself gave. The two documents do not agree on everything: Trace frames the SOCODA dispute as something happening to its contract, not something it caused, while Bula’s framing implies the contract was a casualty of a fight he was already losing in court. But on the narrow, checkable point, that the platform had not launched, Trace’s own account and its critic’s account agree.
What this means for artists#
For a Congolese songwriter or performer, the practical promise behind this contract was simple: a system that would actually track where their music gets played and make sure the money that use generates reaches them. Measured against that promise, two years after signing and more than two since the ministers stood up in Kinshasa, the paying half of the deal is the half with no confirmed delivery date.
That is a familiar shape in Congolese rights administration specifically. SOCODA itself has faced a reported, unverified allegation that more than $25 million meant for rights holders could not be accounted for, against a far smaller confirmed sum actually paid out, a figure this desk has treated with caution elsewhere because the underlying government report has never been published. The Trace contract was supposed to be part of the fix for exactly that kind of opacity, a technical layer that would make collection and distribution auditable in a way the institution around it has not managed on its own. Whether it will still do that is, on the documents available as of this record, an open question. Trace says the delay sits with a late government payment and a governance fight that is not its doing. No government statement, no SOCODA statement, and no independent audit addressing either claim was found. Afrobeats Wire checked for reporting on the platform’s status dated after Trace’s October 2024 reply and found none, from any of the three parties with a direct stake in it.
An artist trying to work out whether this contract will ever pay them anything is, for now, left with the same answer as an artist trying to work out whether SOCODA itself is currently solvent: the paperwork says yes, eventually, and nobody independent has confirmed it.