boarding school in Belgium. In 1979 Mulangala received a BA Hons in Business & Finance from the Institut Catholique des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (ICHEC) in Brussels, Belgium. In 1996, Mulangala attended the College of Petroleum and Energy Studies, part of the Oxford-Princetown Programme, in Oxford, England. Political career In 1990, as calls for democratic reforms in the then Zaire became unstoppable, President Mobutu Sese Seko began to bow to the calls from the international community and the opposition to widen his government and initiate moves towards multiparty democracy. 1990 Mobutu began to open his government to groups and individuals other than his own supporters and Mulangala joined the Government. In that year, Mulangala then a senior corporate banker in the region and because of his family and political roots in the important business and mining province of Western Kasaï was appointed to the reformist Government of Prime Minister Lunda Bululu, initially as Minister of Mining and Energy. Between 1990 and 1992 he held various ministerial positions in the reformist transition government including Minister for Petroleum, Minister for Land and Mines, and Minister for Industry and SME development. Mulangala remained in the Cabinet until the election of Étienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba as Prime Minister in September 1992. Mulangala remained in the country during Kabila’s seizure of power at the end of the First Congo War hoping the change of regime would bring about the badly needed reforms that Congolese had been waiting for. However, he quickly became disillusioned as corruption and political repression grew in the years after 1997. In 1998, Mulangala became a member of the executive of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), a group in opposition to Kabila’s continuing leadership of the country. In disagreement with RCD’s strategy of direct action against the Government, Mulangala later resigned from the executive and the organisation, and became in 2000 a founder member of FRUONAR (The United Opposition Front for Non-Armed Struggle) and its representative in Europe. Mulangala was an active figure (he chaired the working group responsible for drafting the resolution on the sensitive nationality issue) at the Accord Global et Inclusif of 2002 in Pretoria (peace talks between warring factions, non armed opposition and civil society) organised under the umbrella of South Africa that put an end to what is generally recalled as the African first world war and paved the way for a power sharing agreement implemented in