However, as violence deepens in eastern DRC and peace efforts face tests, a different, more grounded truth continues to emerge that instability in the DRC is not the product of Rwandan ambition but of persistent and profound Congolese administrative failures.
Even the United Nations and humanitarian agencies paint a stark picture of this reality. As of late 2024, more than 7.8 million people were internally displaced across the DRC, including nearly 4 million in the Kivu provinces, where insecurity has been most intense. This figure makes the DRC one of the largest internally displaced populations in the world, a crisis driven by chronic conflict, weak state authority, and the proliferation of armed groups.
Yet Kinshasa has mastered the art of political deflection. Faced with the impossible task of governing a territory where more than 120 armed groups, each vying for influence, territory, and resources, operate with impunity, President Félix Tshisekedi’s administration has chosen a convenient villain. By framing the conflict as a bilateral dispute with Rwanda, Kinshasa successfully distracts its citizens from a collapsed civil service, an unpaid and under‑equipped military, and a total lack of infrastructure and public services.
If Rwanda were truly the sole cause of the DRC’s woes, what explains these other scores of militias that predate any current political crisis? What explains why groups such as CODECO, Wazalendo, and even factions within the Congolese national army itself act without effective state oversight?
One of the most persistent and lazy narratives is that Rwanda fuels conflict to plunder Congolese minerals. During his recent address at Umushyikirano, President Paul Kagame dismantled this logic with a biting dose of reality:
“If we were really in the Congo for minerals, Rwanda would be a hundred times richer than it is today,” the President remarked.
The math of the “plunder” narrative simply doesn’t add up. Rwanda has built one of the fastest‑growing economies in the world through meticulous planning, service‑sector growth, and institutional accountability, not through chaotic, low‑margin “leakage” of artisanal mining across a volatile border. War is an expensive, resource‑draining endeavour. In my view, if Rwanda’s goal were pure profit, it would have spent the last 30 years as a trading hub for a stable neighbour, not as a defensive wall against a collapsing one.
The real tragedy is that while Kinshasa lobbies for international sanctions against Kigali, it ignores its own internal failures. The March 23 Movement (M23), often held up in Western media as a proxy of Rwanda’s ambitions, is fundamentally rooted in Congolese politics and grievances. It emerged from Congolese army mutineers in 2012 and is composed primarily of Congolese Tutsi, a community that has faced decades of marginalisation and insecurity within the DRC.
Critics of the group argue about its tactics and alliances, but the deeper truth is that M23 exists because the Congolese state has failed to enforce its sovereignty over its own territory. The government has been unable to effectively administer regions that are rich in strategic minerals but far from Kinshasa’s seat of power. This governance vacuum has enabled armed groups of all stripes to flourish.
Furthermore, the DRC’s continued tolerance of groups like the FDLR, comprising the remnants of forces that committed the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, is a non-negotiable security concern to Rwanda. No sovereign nation can be expected to sit idly by while a genocidal militia is “settled” and re‑armed on its doorstep, feeding cycles of revenge and violence.
The humanitarian toll of these governance failures is immense. In just the opening weeks of 2025, fighting between Congolese forces and M23 led to hundreds of thousands of people being displaced, adding to an already enormous crisis. UN agencies have described the forced displacement as one of the most alarming humanitarian crises in the world, with civilians enduring indiscriminate violence, sexual assault, and the collapse of basic services.
The international community, which President Kagame described as treating the DRC leadership like a “spoiled child,” must stop validating Kinshasa’s excuses. Diplomatic gestures, ceasefires, and peace accords, many brokered in Doha, Washington, and Nairobi, are repeatedly undermined on the ground by a Congolese state that lacks the institutional capacity to implement them.
Real peace in the Great Lakes region will not come from more ceasefires that are used as “breathing spells” to re‑arm militias. It will come when the DRC stops framing its administrative failures as external aggressions and begins the hard work of state building, accountability, and inclusive governance.
Rwanda has proven that even with limited resources, a nation can be built through accountability. It is time for Kinshasa to stop looking at Kigali and start looking in the mirror. Peace is not something Rwanda can give to the DRC; it is something the DRC must finally decide to build for itself.
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