This was so under the radar with everything else going on in the world that I’m just reading about it this morning, days after it happened.
The Rwandan genocide of 1996-1997, aka The First Congo War – you probably all remember those horrific images of minority ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutus who had been slaughtered by rampaging Hutu extremists. That began a cycle of cross-border ethnic violence between Rwandan-supported rebels (or Hutu extremists) and the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Almost two million Hutu refugees had sought safety in the DRC during the aftermath of the first war. However, Hutu extremists slipped in with them and organized rebel militias that preyed on the camps and Hutus in the border region.
…Since 1996, conflict in eastern DRC has led to approximately six million deaths. The First Congo War (1996–1997) began in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, during which ethnic Hutu extremists killed an estimated one million minority ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda (DRC’s neighbor to the east). During and following the genocide, nearly two million Hutu refugees crossed the Congolese border, mostly settling in refugee camps in the North Kivu and South Kivu provinces. A small subset of those Rwandans who entered DRC were Hutu extremists who began organizing militias within the Congo. Pressure intensified as Tutsi militias organized against the Hutu groups and as foreign powers began taking sides.
Tutsi militias organized in response, foreign powers and neighboring countries soon took sides, and it became a bloody free-for-all with a mind-numbing, three-decade death toll.
The warring factions have continued the violence to this day.
A particularly nasty episode broke this past January when the M23 (March 23 Movement, primarily ethnic Tutsis, Rwandan-backed) turned clashes with Congolese forces into real fighting, and the rebel factions captured the DRC city of Goma.
In early 2025, fighting between Congolese security forces and militant groups led by M23 escalated rapidly, culminating in M23’s capture of Goma, the regional hub of the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC; the Congo) on the Rwandan border. Rwanda, the primary backer of the M23 armed group, supported its offensive in eastern DRC with three to four thousand ground troops. As Goma fell, thousands of locals—many of whom were already internally displaced—fled the region. On February 4, M23 declared a unilateral ceasefire. Between 900 people, by UN estimates, and 2,000 people, by Congolese government estimates, were killed in the offensive on Goma. M23 is the latest in a series of Rwanda-backed militant groups that have been vying for territory and valuable natural resources in the eastern Congo since the late 1990s. The escalation in Goma exacerbated nationwide political violence—including in the capital, Kinshasa—which surged following DRC’s December 2023 national elections. With one million Congolese seeking refuge abroad and twenty-one million people in the country in need of urgent medical, food, and other aid, the DRC represents one of the largest and deadliest humanitarian crises in the world.
The Chinese also have their financial fingers in this, as the Great Lakes region of the DRC is loaded to the gills with mineral wealth. It’s just been too perilous for anyone to exploit, from the Congolese themselves to any international commercial partners, good intentions or otherwise.
So, a classic African mess.
As late as the middle of this month, and mostly in reaction to the gut-job done on USAID by DOGE and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US media were moaning that Africa was going to be abandoned to its fate by the Trump administration, even as they quoted some experts who said forcing the continent to deal with its problems vice just take more money might not be a bad thing.
Witness this Politico headline as proof.
Trump Looks Willing to Write Off an Entire Continent
Many presidents have promised to fundamentally change the U.S. relationship with Africa, focusing more on trade and less on aid.
President Donald Trump might actually make that shift happen.
At first glance, Trump’s recent moves look like a sudden — and very messy — breakup with a whole continent. From dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development to considering banning visitors from many African countries, the U.S. appears to be abandoning these nations to deal on their own with challenges ranging from battling AIDS to weak education systems. The U.S. is also expected to close several embassies in Africa, and some reports suggest that Trump wants to scale back America’s military operations on the continent.
While the Trump administration is retrenching globally and imposing tariffs all over, no region appears to matter less to the White House than Africa.
Nothing ‘matters less’ to the Trump administration ‘than Africa.’
And yet, there was Marco Rubio at a table between representatives of the DRC and Rwandan governments this past Friday, signing ‘declarations of principles’ charting a path forward through economic integration towards lasting peace and prosperity for the region.
#Tshisekedi‘s decision to engage in peaceful talks with #Rwanda could have a profound impact on regional security. With the #US pushing for a more constructive approach, it may be the catalyst that ushers in a new era of cooperation and collaboration between the two nations. pic.twitter.com/lJuAhvUx5i
— Kayinamura Joseph (@KayinamuraJose8) April 27, 2025
…The Declaration will help protect our strategic interest in critical minerals to grow our tech sector and bring sorely needed peace and stability to the region.
Well…huh.
Damned if I can find anything about this on Politico as an update to their pessimism. They might have missed it with all the dead pope, Canada, and tariff brouhahas, right?
In any event, it sure doesn’t look as if Africa is being ignored in the least.
Even the Trump-averse team at Foreign Policy took notice of the agreement, while maintaining their skepticism that anything or anyone could sort out Africa’s extraordinary ills.
It was interesting to learn that the Congolese were the ones to approach the administration. If there’s one thing Trump will do, it’s work in good faith when it’s offered, and as long as all parties have skin in the game.
…In a U.S.-brokered deal, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda agreed on Friday to draft a peace plan by May 2 to end the fighting that has engulfed eastern Congo in recent months. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio facilitated the talks in Washington.
Since January, Kinshasa has lost swaths of territory to the Rwandan-backed March 23 Movement (M23) rebel group, which resurfaced in 2022 after five years of relative inactivity.
The agreement comes after the Congolese government lobbied the Trump administration for support in the conflict. In February, Congo proposed a Ukraine-style minerals-for-security deal with the United States, offering U.S. companies “exclusive” mineral extraction rights in return for diplomatic support, weapons, and military training in its fight against M23.
Michael Boulos, Trump’s ‘Africa Czar,’ has already been in talks with Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi regarding the mineral deal and encouraging private US corporate investment, aided by the federal government’s international agencies.
…According to Boulos, Washington intends to support Congo by encouraging private-sector investment as well as by using government agencies, including the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and Export-Import Bank of the United States.
…Congo is vital to the U.S. government’s plans to compete in the critical minerals race with China, which has restricted exports of so-called rare earths in response to Trump’s trade war. Currently, Chinese companies operate the majority of Congolese mines, which are a key component of Beijing’s dominance in critical minerals.
Congo produces more than 70 percent of the world’s cobalt, which is used for batteries in phones and electric vehicles. It also has significant reserves of elements such as germanium, which is used in semiconductors.
With the weight of the US now weighing in, corollary talks in Qatar between the DRC and M23 are progressing in a positive direction toward the most important objective: ending the non-stop slaughter.
After talks in Qatar, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels agreed to work on a truce to end violence that flared in January, in which thousands have died and millions have been displaced https://t.co/blmDrZFVaG pic.twitter.com/F8uldtKCFM
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 24, 2025.
These are encouraging – and underrated – headlines.
Feuding Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo agree to draft a peace agreement https://t.co/lnxbgHqCUh
— Bloomberg (@business) April 29, 2025
Yesterday, even Bloomberg, hardly another Trump booster, was cautiously optimistic.
Could the US’s transactional approach toward conflict resolution yield lasting peace in Africa’s troubled Great Lakes region?
Donald Trump thinks so. The American president said “great news” will soon emerge from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where government troops have spent years fighting a rebel group that the United Nations says is backed by Rwanda. Kigali denies involvement.
…While the US, according to people familiar with its thinking, is unlikely to commit militarily it has a carrot to dangle — money.
As part of the peace accord, the Congolese and Rwandan authorities are expected to commit to joint projects in hydropower, national parks and mineral supply chains “in partnership with the US government and US investors,” they state in a declaration of principles.
If things go according to plan — and there is no shortage of skepticism that it will — the US approach could end a more than 30-year-long regional conflict over land, resources, ethnicity and political power that kicked off after the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide fled across the border into Congo.
In Trump’s words that would be “a terrific thing.”
It was so ‘terrific’ a possibility that no one has heard the good news about the progress towards it.
Isn’t that wild?
They’d have given Obama another Peace Prize already just for getting them to the table together, let alone agreeing to anything.
Ah, well. As Ebola always says, ‘It is what it is.’
Time to chalk one more accomplishment up on that ‘Hundred Day’ board before they close out the entries.
If there’s any space left for one more thing…
