Regional Cooperation in the Great Lakes Region

The Great Lakes region of Africa is where the continent’s most stubborn conflicts and its most interesting experiments in cooperation share the same ground. Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda have lived through genocide, two continental wars and decades of cross-border insurgency. Yet through all of it, a jointly owned hydropower station on the Ruzizi River kept sending electricity across the very borders that armies were fighting over.

That paradox sits at the heart of regional peacebuilding policy. Donors, above all the European Union, have poured money into regional institutions on the theory that trade and shared infrastructure knit hostile neighbours together. Field research conducted for the European Commission in 2008 and 2009 tested that theory on the ground in Bujumbura, Kinshasa and Kigali. Its conclusion was sobering: cooperation can support peace, but only when peacebuilding is designed into the institution from the start. It does not happen by itself.

Where is the Great Lakes region of Africa?

Look at a map of the Great Lakes region of Africa and the logic of interdependence is hard to miss. The region takes its name from the chain of lakes running along the western branch of the East African Rift: Lake Albert, Lake Edward, Lake Kivu and Lake Tanganyika, with Lake Victoria to the east. In its narrow sense the region covers Burundi, Rwanda and the eastern DRC; broader definitions add Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. The International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) counts twelve member states, stretching from Angola to Sudan.

Borders here cut across ethnic communities, trade routes and watersheds. Kinshasa lies more than 1,500 kilometres from the Kivu provinces, while Kigali, Bujumbura and the ports of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam are the natural outlets for eastern Congolese trade. Rivers shared between the DRC, Rwanda and Burundi carry most of the area’s hydropower potential, and the methane dissolved in Lake Kivu belongs, quite literally, to two countries at once. Geography made these economies interdependent long before any treaty did.

Conflict has always been regional

The wars that devastated the region between 1994 and 2003 never respected national boundaries. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda pushed more than a million people, including armed extremists, into eastern Zaire. Fighters from that exodus formed the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), which still operated in the Kivu provinces more than a decade later. Rwanda and Uganda intervened militarily in the DRC in 1996 and again in 1998, and neighbouring governments stood accused of bankrolling rebel movements on Congolese soil. By the late 2000s the Congolese conflict alone had produced an estimated 300,000 refugees in neighbouring countries.

Recovery programmes, by contrast, stayed stubbornly national. Researchers studying the region for the European Commission noted that peacebuilding confined to a single state tends to displace problems across borders rather than solve them: smuggling networks, recruitment pipelines and refugee flows simply move. A regional conflict system, the argument runs, needs regional answers.

Energy: the surprising survivor

The strongest evidence that cooperation can outlast war comes from the power sector. SINELAC, a joint venture between the state electricity utilities of Burundi, the DRC and Rwanda, has run the Ruzizi II hydropower dam on their common border since the 1980s. The company kept generating and distributing electricity to all three countries through the worst years of regional conflict, when the same governments had no diplomatic relations at all.

Energy poverty gives every capital a reason to keep that arrangement alive. All three countries face severe electricity deficits, and the best remaining hydropower sites sit on shared rivers near national borders. The Nile Equatorial Lakes Subsidiary Action Programme (NELSAP), working with the World Bank under the Nile Basin Initiative, produced an indicative power master plan signed by six countries in December 2005, mapping generation and transmission projects two decades ahead. Including eastern DRC in that plan was a quietly significant choice. Leaving it out would have deepened the political divide and penalised a population already cut off from Kinshasa’s grid.

Lake Kivu’s methane tells the cautionary version of the same story. The gas is a shared resource, yet Rwanda moved first on extraction. Congolese communities across the water saw a neighbour helping itself to a common asset, and researchers interviewing on both sides of the border in 2008 found that unilateral exploitation was feeding exactly the mistrust that joint ventures are supposed to dissolve.

Trade: livelihoods, war economies and six corridors

Cross-border commerce never stopped either. The DRC, Rwanda and Burundi form a transit belt linking the Congo basin to East African ports, and eastern DRC remains the biggest export market for several of its neighbours. Six main trading corridors connect different Congolese provinces to different neighbours, and small-scale traders kept crossing throughout every phase of the fighting.

The research for the European Commission cited a finding that has become a staple of the trade-and-peace literature:

Various empirical studies seem to confirm the adage that countries that trade with each other, on equitable terms, are less likely to fight each other.

The qualifier matters more than the adage. Formal exports were estimated at only 25 to 30 percent of the DRC’s total exports in the late 2000s; the rest moved through informal and illicit channels, much of it gold and cassiterite from the east. A UN Security Council panel of experts concluded as early as 2002 that mineral exploitation was financing armed factions in the conflict, a pattern the Security Council’s DRC sanctions regime has documented ever since. Where trade and war economies share the same infrastructure, opening borders without reforming governance can end up subsidising the men with guns. Whoever profits most from a trade route, the researchers observed, usually also controls the means of violence along it.

The institutions: ICGLR and CEPGL

Two regional bodies carry most of the peacebuilding weight. The International Conference on the Great Lakes Region was established in 2004 under UN and African Union auspices. Its 2006 Pact on Security, Stability and Development rests on four pillars: peace and security; democracy and good governance; economic development and regional integration; and humanitarian and social issues. The conference gathered more than US$10 million in contributions by 2006 and has served a real diplomatic function. When Kinshasa and Kigali had no formal relations, ICGLR meetings were one of the few rooms where both governments would sit down.

The Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries (CEPGL) is older and smaller. Founded in 1976 by Burundi, the DRC and Rwanda, it collapsed during the wars of the 1990s and was relaunched in 2007 with strong donor backing, including a €50 million commitment from the European Commission for its secretariat in Gisenyi. Its indicative revival budget for 2006 to 2010 ran to roughly US$138 million. CEPGL’s first incarnation left two durable legacies: free movement of people under a joint identity card, and SINELAC itself, which remained its only fully functioning organ.

Both institutions, however, ran into the same wall. The DRC declined for years to second staff to the CEPGL secretariat, leaving the relaunch in preliminary limbo. Many in Kinshasa saw the community as serving Rwandan and Burundian interests first, since Ruzizi electricity and cross-border trade chiefly benefit the eastern provinces rather than the distant capital. The ICGLR, for its part, carried an agenda so broad that observers warned it risked becoming a diplomatic talking shop. Its visible role at the January 2008 Goma conference on eastern DRC was not matched by follow-through on the commitments signed there.

Too many clubs, too little commitment

Institutional overlap compounds the problem. Burundi and Rwanda joined the East African Community in 2007 while remaining members of CEPGL, COMESA and the ICGLR; the DRC belonged to ECCAS and SADC before itself acceding to the EAC in 2022. Each membership carries fees, meetings and sometimes contradictory tariff obligations. The UN Economic Commission for Africa famously depicted the region’s memberships as a spaghetti bowl, and the African Union declared a moratorium on recognising new regional economic communities in 2006 for precisely this reason.

The EU’s own instruments have not always helped. Economic Partnership Agreements negotiated with sub-blocs rather than whole regions drew criticism, including from COMESA’s then secretary-general, for splintering the very integration Europe claimed to support.

What would make cooperation build peace?

The research pointed to a consistent set of fixes, and they remain the benchmark against which regional initiatives are judged today.

• Design peacebuilding in explicitly. Joint projects contribute to peace when conflict analysis, stakeholder consultation and transparent benefit-sharing are built into their structure, not assumed as by-products.
• Pick institutions strategically. Donors should fund bodies with a proven niche rather than reviving every organ of every organisation. For CEPGL, that niche is energy.
• Address asymmetry. Burundi’s small economy, Rwanda’s relative capacity and the DRC’s sheer size mean the gains from integration are uneven. Unmanaged, that fuels resentment; the DRC’s disengagement from CEPGL was a symptom.
• Bring in civil society and border provinces. Traders, provincial authorities and local associations kept cooperation alive when governments would not speak. Institutions that exclude them lose their most resilient constituency.

Events since have vindicated the warning that technical cooperation cannot substitute for political settlement. The M23 crisis that erupted in 2012 and again from 2021, examined in detail in this journal’s analysis of the conflict in eastern DRC and its companion piece on North and South Kivu, froze relations between Kinshasa and Kigali repeatedly, and regional bodies could moderate but not prevent the escalation. The same lesson runs through this journal’s coverage of peacebuilding around Lake Albert, where oil discoveries strain a fragile Uganda-DRC relationship, and of security system reform in the DRC, without which no trade corridor stays safe. Comparative work on regional environmental cooperation reaches a parallel verdict from other continents.

The Great Lakes region of Africa does not lack institutions, plans or donors. It lacks the political trust those institutions were supposed to generate, and the honest recognition that generating it is slow, political work. SINELAC’s turbines prove cooperation can survive a war. Turning that survival into peace is a different engineering problem, and it is still unsolved.

Frequently asked questions

Which countries make up the Great Lakes region of Africa?

In the narrow sense, the Great Lakes region covers Burundi, Rwanda and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Wider definitions include Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, and the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region has twelve member states, among them Angola, Kenya, the Republic of Congo, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Why is it called the Great Lakes region?

The name comes from the chain of large lakes along the western branch of the East African Rift: Lake Albert, Lake Edward, Lake Kivu and Lake Tanganyika, together with Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake, to the east. These waters define the region’s borders, ecosystems and trade routes.

What does a map of the Great Lakes region of Africa show about the conflict?

A map shows why the conflicts are regional: national borders cut across ethnic communities and trade corridors, eastern DRC lies far closer to Kigali, Bujumbura and Kampala than to Kinshasa, and key resources such as shared rivers and Lake Kivu’s methane straddle boundaries. Instability in one state spills quickly into its neighbours.

What is the ICGLR?

The International Conference on the Great Lakes Region is a twelve-member intergovernmental body established in 2004 with UN and African Union backing. Its 2006 Pact on Security, Stability and Development commits members to cooperate on peace and security, governance, economic integration and humanitarian issues.

What is CEPGL?

The Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries (CEPGL) is a three-member organisation founded in 1976 by Burundi, the DRC and Rwanda. It collapsed during the wars of the 1990s and was relaunched in 2007 with European Commission support. Its most durable achievements are free movement arrangements and the SINELAC joint electricity venture.

What is SINELAC and why does it matter?

SINELAC is a joint company owned by the national electricity utilities of Burundi, the DRC and Rwanda. It operates the Ruzizi II hydropower dam on their shared border and kept supplying electricity to all three countries throughout the regional wars, making it the region’s clearest proof that technical cooperation can survive political hostility.

Did regional trade stop during the Congo wars?

No. Informal cross-border trade continued through every phase of the fighting and remained a critical livelihood for border communities. Formal exports, however, were estimated at only 25 to 30 percent of the DRC’s total in the late 2000s, with much of the remainder tied to unregulated or illicit networks.

How does mineral trade fuel conflict in the region?

UN Security Council expert panels have documented since 2002 that armed groups finance themselves through the extraction and taxation of minerals such as gold and cassiterite from eastern DRC. Because legal and illegal trade share the same routes and middlemen, expanding trade without governance reform risks strengthening the armed actors who control the corridors.

What role does the European Union play in Great Lakes cooperation?

The EU has been the leading external funder of regional institutions, committing €50 million to CEPGL’s relaunch and €30 million to COMESA’s integration programme in 2005, within a broader Joint Africa-EU Strategy. Researchers credit the funding but fault the EU for fragmenting integration through sub-regional trade agreements and for underweighting conflict sensitivity.

Why has regional cooperation not brought peace to the Great Lakes?

Because cooperation was mostly technical while the obstacles were political: mistrust between governments, especially Kinshasa and Kigali, weak state capacity in Burundi and the DRC, uneven benefits between economies, and institutions overloaded with mandates. Research for the European Commission concluded that peacebuilding must be designed into cooperation explicitly, with civil society involved and asymmetries managed.

Is Lake Kivu’s methane a source of tension?

It has been. The gas dissolved in Lake Kivu is shared between the DRC and Rwanda, but Rwanda began piloting extraction first. Congolese communities perceived a shared resource being exploited unilaterally, and researchers warned that without a transparent joint framework the project would feed suspicion rather than interdependence.

What happened to the free movement of people under CEPGL?

The joint CEPGL identity card introduced during the community’s first phase continued to ease cross-border movement of people and goods even after the organisation itself collapsed. It remains one of the region’s few practical integration measures, though tighter Congolese border controls have periodically curtailed it.