North and South Kivu: Anatomy of a Protracted Conflict

North and South Kivu are two provinces at the eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of Congo, pressed against Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda along the shores of Lake Kivu and Lake Tanganyika. Together they cover an area roughly the size of Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland combined, hold some of the most fertile volcanic soil in Africa and sit on rich deposits of tin ore, coltan and gold. They are also where the Congolese wars never ended.

Every major rebellion since 1996 has either started in the Kivus or made them its battlefield. The provinces host the densest concentration of armed groups on the continent, the largest displacement crisis in Africa, and in Goma and Bukavu two provincial capitals that have each fallen to rebels more than once. Explaining why requires looking below the headlines about proxy war, at a set of local disputes that have been recycled by every generation of fighters since independence.

Land, people and the density trap

The first thing to understand about North and South Kivu is that they are crowded. The highlands around Lake Kivu are among the most densely populated rural areas in Africa, a legacy of rich soils and colonial-era labour migration. Land is the primary asset, and access to it has historically run through customary chiefs who allocate plots in exchange for loyalty and tribute. Where customary title collides with state law, and where a plot can be sold twice under two systems, disputes multiply. With courts distant, corrupt or unfunded, a machete or a militia often settles what a judge should.

Layered on top is the region’s oldest political question: who belongs. Large Kinyarwanda-speaking communities, the Banyarwanda of North Kivu and the Banyamulenge of South Kivu, trace their presence to periods ranging from pre-colonial migration to Belgian transplantation schemes to post-1959 refugee flows. Congolese citizenship law wavered on their status for decades, and local politicians discovered that contesting a community’s nationality was an efficient way to contest its land. Research on the region’s conflicts consistently identifies this citizenship-land nexus, not ancient ethnic hatred, as the combustible core.

How the wars embedded themselves

The 1994 Rwandan genocide detonated this local material. More than a million Hutu refugees crossed into the Kivus, among them the defeated génocidaire forces who would become the FDLR. The wars of 1996 and 1998 were fought substantially on Kivutien soil, and when the national peace deal was signed in 2002, its logic of power-sharing in Kinshasa never reached the hills. In North Kivu the Tutsi-led CNDP of Laurent Nkunda fought the army to a standstill by 2008, displacing hundreds of thousands; the fighting around Goma in October of that year, in which retreating government troops themselves looted and raped, became a defining demonstration that the state’s own forces were part of the threat.

The CNDP was integrated into the army in 2009 under a deal signed on 23 March, a date that later gave its name to the M23 when the same officers mutinied in 2012. The M23 took Goma briefly that November, was defeated in 2013 by the Congolese army and a UN intervention brigade, then returned from dormancy in 2021 to wage the largest offensive the provinces had seen in a generation. Goma fell in January 2025 and Bukavu in February, the first time the M23 had pushed deep into South Kivu. UN Group of Experts reporting to the Security Council’s DRC sanctions committee documented Rwandan forces supporting the offensive; Rwanda denied it and pointed to Congolese army cooperation with the FDLR. Alongside these headline rebellions, dozens of Mai-Mai and community militias, the FDLR, Burundian groups in South Kivu’s highlands and the ADF on North Kivu’s northern edge have kept rural insecurity constant. The full regional story is traced in this journal’s analysis of the conflict in eastern DRC.

The economy of a long war

Wars this long must pay for themselves, and the Kivus’ pays well. The provinces produce gold, cassiterite, coltan and tungsten, mined mostly by hand and moved through trading houses to regional markets. UN expert panels have documented since 2002 how armed groups and army networks tax pits, checkpoints and export routes; campaign groups such as Global Witness traced how minerals from militarised mines entered global supply chains. Traceability schemes have since formalised parts of the tin and tantalum trade, but gold, easy to smuggle and hard to fingerprint, remains the militia currency of choice.

Researchers studying the region’s trade for the European Commission put the underlying rule plainly:

Those that are able to profit most often also control the means of violence in a given area.

The same research noted a geographic irony that shapes Kivutien politics to this day: the provinces’ economy points east. Their exports flow to and through Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and the ports of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, not to Kinshasa, some 1,500 kilometres away with no reliable road between. Cross-border commerce sustains livelihoods on both sides of the frontier, as this journal’s essay on regional cooperation in the Great Lakes region explores, yet the same corridors carry smuggled gold and finance the men who tax them.

A state present mainly as a predator

What has consistently failed in North and South Kivu is the state. The soldiers deployed there have gone unpaid so routinely that extortion became their salary system, a dynamic dissected in this journal’s study of security system reform in the DRC. Civil administration is no better funded. When Congolese civil society examined the financing of decentralisation in 2009, South Kivu made the case study: the province had executed just 13 percent of its 2008 budget, squeezed between contradictory instructions from Kinshasa and its own provincial assembly, while constitutional revenue transfers arrived late, diminished or not at all. A decade and a half later the pattern of underfunded provincial government persists, and every service the province cannot provide, titling land, judging disputes, policing roads, is provided instead by chiefs, militias or nobody.

The humanitarian result is measured in millions. The UN refugee agency’s DRC situation reporting has counted displacement in the country at around seven million people, the great majority in the Kivus and Ituri, with repeated cycles of flight around Goma as front lines moved. Sexual violence has been documented at a scale that made the region infamous, prosecuted only exceptionally.

Why “protracted” is a choice, not a mystery

Calling the Kivu conflict intractable flatters everyone who has profited from not resolving it. Its persistence has identifiable maintainers: neighbouring states that use armed groups as instruments and buffer zones; commanders on all sides for whom mineralised territory is a business; national politicians who find eastern insecurity useful and reform expensive; and an international system that has preferred episodic deals, integrating each rebellion into the army ahead of the next one, to the slow work of land reform, citizenship guarantees and functioning provincial finance.

The current diplomacy, the Washington agreement between Kinshasa and Kigali and the Doha track with the M23, addresses the regional maintainers. It will meet the fate of Goma 2008, Addis Ababa 2013 and every accord between them unless the local layer is finally funded and governed: courts that can settle a land case, registries that can record it, provinces that receive their constitutional share, and communities, Kinyarwanda-speaking ones included, whose citizenship is no longer a bargaining chip. The International Crisis Group has made versions of this argument for two decades. North and South Kivu are not cursed. They are unfinished, and the ledger of who benefits from leaving them that way is not hard to read.

Frequently asked questions

Where are North and South Kivu?

North and South Kivu are two provinces in the far east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, bordering Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi along Lake Edward, Lake Kivu and Lake Tanganyika. Their capitals are Goma and Bukavu, which sit at the northern and southern ends of Lake Kivu, directly on the Rwandan border.

Why is there so much conflict in North and South Kivu?

Three layers reinforce each other: local disputes over land and citizenship in densely populated highlands, a war economy based on gold, tin and coltan, and interference by neighbouring states dating from the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Weak provincial government and an abusive, unpaid army leave no authority capable of settling disputes peacefully.

Who are the Banyamulenge and Banyarwanda?

They are Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese communities: the Banyarwanda of North Kivu and the Banyamulenge of South Kivu, whose presence derives from pre-colonial migration, colonial labour schemes and later refugee flows. Decades of contested citizenship law made their nationality, and therefore their land rights, a recurring political weapon, and their protection has been invoked by successive rebellions.

What is the difference between the CNDP and the M23?

The CNDP was a Tutsi-led rebellion under Laurent Nkunda that fought the Congolese army in North Kivu from 2004 until its integration into the army under a peace deal signed on 23 March 2009. The M23 takes its name from that date: it was founded in 2012 by former CNDP officers who mutinied, claiming the agreement had been violated.

Has Goma ever fallen to rebels?

Yes, repeatedly. Rwandan-backed forces held it during the Second Congo War, the M23 occupied it briefly in November 2012, and the M23 captured it again in January 2025 during its largest offensive, followed by Bukavu in February 2025. Each fall displaced enormous numbers of civilians around the city.

What minerals come from North and South Kivu?

The provinces produce gold, cassiterite (tin ore), coltan (tantalum ore) and tungsten, largely from artisanal mines. Tin and tantalum have been partially brought into traceability schemes, but gold remains easy to smuggle and continues to finance armed groups and corrupt military networks, as UN expert panels have documented since 2002.

What role does Rwanda play in the Kivus?

Rwanda has intervened in the Kivus since 1996, citing the threat of the FDLR, a group descended from the forces behind the 1994 genocide. UN Group of Experts reports have documented Rwandan support to successive rebellions, including troops backing the M23 offensive that took Goma in 2025. Rwanda denies supporting the M23 and accuses Kinshasa of working with the FDLR.

How many people are displaced in the Kivu provinces?

Displacement in the DRC has stood at around seven million people in the mid-2020s according to UN figures, the great majority within North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri. Many families have fled multiple times as front lines shifted, and camps around Goma have repeatedly emptied and refilled with each offensive.

Why can’t the Congolese state control the Kivus?

Distance, money and incentive. Kinshasa lies some 1,500 kilometres away with no reliable overland link, constitutional revenue transfers to provinces have arrived at a fraction of their legal share, and soldiers posted east have routinely gone unpaid. South Kivu executed just 13 percent of its 2008 provincial budget. Underfunded government left a vacuum that chiefs and militias fill.

What are Mai-Mai groups?

Mai-Mai is a generic term for local self-defence militias in the Kivus, originally formed to resist foreign-backed forces. Many evolved into protection rackets, mining enterprises or proxies for larger players. Dozens exist at any given time, and their fragmentation makes both negotiation and demobilisation persistently difficult.

Is there a peace process for the Kivus?

As of early 2026, two connected tracks exist: the June 2025 Washington agreement between the DRC and Rwanda and the Doha process between Kinshasa and the M23, which produced a declaration of principles in July 2025. Implementation remains partial, and analysts warn it will fail like earlier accords unless land, citizenship and provincial finance are addressed alongside the military questions.