DRC/Rwanda: The War That Was Avoidable: How Rwanda–DRC Cooperation Threatened Old Interests

Jul 27, 2026 | Bojana Coulibaly
Pan African Review
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Between February and June 2021, the DRC and Rwanda signed a series of bilateral security and economic agreements that broke with decades of practice. For the first time since independence, Congo was not channeling its security and mineral policies through Western capitals and long‑standing Belgian networks. Instead, Kinshasa chose to work directly with a neighboring African state on the basis of shared interests. That choice is what became intolerable to certain Western and particularly Belgian interests.