Rwandan President Paul Kagame opened the way, Monday, March 11, for a meeting with his Congolese counterpart, Félix Tshisekedi, to discuss the security situation in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), told the press the Angolan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tete Antonio, after a summit in Luanda. “It was agreed that President Kagame would agree to meet with President Tshisekedi on a date to be indicated by the mediator,” he said, adding that each party still needs to “work at this stage.”
This decision was taken following a bilateral meeting between Paul Kagame and the Angolan president, Joao Lourenço, mediator of the African Union (AU). “The heads of state agreed on the key measures to be taken to tackle the root causes of the conflict,” the Rwandan presidency only indicated on its X account. The Rwandan and Congolese presidents last met in Addis Ababa on February 16, on the sidelines of a summit of AU leaders, at a “mini-summit” chaired by Mr. Lourenço. According to two diplomatic sources in the Ethiopian capital, the meeting was very tense and ended with an “exchange of insults.”
At the end of February, the presidency of the DRC had indicated on its X account, also quoting Tete Antonio, that “President Félix Tshisekedi would have given his agreement in principle to meet his Rwandan counterpart”. The Congolese presidency also recalled that “Félix Tshisekedi demands the withdrawal of RDF [Rwandan army] troops from Congolese territory, the cessation of hostilities and the cantonment of the M23 [March 23 Movement] rebels before meeting Paul Kagame “.
Clashes have recently intensified in eastern DRC. After eight years of dormancy, the M23, a predominantly Tutsi rebellion, took up arms again at the end of 2021 and, with the support of the Rwandan army, seized large swaths of North Kivu, a province of nearly 60,000 km2 bordering Rwanda and Uganda.
The renewed violence has caused new displacements of populations. The United Nations estimated last week that more than 100,000 people had already been displaced by this fighting. At the end of 2023, the UN estimated that nearly 7 million people were displaced in the DRC, including 2.5 million in North Kivu alone. Hundreds of thousands of people are crowding into camps on the outskirts of Goma, the provincial capital.
