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Research Associate at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies
The M23 rebellion has continued its advance following the fall of Goma and Bukavu, the respective capitals of North and South Kivu in the DRC, since late January 2025
The M23 rebellion— widely recognised as being backed by Rwanda—has continued its advance following the fall of Goma and Bukavu, the respective capitals of North and South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), since late January 2025. It is not meeting much resistance from the Congolese forces, known by the French acronym, FARDC, particularly after European mercenaries left the battlefield. Burundian forces, numbering around 10,000 in South Kivu, reportedly started withdrawing after M23 rebels overran Kavumu airport and the adjacent air force base on their way to Bukavu.
The M23 then pressed further south, capturing Kamanyola on its way to Uvira, the third largest city in the Kivus. Another prong pressed north of Goma towards Butembo, attacking FARDC positions on the way. Meanwhile after making repeated threats on mainstream and social media, Ugandan troops entered the DRC and seized Bunia, the capital of Ituri. M23’s drive towards Butembo, en route to Bunia, raised eyebrows given the Ugandan deployment.
Uganda states that its latest deployment does not violate prior agreements with the Congolese government to combat the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni also clarified that Ugandan forces are not in the DRC to fight M23 and the DRC government should speak directly with them. However, there are suspicions, in some quarters, about potential coordination between them on this occasion. Top Ugandan generals and senior government advisors have commented favourably on the M23’s cause and narrative, which was not the case when M23 seized Goma back in 2012.
Congo’s already dire humanitarian situation has been worsened by displacements occurring from Goma into Rwanda and further south and west, Bukavu and Uvira into Bujumbura, and Butembo into Uganda. The United Nations (UN) estimates that as many as 3000 people were killed during the M23’s attack on Goma, underlining the violence involved. Many say the death toll is much higher. 500,000 people were already displaced in the Kivus before the M23’s latest push. Total displacement in the entire region already stood at 4.6 million Congolese before the latest crisis erupted. The risk of mass atrocities is also high, in a region where predation by rebels, militias, and government forces is a common occurrence.
Calls for a pause in the fighting by the East African Community (EAC) and Southern African Development Community (SADC) have not produced the desired results, partly due to tensions between the two regional blocs and the M23’s continued advance which a multitude of Congolese analysts, civil society activists, professionals, and ordinary citizens blame on Rwanda and Uganda. This sentiment is reflected, in part, by the burning of their embassies in the capital, Kinshasa, along with others, by angry protestors.
The costs of inaction are high.
A regionalised crisis
Claude Kabemba, a noted Congolese scholar who followed the South African—mediated Inter Congolese Dialogue (ICD) in 2002-2003, observed that the M23 is advancing faster than its predecessors during the First and Second Congo Wars (1996-1997 and 1998-2003). “They could march on Kinshasa at this rate,” says Martha Bakwesegha, who leads Life and Peace Institute’s regional office in Nairobi, Kenya and who has worked on several South African sponsored ceasefire initiatives. The key question on many people’s minds is what happened to M23 between 2012 and 2022 when it was dormant after it was supposedly defeated?
From the daily commentary on the M23’s surge by Congolese and African professionals, the M23 is thought to have undergone intensive military and organisational training and preparation from around 2013 to 2021. Their battlefield gains since 2021, communications, armaments, intelligence, and battle kit suggests heavy state backing, which a July 2024 UN investigation blames on Rwanda and Uganda – a finding both deny. The same report suggests that many M23 personnel are in fact from the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF), fighting alongside and embedded within it.
At the other end of this regionalised crisis is the Burundi National Defence Force (BNDF) that has battled the M23 alongside the Congolese military, a government militia called Wazalendo, and European, mostly Romanian mercenaries, who withdrew after the fall of Goma. Rwanda-Burundi relations have been frosty since the 2015 crisis over the late President Pierre Nkurunziza’s third term, with each country accusing the other of supporting rebels seeking its overthrow.
Rwanda also accuses Burundi of being part of a coalition of forces fighting alongside the DRC including the Allied Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), remnants of forces implicated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. South Kivu has witnessed heavy fighting between M23 and Burundian forces, who reportedly started retreating to prevent encirclement as the rebels split into three prongs, one of which passed through Uvira, directly across Lake Tanganyika from Burundi’s main city, Bujumbura —a 25-minute drive away. Burundi says it has not retreated, but its forces reportedly crossed back to Bujumbura to reorganise. South Kivu also hosts Burundian rebels that have engaged in pitched battles with Burundi forces since 2021.
Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi has also relied on SADC forces to fight M23 under the Southern African Mission in the DRC (SAMIDRC). During the battle for Goma, a firefight between M23 and Congolese and SADC forces led to the deaths of 13 soldiers—the vast majority from South Africa, as well as Malawi and Tanzania, the other troop contributing countries. About 1,300 SAMIDRC troops remain confined to their bases in Goma and Sake under the watch of M23 fighters after negotiating a ceasefire. South Africa holds Rwanda ultimately responsible for SADC’s losses and warned that further attacks would be treated as an “act of war.” Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s rejoinder was just as terse: “If South Africa prefers confrontation, Rwanda will deal with the matter in that context any day.”
Malawi withdrew its troops in the face of the M23’s ongoing advance while Tanzania is playing the role of bridge building within the EAC. South Africa has deployed additional troops and equipment to the DRC. Meanwhile Tshisekedi has requested military support from Chad to combat the M23. All told, the crisis has metastasised into a regional conflagration that harkens back to the First and Second Congo Wars that quickly sucked in other countries, triggering the largest African multi-national war ever witnessed.
M23’s shifting calculus and methods
The M23 has imposed political and administrative governance structures on the areas it controls, which it did not do in its campaigns a decade ago. It is also absorbing defeated Congolese government forces after retraining and political education, another new modus operandi. It now also operates as the armed wing of the Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC), bringing together anti-government groups, armed movements, and leaders in other parts of the DRC outside the east. The alliance is led by Corneille Nangaa, who hails from the west and was twice President of the Independent Electoral Commission, known by its French acronym, CENI. He is calling for the overthrow of the government in Kinshasa.
The M23 has also expanded its control of lucrative mining sites, including Rubaya, the DRC’s largest coltan producer, which it seized in May 2024. “They [M23] are targeting minerals in addition to government posts, the army, police, and state enterprises,” says Amadee Fikirini, Life Peace’s Country Director for Congo based in Bukavu. Rubaya produces 1,000 tons of coltan annually—half the DRC’s output. Other areas of M23 control are rich in cobalt and lithium, which is critical to Electric Vehicle (EV) batteries.
A UN investigation found that M23 earns $800,000 monthly from the taxes it imposes on miners and traders of coltan alone, partly explaining its military expansion in recent years. Calls are growing for the European Union (EU) to suspend a Memorandum of Understanding it negotiated with Rwanda in 2024 to “boost the flow of critical raw materials for Europe’s microchips and electric car batteries.” Part of it entails developing infrastructure in Rwanda for raw material extractions, and health and climate resilience, for which the EU committed US$941 million to Rwanda.
Diplomatic endeavours
Two summits of the EAC in Nairobi, Kenya and SADC in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania ended without clear agreement. DRC President Felix Tshisekedi skipped the Nairobi Summit, while Burundi’s Evariste Ndayishimiye skipped the Dar-es-Salaam one. There is tension between the Congolese government and EAC over Tshisekedi’s expulsion of the EAC Regional Force (EACRF) from Congo just over a year after it deployed. He accused it of being ineffective and unwilling to fight the M23. The EAC pushed back, noting that it reached a ceasefire with 53 of the nearly 120 armed groups in eastern DRC and that M23 did not launch attacks for 8 months of its deployment thanks to diplomatic efforts.
The EAC also balked at the Congolese government’s use of foreign mercenaries and militias, which would put their forces on the same side in the battle against armed groups. It has also insisted on finding a comprehensive solution to the question of citizenship of Congolese of Rwandan ethnicity, to include the Banyamasisi, Banyamulenge, and others. This has long been manipulated by ruling elites for political purposes, leaving these communities stateless at times and pushing them into rebellions, which have always started in the east, in five cities in particular: Bunia, Bukavu, Goma, Kisangani, and Uvira.
The Dar-es-Salaam Summit sought to bridge regional differences by bringing the two blocs together. It called for an immediate ceasefire, direct talks with M23 and other non-state actors, and a plan to disengage Rwandan forces by harmonising efforts to neutralise the FDLR. Leaders from both blocs gave themselves 30 days to reassemble and hear from EAC and SADC chiefs of defence on a ceasefire.
The SAMIDRC forces, which were deployed at President Tshisekedi’s request following the expulsion of EAC forces, were sent as part of a SADC collective security treaty that compels member states to commit forces if one of them is attacked or facing a complex internal national security threat. Should this mission be expanded into an all-out warfighting one, it would be reminiscent of the Second Congo War, when SADC troops came to the aid of the then DRC President, Laurent Kabila, against the Rwandan and Ugandan assault.
Scenarios
The interests driving M23 and its backers are varied and unclear. However, some plausible scenarios, or combinations thereof, can be sketched from the debates by Congolese professionals and activists on the ground in Goma, Bunia, Bukavu, Uvira, Kisangani, Katanga, and Kinshasa, and the Congolese diaspora.
Scenario 1: defacto military and administrative control of the Kivus
According to Fikirini, many Congolese refer to this scenario as “annexation by Rwanda.” It could plausibly strengthen the M23’s hand at the negotiating table and/or create the conditions for a permanent or semi-permanent sphere of Rwandan control.
Scenario 2: national rebellion
This would be a repeat of previous wars in Congo, which always crystallised in the east and spread to the west and ultimately Kinshasa. The AFC/M23 alliance has taken on a national narrative and called for the overthrow of Kinshasa. “There is no doubt they want to capture power,” says Bakwesegha. The aim could be a regime dominated by the M23’s alliance members and/or components sympathetic to it. This would mirror the role played by the M23’s predecessors in previous conflicts.
Scenario 3: protracted civil war
If diplomacy fails, the armed protagonists may decide to pursue military solutions, a scenario that would be a repeat of the Second Congo War, which pitted the DRC government and its SADC allies on one side and Uganda and Rwanda on the other.
What is to be done?
Kabemba notes that Congo’s fundamental problem is that it has been a defective state since independence. Its leaders have tended to treat it as private property in much the same way as King Leopold II of Belgium who held it as such. Resolving this requires a democratic state building project and restoration of legitimacy through democratic institutions and genuinely free, fair, and credible elections. Georges Ntajala Nzongola, a veteran Congolese intellectual and retired diplomat, argues that the 1992 Sovereign National Conference, where he advised the late Etienne Tshisekedi, was the first serious attempt to address the problems cited by Kabemba.
The DRC may need a second, inclusive Congolese National Conference, assembling all political and social forces—including armed and unarmed groups—through the stewardship of the country’s highly respected religious leaders like in 1992. However, it must draw lessons from the collapse of the previous Conference by enacting measures and guardrails to ensure the likelihood of success. First, Bakwesegha and Fikirini suggest that there must be a verifiable agreement on good neighbourliness by the DRC and Rwanda, backed by a Joint Commission to monitor commitments. This should be modelled after the South African-mediated Pretoria Accord in 2022 that paved way for Rwanda’s exit from Congo and a mechanism for joint operations with the Congolese government to address the FDLR.
With this in place, the following should be considered:
- A military pause, observed by a multinational AU force from countries acceptable to all belligerents.
- Deployment of elements of this Force to Kinshasa to create conditions for the holding of the proposed Congolese National Conference.
- Agreement on Principles, Conference Agenda, and Modalities of Engagement.
- A Multinational African Guarantor Mechanism with International Backing.
Crucially, this Conference should draw lessons from other conflict resolution efforts in the DRC. There are many: the Inter Congolese Dialogue, which was partly modelled on the Sovereign National Conference, and the Lusaka Peace Process, which focused on the military dimensions of the crisis and secured the withdrawal of external actors, and a mechanism to pursue disarmament and reintegration.
The solutions to Congo’s complex problems are to be found within the Congolese experience but must be backed up by African support and engagement. There is no shortage of experience to draw upon in this quest.
Paul Nantulya is a Research Associate with the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.