Peace was signed, but the war continues in East Africa
On 4 December, under the auspices of President Donald Trump, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a peace agreement in Washington that was supposed to put an end to more than three decades of conflict. A war that has claimed more than a million lives and left countless others missing, and has caused the largest displacement of people in human history, with refugee camps housing more than two million people.
Trump's ‘peacekeeping’ intervention sought to highlight the collective failure of Europe, especially the French, British and Belgians, to end an endless war, a direct consequence of the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. More than 800,000 Tutsis perished at the hands of the Hutu majority, which also massacred members of its own ethnic group who opposed the planned killings. Since then, the war has continued and spread, involving virtually the entire tropical zone of the continent.
Now the main problem facing this ‘Trumpist peace’ is its ability to enforce the agreements imposed on both Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda, and Felix Tshisekedi, President of the DRC. The signing of the peace agreement has not given Kinshasa any real power to control what is already a de facto split region of the country, a highly unstructured Congo. And Rwanda, mentor and supporter of the rebel March 23 Movement (M23), does not want to give up its true ambitions in the Great Lakes region: to ensure that the enormous mineral wealth of Kivu does not migrate in its raw form to China or the United States, but is processed in Rwanda, thus turning this country into one of the richest powers on the African continent.
The United States is exerting strong pressure on Kigali, which has developed in different phases throughout 2025. At the beginning of the year, it imposed sanctions on Rwanda when the M23 took full control of Goma and Bukavu, which were only lifted when Kagame agreed in June to hold and conclude talks that would lead to a peace agreement, finally signed five months later in the US capital.
However, less than four days after the solemn signing ceremony in Washington, Kigali relaunched its offensive in South Kivu, taking control of the strategic city of Uvira. In addition to shaking up the geopolitical landscape once again and being accused by Trump of violating the peace agreement, Kagame's offensive has had another dramatic consequence: the stampede of more than 200,000 refugees to neighbouring Burundi, which was already overwhelmed by the trickle of immigrants, fed up with the violence that had barely ceased after the alleged ceasefire. Such is the instability that has gripped the small country of Burundi that the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has appealed for desperate emergency aid of £30 million to alleviate the misery and hunger of this new wave of displaced people.
In view of past experience, no one but the United States can successfully mediate in this new outbreak, but even that does not seem to guarantee a definitive end to the hostilities. In fact, agents of the main superpower already established in Africa, namely China, are already spreading the message that Washington ‘seeks to take over the immense mineral wealth of the region's subsoil’, reviving the old clichés of anti-colonialism. In reality, several American companies already have consolidated extraction and exploitation rights in the DRC, formally agreed with Kinshasa. And these deposits of rare earths, lithium, tantalum and coltan are geographically located in Congolese territory. The position of Kagame and Rwanda would then be to obstruct not only the American project, but even to wrest these deposits from Congolese sovereignty. This is a major gamble that could provoke Trump's anger, but at the same time it tests his power and strength, now that Washington, with its attacks against Daesh Islamists in Nigeria, has decided to re-enter Africa, if it was ever truly absent.