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DR Congo: its peoples, its history, who is fighting and why

Updated 22 October 2026

The news from the Democratic Republic of the Congo talks about the M23, Goma, Rwanda and coltan, but rarely explains who the peoples of the east are, where a war that has lasted thirty years comes from and who profits from it. This profile gathers the essential background. We keep it updated: every change is logged at the bottom, with its date and source.

Land and peoples

Congo covers almost the whole basin of the Congo River, most of it rainforest. In the west it has an outlet to the Atlantic only a few kilometres wide. The capital, Kinshasa, is on the river, in the west; the copper and cobalt mines are in the south-east, in former Katanga; the most fertile and most contested land is in the east, on the highlands of the Great Lakes, on the borders with Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania. For many people in the east, Kigali and Kampala are closer than their own capital.

A warning about the numbers. DR Congo's last census dates from 1984, when the country was still called Zaire; a new census is being prepared in 2026 (Al Jazeera). Even the population is an estimate: about 112 million according to the World Bank (same source). There are no recent official data on the country's peoples. The figures below are of two kinds, always indicated:

• estimate: the percentages compiled by the language research centre of Université Laval, in Canada (CEFAN, Université Laval), which does not give the year of the survey; they should be read as orders of magnitude;
• description: for the peoples of the east, where the fighting is, independent sources describe where they live and how they relate to one another, but give no reliable numbers.

The country has some 250 peoples and more than 200 languages. The official language is French, but only a minority speaks it; the four national languages are Lingala (west and north, the language of the army and of music), Swahili (east and south-east), Kikongo (west) and Tshiluba (south-centre) (same source).

• Luba — about 18% (estimate). They live in Kasai and northern Katanga, in the south-centre, and speak Tshiluba. They descend from a great pre-colonial empire.
• Mongo — about 17% (estimate). They live in the great forest of the central basin, in the former Équateur province. They are a cluster of many groups related by language.
• Kongo — about 12% (estimate). They live in the west, between Kinshasa and the Atlantic, and across the borders with Angola and the Republic of the Congo. They descend from the Kingdom of Kongo, one of the great pre-colonial states of Central Africa.
• Banyarwanda (Congolese Hutu and Tutsi) — about 10% (estimate). They are the Kinyarwanda-speaking people who live in Kivu, mostly Hutu, with Tutsi and Batwa minorities. Some have lived there since before colonisation; others were moved there by the Belgians, who after 1922 also governed Rwanda and transferred tens of thousands of workers to the plantations of North Kivu; others still came as refugees. According to Minority Rights Group they came to make up about half the population of North Kivu (Minority Rights Group). Their citizenship has been granted, revoked and redefined by law several times: it is one of the roots of the war (see "Where the conflict comes from").
• Banyamulenge — no reliable estimate. They descend from Tutsi herders who settled on the Mulenge highlands, in South Kivu; today the name generally refers to the Congolese Tutsi of the south (same source). They are often treated as "Rwandans" and are attacked by the army and by pro-government militias (HRW, via our analysis). The M23 says it defends them.
• Nande, Hunde, Nyanga, Shi and the other peoples of Kivu — no reliable estimate. They are farmers and traders in North and South Kivu. The Hunde claim customary rights over the land against the Banyarwanda farmers who came later; in 2013 a Hunde militia forced at least 3,000 people to leave Kitchanga (Minority Rights Group, cited above).
• Hema and Lendu — no reliable estimate. They live in Ituri, in the north-east. From 1999 a conflict over land between the two peoples spread to other groups and ethnic militias; the Ugandan army, which occupied the region for about four years, armed several factions (HRW). Today the CODECO militia, linked to the Lendu, operates in Ituri.
• Pygmies (Mbuti, Twa, Baka) — no reliable estimate. They are the oldest peoples of the forest; they live by hunting and gathering and are among the most discriminated against in the country (CEFAN, cited above).
• Peoples of the north (Zande, Mangbetu, Ngbandi) — no reliable estimate. They speak non-Bantu languages (CEFAN, cited above).

Religion (estimate, CEFAN, cited above): Catholics about 40%, Protestants 35%, Kimbanguists (a church born in Congo) 10%, Muslims 9%. The Catholic Church is one of the main actors in civil society and has led protests over elections.

Resources: cobalt, copper, coltan (from which tantalum is extracted), gold, tin, diamonds, timber, the rainforest, the river's potential for energy. In 2024 Congo supplied 77% of the cobalt mined in the world (Cobalt Institute). Mining accounts for about 26% of gross domestic product and more than 92% of exports; the leading buyer is China (IISD). The Rubaya mine in North Kivu alone produces about 15% of the world's coltan (Daily Maverick). Yet most of the population lives in extreme poverty: 64% on less than $2.15 a day (ALNAP, on FSIN data).

A short history

Before colonisation. Large states arose in the Congo basin, such as the Kingdom of Kongo on the Atlantic coast and the Luba and Lunda empires in the south-east. For centuries the region was struck by the slave trade, both towards the Atlantic and, in the nineteenth century, towards the Indian Ocean.

Leopold II's Congo (1885-1908). At the Berlin Conference of 1885 the European powers recognised the "Congo Free State". It is not a Belgian colony: it is, in practice, the personal property of King Leopold II (San José State University). His private army, the Force Publique, imposes rubber quotas on villages, to be delivered without pay; those who fail to meet them are punished, and soldiers must account for every bullet by showing a severed hand, sometimes cut from living people (same source). How many died is not known precisely, because nobody counted the population before 1924. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica the population fell from about 20 million to 8 million (Britannica); scholars' estimates of the victims range from 1 million to more than 10 million, and the debate is open (review of the estimates, Lenz). The scandal, raised above all in Britain, forces the king to hand Congo over to the Belgian state (Britannica, cited above).

The Belgian Congo (1908-1960). The Belgian Congo is governed by the parliament in Brussels (Britannica, cited above), together with the big mining companies of Katanga and the Catholic missions. In 2020 and 2022 King Philippe expressed his "deepest regrets" and acknowledged that colonial rule was based on racism, but without making a formal apology (The East African).

Independence and Lumumba (1960-1965). On 30 June 1960 Congo becomes independent: Joseph Kasa-Vubu is president, Patrice Lumumba prime minister. A few days later the army mutinies and Katanga, the mining province, declares independence with the support of Belgian interests. In January 1961 Lumumba is killed in Katanga (The East African). In 2001 a Belgian parliamentary commission concluded that some Belgian ministers and officials bore "moral responsibility" for his death, and in 2002 Belgium apologised (Brussels Times). Until 1965 secessions and rebellions kill at least 500,000 people (The East African, cited above).

Mobutu (1965-1997). On 24 November 1965 General Joseph-Désiré Mobutu takes power in a coup; in 1971 he renames the country "Zaire" (Mail & Guardian). A one-party, anti-communist state, it is an ally of the West during the Cold War; his critics call the regime a "kleptocracy", and in the 1970s and 1980s the country goes bankrupt (EBSCO).

1994 and the two Congo wars (1996-2003). In July 1994, at the end of the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, between 500,000 and 850,000 refugees, almost all Hutu, enter Goma in five days; in the camps the former Rwandan army and the Interahamwe militias responsible for the genocide regroup (National Academies Press). In 1996 Rwanda and Uganda back a rebellion led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who overthrows Mobutu on 17 May 1997 (Mail & Guardian, cited above). In August 1998 Kabila breaks with his allies: the second Congo war begins, with Rwanda and Uganda backing the rebels and Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Chad defending the government (EBSCO). The foreign armies exploit gold, diamonds and coltan. In January 2001 Kabila is killed by one of his bodyguards and is succeeded by his son Joseph. The agreements of 2002-2003 formally end the war, but not in the east (same source). How many people died, mostly of hunger and disease, is disputed: the International Rescue Committee estimated 5.4 million deaths between 1998 and 2007; a review by the Human Security Report argues the figure could be up to 60% too high (Congo Research Group).

Joseph Kabila (2001-2019). In 2006 the first free elections since independence are held and Joseph Kabila wins them (Mail & Guardian, cited above). In the east the wars continue: in May 2012 mutinous Tutsi officers found the March 23 Movement, the M23 (same source). Kabila's second term expires in 2016, but the elections are postponed until December 2018. Félix Tshisekedi officially wins them and in January 2019 becomes president in the first peaceful transfer of power in the country's history (Al Jazeera).

The M23's new war (since 2021). In 2021 the M23 takes up arms again (Al Jazeera). In April 2024 it takes the Rubaya mining area (Daily Maverick, cited above); on 27 January 2025 it enters Goma, where according to the UN almost 3,000 people die (VOA); in February it takes Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu (All India Radio). In 2025 agreements multiply: on 27 June DR Congo and Rwanda sign a peace agreement in Washington; on 15 November the government and the M23 sign a framework agreement in Doha; in December presidents Tshisekedi and Kagame sign the "Washington Accords" with Trump, together with a mining partnership between Congo and the United States dated 4 December (Al Jazeera; IEA). Six days later, on 10 December, Rwanda and the M23 take Uvira (HRW). On 30 September 2025 a military court in Kinshasa sentences Joseph Kabila to death in absentia for treason and war crimes, accusing him of supporting the M23 (AP, via KSAT).

2026. In August 2026, after talks in Switzerland with the United States, Qatar, Togo and the African Union, the government and the M23 agree on a roadmap for negotiations and a ceasefire verification mission (Al Jazeera). The fighting goes on all the same. In mid-October Kabila announces in Goma the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation (FRN), which replaces the M23's political-military alliance and calls for resistance against Tshisekedi "by all means, including force" (Al Jazeera). Meanwhile in Ituri an Ebola epidemic that began in May 2026 had killed 2,911 people by 29 August, the worst ever recorded in the country (Africa Rivista).

Who governs, and how

DR Congo is a presidential republic. Félix Tshisekedi has been president since 2019; his second and, under the Constitution, last term ends at the end of 2028. The Constitution states that the number and length of terms cannot be changed. In July 2026, however, the Constitutional Court approved a law that allows the president to change the Constitution through a constituent assembly and a referendum in case of a "serious dysfunction" of the institutions: the opposition sees it as the road to a third term (Africanews).

Two independent institutes, in two different countries, reach similar conclusions:

• Freedom House (United States), 2026 report: 18 points out of 100, "not free", as the year before. The political system is "paralysed by elite manipulation of the electoral process" (Freedom House).
• V-Dem (Sweden), 2026 report: "electoral autocracy", the category of regimes in which people vote but elections are neither free nor fair (V-Dem). We explain what distinguishes an autocracy from a democracy in the entry Autocracy.

In the east, in Goma and Bukavu, the administration of the M23, now the FRN, governs in practice, with its own taxes and officials (our analysis).

Who's who

Where the conflict comes from

We use the four levels of our piece "Are the world's wars 'Muslim'?". Here religion plays almost no part: the great majority of the fighters are Christian, and the only group that flies a religious flag, the ADF, is fighting a separate war.

The ground: a large, absent state. Congo's borders are those drawn in Berlin in 1885. The country was born as an extraction business: rubber and ivory for Leopold, copper and diamonds for the Belgian companies, cobalt and coltan today. In such a vast territory the state never really reached the east: whoever controls a mine can pay a militia. The border with Rwanda, moreover, divides peoples who speak the same language, and the Belgians moved tens of thousands of Rwandans into Kivu (Minority Rights Group, cited above).

This does not absolve the governments that followed. Mobutu emptied the state to enrich himself; for decades Kinshasa's governments treated the citizenship of the Banyarwanda as a political weapon: granted in 1972, revoked by the 1981 law, redefined on ethnic grounds in 2004 and 2006 (same source); and today they arm militias that, according to the UN, commit crimes in their turn.

The spark: 1994. The genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda exported the war to Congo. The refugee camps of Goma housed civilians and perpetrators of the genocide together; the new Rwandan government saw them as a threat and invaded Congo in 1996. Since then every cycle of war in the east has returned to the same themes: Congolese Tutsi who feel threatened, armed Hutu whom Rwanda wants to neutralise, local peoples who see both as foreigners taking their land.

The flag: self-defence and sovereignty. Everyone fights in the name of protection. The M23 says it defends the Congolese Tutsi; Rwanda says it is defending itself against the FDLR; Kinshasa and the Wazalendo militias say they are defending national sovereignty against an invader. According to UN experts, however, Rwanda's aim in 2025 was to conquer territory rather than to neutralise the FDLR (Africanews, cited above); and according to the UN fact-finding mission all parties, including the Congolese army, have committed possible war crimes (our analysis).

The external multiplier: minerals. A war that has lasted thirty years needs money and weapons. In Kivu the money comes above all from the mines. The next section documents who buys, who transports and who negotiates access to these minerals.

Who profits

We document declared or verifiable interests, not motives. If an actor denies something, we say so.

Rwanda and the M23. According to UN experts, military involvement has given Rwanda access to minerals, farmland and political influence in eastern Congo (Africanews, cited above). The M23 levies a 15% tax on the value of the coltan bought from the miners of Rubaya; according to UN investigators the mineral travels through Goma and Bukavu to Rwanda, where it is mixed with Rwandan coltan to hide its origin before being exported to Asia (Daily Maverick, cited above). Rwanda's mineral exports rose from $772 million in 2022 to $1.1 billion in 2023, and a researcher at the International Peace Information Service argues that Rwanda's geology does not allow it to mine as much as it exports (Euronews). Kigali denies supporting the M23.

The government in Kinshasa uses the same resources as diplomatic currency. In December 2025 it signed a strategic partnership with the United States that gives American companies a right of first offer on strategic mining projects and on exported minerals, and plans to send a growing share of copper and cobalt exports towards the Lobito corridor, in Angola (IEA). Congolese lawyers have filed a constitutional challenge against the deal, which they say should have required parliamentary approval (our analysis).

The United States mediated the peace agreements and, alongside them, the mining one: Trump said the United States would get "a lot of the mineral rights" from Congo (same source). It also sanctioned the Rwandan army, on 2 March 2026 (HRW, cited above).

China is the leading buyer of Congolese minerals: cobalt from Chinese-owned mines is refined in China (IISD, cited above). The large "infrastructure for minerals" deal of 2008, renegotiated in 2024, provides for about $7 billion of roads and public works in exchange for copper and cobalt from the Sicomines joint venture, 68% controlled by Chinese companies (Mining.com, from Reuters). According to an independent analysis, China sells weapons both to Rwanda and to the Congolese army (see "Minerals for security").

The European Union signed a memorandum with Rwanda in February 2024 to secure supplies of critical raw materials, including tantalum, and has earmarked more than €900 million from the Global Gateway programme for Rwanda. Belgium asked for the deal to be suspended; the Commission replied that its very purpose is to make minerals traceable (Euronews, cited above).

Uganda and Burundi. During the second war Uganda occupied Ituri and its gold exports more than doubled (HRW, cited above); today it fights the ADF on Congolese territory together with Kinshasa's army. Burundi fights in South Kivu partly to strike at its own rebels (EWN, cited above).

Kabila and the armed opposition. Kabila ruled for 18 years; today, sentenced to death, he has joined the armed rebellion. His party calls the sentence political (AP, cited above). The war will also help decide who governs Kinshasa after 2028.

Who intervenes from outside

• The United States and Qatar. Two parallel processes: in Washington between DR Congo and Rwanda (neutralising the FDLR and withdrawing Rwandan troops), in Doha between the government and the M23 (ceasefire, prisoners, return of refugees) (Al Jazeera). On 13 October 2026 the UN envoy for the Great Lakes, Huang Xia, told the Security Council that diplomacy had made "notable progress" but that the situation on the ground "has continued to deteriorate" (Al Jazeera).
• The African Union. A group of facilitators, including former presidents Uhuru Kenyatta (Kenya) and Mokgweetsi Masisi (Botswana), met the parties in Goma and Kigali on 5 and 6 October 2026 (Al Jazeera).
• The UN. The peacekeeping mission was provided for by the 1999 Lusaka agreements (EBSCO, cited above) and is now called MONUSCO. The Security Council has extended it to 20 December 2026 (Le360, cited above).

The human cost. Nobody counts the dead of the current war. In the capture of Goma alone, in January 2025, almost 3,000 people died (VOA, cited above). There are 5.6 million internally displaced people and 1.25 million Congolese refugees in African countries (UNHCR, February-March 2026 data). More than 26.5 million people, almost one Congolese in four, cannot meet their basic food needs, according to the IPC (FAO and WFP). The UN humanitarian plan for 2026 asks for $1.4 billion for 7.3 million people, out of almost 15 million who need help (OCHA).

International law

The treaties. According to the University of Minnesota database (HRL Minnesota) and the International Criminal Court, DR Congo:

• has been a party to the Genocide Convention since 1962;
• has been a party to the Geneva Conventions since 1961 and to the two Additional Protocols since 1982 and 2002;
• has been a party to the Rome Statute since 2002: the International Criminal Court can therefore try crimes committed on its territory;
• has been a party to the Convention against Torture since 1996.

Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi are bound by international law just as Congo is; the M23, the ADF and the militias, as armed groups, are bound by humanitarian law just as armies are.

**The International Criminal Court.** Congo referred its own situation to the Court in 2004. The convictions so far all concern Ituri in 2002-2003: Thomas Lubanga (2012, 14 years, for child soldiers), Germain Katanga (2014, 12 years) and Bosco Ntaganda (2019, 30 years). The warrant against Sylvestre Mudacumura, military commander of the FDLR, issued in 2012, has never been executed (ICC). On crimes in North Kivu since 2022 the prosecutor has opened an examination at the request of the Congolese government itself (our analysis).

**The International Court of Justice.** There is a direct precedent. In 2005 the Court ruled that Uganda had violated the prohibition on the use of force by occupying Ituri and supporting armed groups; in 2022 it ordered Uganda to pay $325 million, in five instalments of $65 million: 225 for harm to people, 40 for damage to property, 60 for looted natural resources, including gold, diamonds and timber (UN Geneva). On 26 June 2026 DR Congo brought Rwanda before the Court, accusing it of thirty years of abuses in the east, from 1996 to the present (Jurist). The case has only just begun: no responsibility has been established. We wrote about it in "The DRC takes Rwanda to the International Court of Justice".

The responsibilities of others. International law does not concern only those who fight:

• common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions obliges all states to ensure respect for humanitarian law: this applies to those who arm the M23 as much as to those who arm the FDLR and the Wazalendo militias;
• a people's permanent sovereignty over its natural resources, affirmed by the UN in 1962 and by Article 1 of the two human rights Covenants, is the yardstick for judging agreements that trade minerals for security (see "Minerals for security");
• those who buy minerals from war zones have a duty to check where they come from: according to the Commission this is the point of the EU-Rwanda memorandum, and it is exactly the point on which critics challenge it (Euronews, cited above).

Timeline

Change log

• 22 October 2026: first version.

Sources: Al Jazeera · CEFAN, Université Laval · Minority Rights Group · HRW · Cobalt Institute · IISD · Daily Maverick · ALNAP, on FSIN data · San José State University · Britannica · review of the estimates, Lenz · The East African · The East African · Brussels Times · Mail & Guardian · EBSCO · National Academies Press · EBSCO · Congo Research Group · Al Jazeera · Al Jazeera · VOA · All India Radio · Al Jazeera · IEA · HRW · AP, via KSAT · Africa Rivista · Africanews · Freedom House · V-Dem · Africanews · EWN, from AFP · Al Jazeera · Le360 · Al Jazeera · Euronews · Mining.com, from Reuters · Al Jazeera · UNHCR · FAO and WFP · OCHA · HRL Minnesota · ICC · UN Geneva · Jurist

Related pieces: The DRC takes Rwanda to the International Court of Justice · DR Congo: the Washington peace deal hasn't stopped the killing of civilians in the east · Minerals for security: Congo's peace has a price, and Congo doesn't set it

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