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Eastern DR Congo (the Kivus)
Volcanic, mineral-rich highlands on Rwanda's border where the AFC/M23 rebellion holds Goma and Bukavu
The Kivus, the provinces of North and South Kivu on the eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are among the most fertile and mineral-rich highlands in Africa and have been at war almost without pause since the 1990s. Since early 2025 the rebel coalition known as the Congo River Alliance (AFC), led militarily by the M23, has held both provincial capitals, Goma and Bukavu, and runs a parallel administration across much of both provinces. The Congolese government and UN experts say Rwanda backs and fights alongside the group. Rwanda denies supporting M23 and says its security measures guard against the FDLR, a militia founded by perpetrators of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.
The two provinces cover about 124,500 square kilometers along the Albertine Rift, from the Virunga volcanoes and Lake Edward in the north to Lake Tanganyika in the south. Lake Kivu lies between Goma and Bukavu, with Rwanda across its waters, and the active volcano Nyiragongo looms over Goma. The hills hold tin, tungsten, gold and coltan, including the Rubaya mine, held by M23, which supplies an estimated 15 to 30 percent of world coltan. As of October 2026 AFC/M23 controls Goma, Bukavu and a wide arc of territory between and around them. The Congolese army and allied Wazalendo militias, with Burundian troops, hold the far south around Uvira, which M23 seized in December 2025 and left in January 2026 under US pressure, and the Beni–Butembo area in the north.
The Kivus absorbed more than a million Rwandan Hutu refugees after the 1994 genocide, and the two Congo wars that followed drew in armies from across the region. M23, named for a peace deal of 23 March 2009, first took Goma in 2012, collapsed in 2013 and reemerged in late 2021. Two tracks of diplomacy followed its 2025 offensive. The Washington agreement between the DRC and Rwanda, signed in June 2025 and formalized as the Washington Accords in December, commits Rwanda to lift its defensive measures and the DRC to neutralize the FDLR. The Qatar-mediated Doha Framework of November 2025 links Kinshasa and AFC/M23. As of October 2026 neither has produced a lasting ceasefire, fighting continues in both provinces, and UN agencies count several million people displaced in eastern Congo.