The Democratic Republic of the Congo: Political Instability and the Rwandan Factor

Abstract

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been in a state of constant political instability since June 30, 1960, i.e., throughout the entire period of its independent development. The country has experienced a series of civil wars and local conflicts, the causes of which, as in other African countries, have been inter-ethnic and inter-confessional tensions, struggle for power and access to natural resources, inability of governments to control the situation in the periphery, etc. The peculiarity of the Congolese conflicts and DRC politics in general is the interference of external actors, primarily neighboring countries. Rwanda has played the greatest role in maintaining permanent instability in the DRC. This has been argued in numerous books and articles by Russian and foreign researchers, but Africanists have not yet carried out a comprehensive analysis of the historical background and contemporary factors of Rwanda’s influence on the situation in the DRC, and the present paper aims at filling this gap. The purpose of the study is to identify the political and economic motives for the presence of the Rwandan army on the Congolese territory, to examine the role of national leaders of the two states - P. Kagame, L.-D. Kabila, J. Kabila, and F. Tshisekedi - in the political development of the DRC, as well as the reasons for the conflict that broke out in 2022 between the DRC and Rwanda. The paper applies a comprehensive approach to the processes and phenomena under consideration, using the principles of comparative data analysis and critical assessment of information. The relevance of the topic of research is due to both the increase in political instability in Africa and in the world as a whole, and the noticeable increase in the influence of African countries on international political and economic processes.