A few minutes after 5 AM on Sunday, the 3rd of December 2023, Kenyan soldiers loaded themselves into a Kenya Air Force plane and took off from the eastern DRC town of Goma, bound for Nairobi. Not long after, troops from Uganda, Burundi and South Sudan would each complete their own exodus. Except for the South Sudanese, the Ugandan and Burundian troops would soon return.
These four armies constituted the shortlived East African Community Regional Force (EACRF), the force mandated by the East Africa Community (EAC) to go into eastern Congo to disarm the armed groups operating there. They were estimated to be about 120 in total. The Force was created in April 2022 alongside the Nairobi Process, the latest of the many regional initiatives for the Congo that stretched back over three decades. Less than a year into the EACRF’s deployment, the Congolese government refused to renew the mission’s mandate. The regional force had to leave the Congo. What had gone wrong?
The events of late January 2025 illuminate the EACRF’s debacle and serve as a cautionary tale for regional military interventions. Simmering Congolese frustration boiled over on 28 January after news reached the capital that the biggest city in the east, Goma, had fallen to the Rwandese-backed M23 rebels. Foreign embassies in Kinshasa, including those of France, Belgium, the US and Rwanda, were attacked. Notably, the embassies of Kenya and Rwanda, which had acted in different ways as Congolese President, Felix-Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo’s guarantors, were attacked and ransacked as Congolese security looked the other way.
The EACRF had been deployed to confront the March 23 movement (M23). Since its resurgence in November 2021, the M23 rapidly overpowered the Congolese army and seized much of North Kivu province despite the presence of the EACRF and later, a South African-led SADC force, SAMIDRC. The renewed fighting triggered an avalanche of refugees fleeing the region. The M23’s advance on Goma since late 2021 has forced millions in the mineral-rich North Kivu province from their homes and heightened fears that a decades-old simmering conflict risks reigniting a broader regional war.
After taking a number of towns in the province, including the strategic town of Sake and Masisi in December 2024, on January 27, 2025, the rebels announced that they had taken the provincial capital, Goma, the largest city in eastern DRC. At the time of writing, small arms and mortar fire were echoing across Goma, with bodies strewn in the city’s streets, and hospitals struggling to deal with a growing number of casualties.
When the EACRF arrived in late 2022, much to the chagrin of President Felix Tshisekedi, it avoided combat with all rebel groups, including the M23. While Kenya had deployed a general to serve as the force commander and, under former president, Uhuru Kenyatta, had designed and led the intervention, Kenyan current president, William Ruto had voiced his misgivings about the mission, hinting that its success was predicated on Western funding. As a result, he wouldn’t commit Kenyan soldiers to directly confront the M23. Under him, the Nairobi Process appeared dead on arrival.
The DRC government, then and now, refused to negotiate with the M23 directly, unwilling to do anything to legitimize the group, which it regards as nothing more than a Rwandan decoy. At the end, the DRC government claimed that the EACRF was ineffective at best, and complicit with the M23 at worst.
Now, William Ruto, who was elected chair of the EAC Heads of States Summit last November, summoned an extraordinary meeting of the Summit to discuss the crisis in eastern Congo-K. Snubbed by Tshisekedi – he has repeatedly shown his disdain for Ruto’s leadership of the EACRF – the highlight of the virtual conference was a six-minute rant by Kagame. In his defence of the M23 rebels, the Rwandan strongman launched scathing personal attacks against former Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, regarded as the architect of the Nairobi Process; Angola’s Joao Lourenço, who leads the Luanda Process; and of Tshisekedi, whom he accused of collaborating with the Congo-domiciled genocidaire outfit, the FDLR.
But it was his attack against South Africa’s Ramaphosa that potentially carries the biggest risk of an escalation of the ongoing crisis. Accusing the South African leader of lying that his SANDF troops in eastern Congo were on a peace-keeping mission, Kagame offered a thinly-veiled threat that his forces would retaliate if they were attacked.
The spectre of the outbreak of a second Congo has never been closer.
If the Summit’s communiqué was terse and perfunctory, doing little to capture the gravity of the situation, it also allowed rival propagandists to escalate the latent hostilities on social media.
Tshisekedi has not only boycotted previous EAC Heads of States’ Summit meetings, in mid-2024, he also blamed his Kenyan counterpart, William Ruto, for the EACRF’s lack of resolve, going so far as to accuse Ruto of siding with Rwanda.
An unlikely announcement by the M23 made at Nairobi’s Serena Hotel in the run-up to the Congo’s 2023 presidential elections complicated matters further. Flanked by Bertrand Bisimwa, spokesman of the M23, the former head of Congo’s electoral commission, Corneille Nangaa, announced the establishment of the ‘Congo River Alliance’, which included the M23 and eight other armed groups. The two have since been sentenced to death by a military court, accused of planning to topple the DRC government. Kinshasa further responded by recalling both its ambassador to Kenya and its representative in the EAC. The diplomatic cold war goes even further: a year after his appointment, Kinshasa has refused to accredit Kenya’s ambassador to Congo-K.
The EACRF and the Nairobi Process were initiated by Kenya’s former president and Ruto’s predecessor, Uhuru Kenyatta, two months before he left office. At the time, Kenyatta was the Chair of the Heads of States’ Summit of the EAC. Tshisekedi’s claim that Ruto was siding with Rwanda tapped into a dizzying constellation of competing regional interests that have continued to shape conflict dynamics in eastern DRC since the 1990s.
While peace and security issues may have informed Kenya’s entry into this volatile theatre of conflict, a closer reading of Kenya’s intentions in the Congo may reveal darker motives. When Western funding for the EAC mission did not materialise, was the military focus replaced by commercial motivations?
To replace the EAC mission, Congolese President Tshisekedi turned to the Southern African Development Community (SADC), a task facillitated by his position as Chair of SADC’s Heads of States’ Summit. Burundi, Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa responded to Tshisekedi’s 2023 request to deploy forces to eastern DRC to fill the void left by the EACRF. Direct combat with the M23, however, would soon lead to a growing list of casualties, local and foreign.
There was perhaps another factor that had driven Kenya into hastily establishing the EACRF: a calculated opportunity to replace the UN intervention force, MONUSCO. With an annual billion-dollar budget, Nairobi’s securocrats may have gambled on inheriting the funding windfall in much the same way that influential elements in Yoweri Museveni’s circle had done with AMISOM in Somalia almost 20 years ago. Indeed, Kenya had used the same Ugandan playbook before, invading Somalia on its own steam in 2011 before rehatting its troops under AMISOM six months later. In so doing, the Kenya Defence Forces had become a long-term troop contributor (and funds recipient) of the regional military intervention in Somalia.
But just as the EACRF mission was tied to the Nairobi Process, the SADC deployment, under the acronym SAMIDRC, was closely-associated with the ‘Luanda Process’, kick-started by Angolan president, Joao Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço. While the Nairobi process focused on the demobilisation of the up to 120 rebel groups in eastern DRC, the Luanda talks have sought a rapprochement between Kinshasa and Kigali. By December 2024, the Luanda Process seemed to have hit the rocks, when the Rwandan delegation refused to take part. Soon after, the M23 escalated its advance on Goma, taking on smaller towns, before walking into Goma this Monday.
It is worth noting that Turkiye, an emerging power-broker in the Horn of Africa region, offered to mediate in the rising tensions between Congo and Rwanda, but the DRC government rejected the offer, touting the need for African solutions to African problems. These ‘African solutions’ were, however, demonstrably lacking in financial commitments to back them up.
Of the four EAC member-states that contributed troops to the EACRF, only South-Sudan (facing a serious post-conflict situation at home) remains disengaged from eastern DRC. Kenyan forces re-entered the conflict under MONUSCO in August 2024. Needless to say, UN funding for MONUSCO – needed now more than ever – is assured and more certain than was the case with the EACRF, where operational costs were met by Troop Contributing Countries (TCCs). Burundi and Uganda continue to deploy forces in eastern DRC under bilateral agreements with the DRC government. Unsurprisingly, the DRC government refused to let Rwanda participate in the EACRF mission. Tanzania, which abstained from the EACRF despite being an EAC member, deployed under the SADC arrangement in early 2024.
Kenyan diplomacy in recent years: A consideration
Casting Kenya’s latest forays into the Congo within a wider framework requires an examination of the country’s foreign policy stance in recent years. Kenya’s list of international assignments, from Somalia, South Sudan to far-flung Haiti, have quadrupled, especially following the country’s election as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council in 2021.
Kenya has been able to build from its success in brokering Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that saw South Sudan’s peaceful transition to independence in 2011. Now Kenya’s long-running political opposition figure, Raila Odinga, has offered his candidature for the African Union Commission Chair – a second run at the position for Nairobi, which unsuccessfully bid for the position in 2017. Indeed, Kenya is not shying away from delicate and complex peace and stabilisation projects in the region. However, as these projects multiply, I argue that Kenya’s foreign policy continues to be shaped, and therefore, leashed, by narrow elite crony interests.
Others have argued that Kenya has long been labelled – and rightly so – a Western client. However, as the country faces massive domestic debt – the raison d’etre for youth-led protests across the country in mid-2024 – the deep relationship between regime cronies’ rent-seeking motivations and Kenya’s foreign policy in recent years makes sense. This was most visible during William Ruto’s recent State visit to the US. The first visit by an African Head of State since 2008, Ruto inked multiple trade and investment agreements. Kenya’s pledged contribution of up to 1,000 police officers to far-flung Haiti for a multinational security intervention makes sense given the $380 million pledged by the US to support the mission.
Closer to home, the 2019 election of Felix Tshisekedi followed a political détente in Kenya between Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga. Odinga was a long-term ally of Tshisekedi’s father. Kenyatta leveraged this connection to pursue family economic opportunities in the Congo. Kenyan firms began eyeing Congo’s population of 99 million and economy of nearly $50 Billion. But the serious challenge to peace and security in eastern DRC that is posed by the M23 has threatened these latent Kenyan ambitions in the Congo.
The M23 and renewed tensions in eastern DRC
Much of the renewed violence in eastern DRC is attributed to the resurgence since late 2021 of the M23, led by Sultani Makenga. M23 ranks are dominated by Congolese Tutsis, Makenga’s co-ethnics. M23’s sophisticated weaponry and tactics have long been deployed against their arch-nemesis, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR, its French acronym), led by remnants of the Interahamwe, exiled in Congo-K since the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi, and who remain opposed to Kigali. M23 also confronts the Mai-Mai, local Congolese militia opposed to what they see as foreign Tutsi influence in eastern DRC.
While the US, France and a Group of UN experts have published clear proof that the Rwandan regime have trained, supplied and supported the M23 (claims that Rwanda denies), the M23 accused the Congolese military of supporting the FDLR and the Mai-Mai. Rwanda has gone further to state that the Congolese Army has even incorporated the FDLR amongst its ranks. Human Rights Watch independently reported that the Congolese military gave direct support to Mai-Mai and FDLR in 2022 in order to use their forces as proxies against the M23.
A 23rd March 2009 peace deal between the DRC government, then led by President Joseph Kabila, and the CNDP agreed to incorporate members of the CNDP into the Congolese Army. Three years later, on 4th April 2012, 300 former members of the CNDP, led by General Bosco Ntaganda, mutinied, citing poor working conditions and the government’s unwillingness to fully implement the March 2009 peace deal. It was from this mutiny, and the 2009 peace deal, that the M23 was established and the group found its name. On 20th November 2012, M23 took control of Goma for the first time, but significant regional and international pressure led the group to abandon the city and engage in negotiations with the DRC government.
In February 2013, regional governments and guarantors, including the United Nations and the African Union, signed the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework (PSCF), a set of principles for implementation that they hoped could address persistent violence in eastern DRC and associated regional instability. The agreement had come just months after the M23 embarked on their first major rebellion. The PSCF remained in place following the M23’s 2013 defeat at the hands of the Congolese Army and UN blue helmets under MONUSCO’s Force Intervention Brigade, a force made up of SADC member states. Unfortunately, over time the PSCF came to be regarded as a process-driven and lofty mechanism that failed to address the root-causes of instability in the Great Lakes Region.
In its rebound since late 2021, the M23 has demanded that the DRC government honours the 23rd March 2009 peace deal. The UN Group of Experts believes this is a red herring. A UN 2022 report concludes that the M23 resurfaced in November 2021 to showcase Rwanda’s influence in eastern DRC. Rwanda, it is said, has felt its national security and economic interests threatened by the presence of Ugandan and Burundian troops in eastern DRC, which coincided with the laying down of transport infrastructure that would have benefited Ugandan interests in eastern DRC. Rwanda and Uganda have been routinely cited for plundering minerals in eastern Congo. Indeed, Tshisekedi had allowed Uganda and Burundi to operate in the Congo in late 2021, ostensibly to root-out rebel groups – namely, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in Ituri and North Kivu provinces, and the RED-Tabara in South Kivu province, respectively. The violence unleashed by the M23 since, and the resultant tensions between Kinshasa and Kigali, would complicate not only Kenya’s newfound interests in the DRC, but the efficacy of the Nairobi Process as well.
Kenyatta crony interests in the Congo
In March 2018, Kenya’s former president Uhuru Kenyatta, and his challenger for the presidency during the 2013 and 2017 elections, Raila Odinga, shook hands in front of TV cameras. This handshake ended five years of hostility between Kenyatta’s administration and the opposition. In the context of their newfound partnership, Odinga introduced Felix Tshisekedi to Kenyatta, after which Tshisekedi announced his presidential candidature whilst in Nairobi.
Odinga had known Tshisekedi’s father – both had earned their mark as respected opposition figures in their home countries. Once introduced, Kenyatta helped fund Tshisekedi’s 2018 presidential campaign. Kenyatta, accompanied by Odinga, was the only head of state who attended Tshisekedi’s inauguration after his dubious victory. Kenyatta then conducted Kenya’s first Presidential State visit to the Congo. Everything that followed – admission of the Congo into the EAC, the ‘Nairobi process’, the establishment of the EACRF – was done hastily in the second half of 2022 at the instigation of Kenyatta.
As a result, only 28 out of 120 rebel groups operating in eastern DRC were represented in the first round of talks held in April 2022 at Nairobi’s Safari Park Hotel. During the third round of talks in late November, held at the same venue, the number rose to 42; while 52 groups were represented during the second round held in Goma in eastern DRC. At the insistence of the DRC government, the M23 was excluded in all deliberations. When Tshisekedi signed the Treaty of Ascension into the EAC on 8th April 2022, the DRC parliament was only granted 6 months to undertake internal and constitutional processes for the ratification of the treaty.
Kenyatta’s term was coming to an end, with no guarantee that his preferred candidate, Raila Odinga, would win the 2022 elections in August. A senior Kenyatta advisor disclosed to this author that Odinga’s victory would have allowed Kenyatta to advance his private family interests in the Congo unfettered.
Once listed by Forbes as amongst Africa’s top 40 richest individuals, Kenyatta is heir to one of Kenya’s wealthiest estates, with investments spanning banking, real estate, manufacturing, tourism, education and agribusiness. In a November 2023 interview with the East African, Kenya’s former ambassador to the Congo stated that with less than 10% of the Congolese population banked, the country’s large population provided Kenyan banks with huge opportunities. At the time of the interview, the Kenya Commercial (KCB) and Equity banks had opened branches in the Congo. Equity would take over BCDC, the oldest and most established Congolese bank. At the end of 2023, Equity Bank CEO, James Mwangi predicted that profits from the bank’s Congo operation would soon surpass that of their Kenya operations.
Tshisekedi’s controversial 2019 victory left him with a very thin domestic political base. His predecessor, Joseph Kabila’s loyalists, maintained control of parliament along with significant swathes of the Congolese Army. Tshisekedi’s initial turn to the EAC was also informed by the fear that SADC heads of states maintained their loyalties with Kabila.
But it was EACRF’s performance – refusing to attack M23 positions – that spooked Tshisekedi. Continued violence during the first half of 2023, some of it attributed to the M23, didn’t help. Burundian forces claimed to have come under M23 fire while Kenyan forces under EACRF watched on. The EACRF insisted on dialogue and observing a November 2022 ceasefire that Tshisekedi believed the M23 constantly violated.
Tshisekedi’s election as Chair of SADC Heads of State Summit in August 2022 presented him with an opportunity to pursue an alternative course. He was able to consolidate his position amongst Congo-K’s southern neighbours, and by mid-2023, he had already invited Angolan forces to eastern DRC to directly confront the M23. More troops from SADC, under the SAMIDRC mission, would follow in late 2023 and early 2024. In June 2024, Tshisekedi boycotted the EAC Heads of States’ summit; he did the same for the EAC’s Heads of States’ Summit held in November that year, on the sidelines of which the Community was celebrating its Silver Jubilee. Tshisekedi appeared to have turned south towards SADC, the EAC having failed or refused to provide him with the solutions he was seeking.
Regional Cold War
On 19th April 2024, Lydia Mbotela, Kenya Airways’ station manager in Kinshasa, and her Congolese colleague, Olivier Lufungula, were arrested at N’Djili International Airport in Kinshasa by officers from Congo’s military intelligence unit. They were accused of accepting cargo containing bank notes from a Congolese bank destined to the US. Kenya Airways responded by suspending its flights to the Congo, compounding a diplomatic tiff that had begun when the DRC government recalled its ambassador to Kenya in December 2023. Lydia and Olivier were released over a week later, and Kenya Airways resumed its flights to the Congo, but only after Kenya’s Foreign Minister, Musalia Mudavadi, visited Tshisekedi in May 2024 to seek a resolution to rising diplomatic tensions between Nairobi and Kinshasa.
While Congo’s ambassador to Kenya resumed his duties in Nairobi, and Kenya’s newly appointed ambassador to the Congo was allowed to take station in Kinshasa, the falling out between Kenya and the Congo over the EACRF seems to have had a longer residual impact. Shortly after Mudavadi’s visit to Kinshasa in mid-2024, President Ruto gave an interview to Jeune Afrique, where he claimed that the M23 was strictly a Congolese issue, in effect absolving Rwanda the long-held charges of its ties with the rebel group. Two months later, Tshisekedi, while speaking on a Brookings panel, stated that William Ruto ‘managed [the Nairobi Process] very badly’ by siding with Rwanda. Ruto’s remarks, and Tshisekedi’s intimations, appeared to have handed the death sentence to the Nairobi Process.
Denied the Western funding sought by Kenyan leadership, the EACRF had no stomach for combat. Despite retaining Kenyatta as the official facilitator of the Nairobi Process’ William Ruto’s administration proceeded to replace many key diplomats who had worked under the Kenyatta presidency in designing Kenya’s forays into the Congo under EAC leadership. Even the EAC Secretariat seems to have sensed the slow-puncture, with accusations by Uhuru Kenyatta that it had unilaterally reduced the agreed participants’ allowances without informing him.
For Ruto – he had gotten rid of the diplomats that had engineered Kenya’s strategy in the Congo and was facing Congolese criticism over the performance of the EACRF – Tshisekedi had become increasingly difficult to appease. This may complicate the effectiveness of Ruto’s role in finding a resolution to the conflict in eastern DRC. More significantly the Kenyan state’s attempts at a homegrown regional imperialism, it puts Kenya’s elite commercial interests in the Congo at risk.
*This article is an adapted version of an essay that was commissioned and published in November 2024 by the South-Sudan office of Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), collectively entitled “The East African Community Regional Force in the DR Congo: A regional perspective.”
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