The Trump Administration’s Peace Initiative for the Great Lakes Region of Africa: History and the Drivers of Conflict

President Donald Trump and his administration are engaged in a noble effort to end the violence in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). On June 27, 2025, Trump hosted the foreign ministers of DRC and Rwanda following the signing of a U.S.-brokered peace agreement known as the Washington Accord. The agreement commits Rwanda to withdraw its troops from eastern DRC within 90 days and contains initiatives to improve regional economic integration. Trump warned of “very severe penalties” if the agreement is violated. To understand the obstacles that all parties will have to overcome in the effort to achieve enduring peace, it is important to consider the factors that drive that conflict in context of the history of the Great Lakes region, encompassing North Kivu and South Kivu provinces in DRC and Western Province in Rwanda.

Violence and exploitation are not new to the Great Lakes region. Roughly 3,000 years ago, agriculturalist communities migrated southward to the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo, establishing powerful kingdoms including Kongo, Luba, and Lunda. In the modern period, the Atlantic slave trade was particularly devastating for the Kongo Kingdom; from the 16th to 18th centuries, over 5 million slaves were kidnapped from its territories and sent to Brazil. In 1885, Belgian monarch Leopold II seized personal control of the territory which he called the Congo Free State. Leopold II exploited the region’s natural resources, particularly rubber, through brutal forced labor that killed roughly half the Congolese population, an estimated 10 million people. In 1908, the Belgian government formally annexed the territory, renaming it the ‘Belgian Congo’ while continuing to exploit it for natural resources.

The DRC gained independence on June 30, 1960. Patrice Lumumba was elected Prime Minister and Joseph Kasavubu was elected president. However, security deteriorated rapidly. The government signed a treaty with Belgium that kept Belgian military officers at their posts but limited Belgium’s involvement in governance. Days after independence, the Congolese army mutinied against its Belgian commanders. Many Belgians and other Europeans fled the country, and Belgium intervened. The mineral-rich Katanga province seceded. On July 14, the United Nations ordered Belgian troops to withdraw. On September 5, President Kasavubu and Prime Minister Lumumba mutually dismissed each other. On September 14, then-Colonel Joseph Mobutu organized a coup d’etat and the army took power alongside a caretaker government. After five years of unrest, General Mobutu orchestrated another coup and declared himself dictator of a republic, which he renamed Zaire. He also renamed himself Mobuto Sese Seko as he initiated a brutal reign of 32 years.

Regional turmoil in the 1990’s precipitated two conflicts known as the First and Second Congo Wars. In 1994, the violence of the First Congo War reached its apogee during the almost unspeakable genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda. Ethnic Hutu extremists murdered over one million people. Paul Kagame led the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel force composed largely of Tutsi exiles, in an offensive that captured Kigali in July 1994, halted the genocide and toppled the Hutu-led government. Following the military victory, Kagame appointed a Hutu president, became vice president and defense minister, and implemented a multifaceted reconciliation effort that included security sector reform, civic education, local elections, and reintegration of former fighters and refugees.

Violence in the broader Great Lakes region persisted, however. Under Paul Kagame de facto leadership, Rwanda and a coalition of African states with security concerns about Mobutu invaded Zaire in 1996. Mobutu fled Kinshasa in 1997, and Kagame-backed opposition leader Laurent Kabila became president. Kabila renamed the country the Democratic Republic of Congo and, in 1998, demanded that the Rwandan and Ugandan forces that put him in power leave the DRC. Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi invaded the DRC a second time while Angola, Namibia, Sudan, Chad, and Zimbabwe supported the DRC. The Second Congo War, also known as Africa’s World War, resulted in over 3 million deaths from 1998 to 2003.

On January 16, 2001, Laurent Kabila was assassinated by a bodyguard. His son, Joseph Kabila, 29 at the time, was proclaimed president that same day. He immediately set about consolidating peace accords and planning elections to legitimize his rule. In 2006—the first free, multiparty vote since independence—Joseph Kabila won the presidency in a two-round contest, then secured a second term in 2011. As a new constitution took effect, mining revenues boomed, and some infrastructure was built, even as armed groups perpetuated violence in the east, corruption hindered progress, and the government stifled opposition and criticism.

There has been progress toward the representative government and rule of law in the DRC in recent years. Félix Tshisekedi, opposition leader and son of veteran politician Étienne Tshisekedi, narrowly won the December 2018 election and became the DRC’s first peaceful successor to another president. He initiated a reform agenda to decentralize government, fight corruption, and improve the professionalism of security forces.

In 2006, Joseph Kabila–who came to power when his father, Laurent, was assassinated in 2001– won the country’s first free elections since independence. However, his 2011 reelection was disputed and youth-led demonstrators called for him to relinquish power in 2015. Kabila’s government violently suppressed the protestors as he sought an unconstitutional third term, but he stepped down in 2016. Opposition candidate Félix Tshisekedi became president in 2019 following disputed presidential elections and was re-elected in 2023.

The violent and turbulent history of the region reveals the ambition of the Washington accord. It is unlikely that the signing of the accord will end violence as the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel movement and a tangled web of local militias known as the Allied Democratic Forces continue to battle DRC government forces over territory and mineral wealth.

But the DRC’s and Rwanda’s recognition of each nation’s territorial integrity and Rwanda’s commitment to withdraw from Congolese territory in the agreement is positive. Peace could unlock tremendous economic benefits for all parties to the conflict. The DRC holds an estimated $25 trillion in mineral reserves including cobalt and copper. But that wealth is likely to remain both a blessing and a curse. Sustainable peace will be impossible if militias continue to fight to preserve their ability to illegally exploit DRC’s natural resources.

Rwanda could benefit tremendously from transit fees and infrastructure development necessary to exploit DRC’s mineral reserves. U.S. and other investment would reduce the malign effects of opaque Chinese “infrastructure-for-minerals” agreements that lock the DRC into long-term contracts, grant Chinese firms control of strategic cobalt and copper concessions, impose repayment obligations through resource shipments, saddle the DRC with crushing debt, use child labor and forced labor in unsafe artisanal and small-scale mines, and degrade the environment. But it is not clear that DRC and Rwanda will be able to martial the will and capabilities necessary to enforce the agreement, enforce peace, and convince militias to foreswear violence and abandon their lucrative criminal enterprises.

President Trump announced the agreement as a “glorious triumph” and asserted that “Today, the violence and destruction comes to an end, and the entire region begins a new chapter of hope and opportunity, harmony, prosperity and peace.” Although his statement was overoptimistic given the complex tribal, ethnic, and economic drivers of violence in the Great Lakes Region, the sentiment is a noble one. Trump vowed to “make sure you follow through. We will make sure that you follow through, and we will make sure that you follow through..." The repetition of the phrase indicates that Trump understands how difficult implementation of the agreement will be.

But the Trump Administration’s effort to bring peace to a region is laudable and the personal involvement of President Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicates a strong commitment to follow through. The agreement, coming during the Iran crisis, trade negotiations, a NATO summit, and the ongoing effort to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine, indicates that, despite many vacancies in the State Department, the Trump Administration can pursue multiple diplomatic initiatives simultaneously. And the prioritization of the agreement indicates that fears of U.S. disengagement from complex challenges abroad are exaggerated. Donald Trump knows that the United States cannot solve complex problems abroad. But the Washington Accord indicates that he also believes, consistent with his December 2017 National Security Strategy of the United States, that his administration can “catalyze regional efforts to build security and prosperity through strong diplomatic engagement.”

For more on the DRC, see the episode with Djo Munga, an award-winning director, producer, and screenwriter.

And for more on Rwanda and its President, see the conversation with Paul Kagame.