Episode 396:Unpacking the DRC: War, Power, Disease and Disinformation

In this episode of The International Risk Podcast, Dominic Bowen speaks with Stephanie Wolters about security, governance, and stability across the Democratic Republic of Congo. Stephanie Wolters unpacks why the DRC cannot be ignored, and why the roots of the conflict stretch far beyond its own borders.

The discussion examines the international intervention in DRC, including MONUSCO, and what daily life actually looks like for communities living under armed group control. It also explores Rwanda’s influence in the crisis.

The conversation explores:

-The regionally-driven roots of the conflict and why it’s about power more than resources

-Rwanda’s role in the crisis -The impact and limits of international intervention on the ground

-What daily life is actually like for communities in areas controlled by armed groups

-The challenge of managing outbreaks like Ebola in conflict-affected areas

Stephanie Wolters is a Senior Research Fellow at the South African Institute of International Affairs and founding director of Okapi Consulting, with over 25 years of experience researching conflict and political economy across the Great Lakes region.

The International Risk Podcast brings together global experts, frontline practitioners, and senior decision-makers to explore the forces transforming our world — from geopolitical instability and organised crime to cybersecurity threats and hybrid warfare.

Dominic Bowen is the host of The International Risk Podcast and one of Europe’s leading experts on international risk and crisis management. He advises CEOs, boards, and senior executives across Europe on how to prepare for uncertainty, navigate crises, and build strategic resilience in an increasingly volatile world.

#Geopolitics #DRC #GreatLakes #MONUSCO #Congo #Rwanda #PoliticalRisk #InternationalRisk #Strategy #Africa

Transcript:

Dominic Bowen:The Democratic Republic of the Congo sits at the intersection of some of the biggest risks facing the global economy. We’re talking about critical minerals, great power competition, fragile states, and of course regional conflict mixed in as well. The DRC holds some of the most important reserves of cobalt and copper: resources that are central to electrification, technology, and global supply chains. We’ve had some great conversations on the International Risk Podcast about these topics, but Congo remains at war. M23 has seized major cities, as we discussed several months ago. Rwanda and the DRC remain locked in this regional confrontation, and decades of UN peacekeeping and international diplomacy have still failed to deliver lasting stability in the region.

I’m Dominic Bowen, host of the International Risk Podcast, where we unpack the topics that really matter. Our guest today is Stephanie Wolters, who has spent almost three decades working on the Great Lakes region. She’s reported from Kinshasa for the BBC, Reuters, and The Economist, and she’s now a Senior Research Fellow at the South African Institute of International Affairs. Her forthcoming book, A Disinterested State: War, Violence and Indifference in the Great Lakes, examines many of the topics we’re going to explore today. Stephanie, welcome to the International Risk Podcast.

Stephanie Wolters: Thank you very much, Dominic. I’m very happy to be here.

Dominic Bowen: So tell us, Stephanie, whereabouts in the world do we find you today?

Stephanie Wolters: I’m in Johannesburg, almost at the beginning of spring.

Dominic Bowen: Fantastic. Well, thanks very much for coming on the show today. Maybe we can start really broadly — for anyone just tuning in who isn’t sure why the DRC matters, and who hasn’t heard our previous episodes on the conflict and resources there, why should they be paying attention to what’s happening now?

Stephanie Wolters: There are many different reasons. On a very basic level, this is a country of close to 100 million people, it is the size of Western Europe. Being one of the countries with the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, it’s of concern to us as fellow humans that there’s tremendous suffering going on there. There are also many economic interests that outsiders and some of the political elite in the DRC have, notably around minerals. As you mentioned, this is an incredibly mineral-rich country, and there are many different narratives about how that contributes to instability.

It’s also a huge resource in terms of rainforest and species diversity, an incredibly valuable area, and it’s gigantic. It’s the second-largest country in Africa. We cannot ignore it. It has 12 neighbors, so what happens in the DRC tends to affect neighbors across the southern and central African regions. It’s just a country you cannot ignore.

Dominic Bowen: We often describe this as a conflict in eastern Congo, but I’m wondering if that’s actually the right way to understand it, or if this is more a regional conflict : there’s Rwanda, Uganda, other state actors, and of course actors from further away with strong interests in the resources and minerals. How do you think about the current conflict?

Stephanie Wolters: I think of it very much as a regionally driven conflict with domestic elements in eastern DRC. Unpicking it and finding a way to bring peace to that region requires multiple layers of intervention. Uganda and Rwanda have played a destabilizing role in eastern DRC in one way or another since 1998 — in fact since 1996, when Mobutu was overthrown. There’s no way to take them out of the equation. One of the challenges is that this regional role isn’t always recognized, and it hasn’t really been addressed effectively in a regional peace process. That’s one of the key issues we need to work on.

Dominic Bowen: We’ve talked a little about minerals and resources — the DRC possesses extraordinary mineral wealth that’s so important to Western energy in Europe and North America, to China, and to the technology strategies underpinning so much of the growth we’re seeing in the NASDAQ and S&P 500 today. From your research, how much of this conflict is really about resources, or is that a simplification that doesn’t do it justice?

Stephanie Wolters: It’s absolutely a simplification that doesn’t do it justice. Minerals provide revenue for neighboring countries, there’s no question about that. There’s a very intense illicit economy at work in eastern DRC that’s been established over three decades, and there are economic interests that drive elements of the conflict. Certainly for Uganda that’s a much bigger driver than it is for Rwanda. But that’s not the primary issue. This isn’t primarily about who has access to resources — for Rwanda, this is about wanting to be a hegemon in the region, competition with some of its neighbors, wanting to control Kinshasa, and elements persistent from after the genocide. Some of the armed groups in eastern DRC have links to that period. So for the actors most involved at the moment, this isn’t really primarily about minerals.

Dominic Bowen: When we talk about hegemony and states trying to have more power, what’s the endgame? What are they trying to achieve?

Stephanie Wolters: That’s a very good question, especially when it comes to Rwanda. We’ve seen so many waves of Rwandan involvement — whether supporting a proxy group, or having its own troops on the ground. Right now we’re in a phase where it has several thousand of its own troops on the ground in addition to supporting a proxy.

We have to remember that Rwanda’s regional intervention really began in the aftermath of the genocide the new government, President Kagame, the RPF, getting involved in overthrowing Mobutu in the 1996–97 campaign, motivated by the refugee camps along the eastern border where the Interahamwe had regrouped. Rwanda’s objective at that stage was to break up those camps. But it went a step further: its secondary, unstated objective was to physically eliminate the Interahamwe. This has evolved over the years. Initially there was a security-driven interest, they weren’t fully able to eliminate the FDLR. Then there was a divorce between the new DRC leadership and the Rwandan government over the FDLR, and that’s when Rwanda started developing proxy groups that did its bidding in eastern DRC.

At this point, it’s also to a great extent about the narrative of Rwanda’s own history, which has been greatly controlled, rewritten, and manipulated by the RPF perpetuating the sense of an external threat to the country. That’s a key part of the narrative Kagame and the RPF maintain. There are also concerns, always put forward as the biggest one, around the Banyamulenge community — Congolese Tutsis — with allegations that community is being abused, mishandled, and marginalized. There are elements of truth to that, but it’s essentially a justification for Rwandan involvement in eastern DRC. Over the last 30 years, Rwanda has kept its finger in the pie, either through an armed proxy or by attempting a political proxy in government. Now, one year after the fall of Goma and Bukavu, four years into this war, we’re seeing a proper occupation. There’s a sense that for Rwanda, the endgame is to maintain a long-term hold on eastern DRC.

Dominic Bowen: Is there any truth to the fear that Rwanda is under threat from foreign state actors, or is that domestic hyperbole to justify their external activities?

Stephanie Wolters: I think it’s very much domestic hyperbole. On a simple level, in the last three decades no Rwandan civilian has been killed by the FDLR or the armed group that grew out of the Interahamwe. Thousands and thousands of Congolese citizens have died in the conflict in the east at the hands of the FDLR, M23, and previous Rwanda-backed proxy groups. There are also domestic armed groups that attack civilians. But Rwanda’s argument that it faces an existential security threat is absolutely untrue. Beyond the fact that casualty figures tell the story plainly, Rwanda has an extremely competent and strong army, thousands of times better than the Congolese army, which is a known fact. If it had really wanted to dismantle the FDLR, many of us feel that would have been within its capabilities. So there’s a sense that Rwanda is perpetuating this narrative for its own purposes, and it hides a whole other set of interests that matter more to them than actually eliminating the FDLR.

Dominic Bowen: How does this square with the fact that we’ve seen a lot of Western politicians — European and North American — praise Rwanda and Paul Kagame’s government as a success story, credited by donors and development institutions for restoring security, reducing corruption, building effective state institutions, improving health and education, attracting investment, promoting women in government, and strong economic growth? These sound like good things, but they seem at odds with what we’re discussing. Can we hold two truths at once that don’t match up?

Stephanie Wolters: I think they’re very much at odds. If you present yourself as a government that governs well and stands a cut above the rest, which is certainly how Kagame presents his country, and there is some truth to that in many ways — but at the same time you’re waging war in eastern DRC and disrespecting the value of Congolese lives, and I’d argue Rwandan lives too. We have plenty of stories about the fate of political opponents inside Rwanda, and that’s another important story about human rights violations in that country, then in my view these things really are very much at odds.

The really important thing to know about Kagame is that he understood the value of image and PR from the start. He knew that crafting a narrative and winning over international actors and governments was vital to succeeding in what he wanted to do. One of the things we unfortunately see a lot of in Africa is corruption, and we don’t hear much about corruption in Rwanda — the place is clean, people go there for a conference and say “there’s no rubbish in the streets.” These are things he does deliberately, because they have the intended effect of making people say, “look how different this is from the DRC, from Cameroon, or wherever.”

Dominic Bowen: You’ve watched three decades of peace agreements, peacekeepers, and diplomatic initiatives come and go. Who’s at fault? Is it the international community, the regional community, Rwanda, or the DRC? Where does the blame sit for three decades of lost development?

Stephanie Wolters: I think it lies with all of the actors you’ve just named. Rwanda isn’t honest about what it wants to achieve. Uganda isn’t honest about what it does there; about its interest in gold, in destabilizing the region, they’ve never been clear about that. The Congolese government is equally to blame in many ways, not because it deserves to be attacked, but because it hasn’t reformed the army, hasn’t strengthened governance, and hasn’t managed to strengthen governance of mineral flows, because there’s tremendous corruption within the Congolese army that benefits just as much from the illicit economy in eastern DRC as other regional elites do. So the blame sits squarely across all three countries.

International actors are also to blame. Looking back at the first war — years when I lived there, reporting for the BBC and Reuters — Rwanda was clearly playing a tremendous role in that 1998 war, yet nobody wanted to criticize Rwanda; it was too soon after the genocide. I remember asking Richard Holbrooke, when he came through when are you going to speak about the role Rwanda is playing? How do you expect to resolve this conflict if you don’t address this very clear issue? We’ve had this information about Rwanda’s role, about Uganda’s role, about developing mineral interests, and international actors simply haven’t addressed them.

Approaches have shifted over time. After the 1998–2003 war, the focus was very much on rebuilding the Congolese state — establishing government, establishing institutions — while the regional side of things was left out; it just wasn’t considered. Even as Rwanda’s new proxy strategy emerged, causing chaos in the east through proxy rebel groups, that simply wasn’t addressed. A lot of that has to do with the guilt international actors felt about the Rwandan genocide — about not having done better, not having ended it sooner, not having prevented it. That guilt has been so persistent that even today you find diplomats and international actors who have spent time in Rwanda and simply cannot see, at face value, the destabilizing role it plays. That has inevitably had a big impact on how the international community engages with the conflict in the DRC.

Dominic Bowen: Looking back at that history often helps us learn what worked, what didn’t, and why — what things might be worth trying again, differently. What has changed over time that failed, that maybe should have worked but didn’t achieve the outcomes hoped for?

Stephanie Wolters: One of the big things is the assumption by international actors that Kinshasa had an interest in security sector reform, when in fact the political economy of the Congolese army is such that nobody really wants a transparent, functional army that can take on those challenges — too many people benefit from the status quo. That assumption, that there would be a straight line between the end of the war and reform of that key sector was wrong, and international actors failed to learn that lesson again and again. We know that’s a key element of what has to happen long term, but without interest from the ruling elite, we won’t get that result.

MONUSCO, the UN peacekeeping mission that first deployed in 1999 and is still there — much can be said about it, but it’s constantly being retrofitted to changing circumstances. First it was there to bring about a ceasefire, then to monitor one, then to accompany a transition and elections, and so on. Eventually it was redesigned to deal with conflict in the east, often without the tools for that. The government in Kinshasa wasn’t always willing to accept the kind of criticism MONUSCO was making. And there’s the civilian side — a population suffering immensely, watching this massive UN apparatus arrive. I worked for the United Nations back then, and I always thought it was a bit like a UFO landing from another planet, unfurling this whole infrastructure of containers, airplanes, and helicopters, and incredible resources in a place where the civilian population has none of that, creating expectations. That clash between the peacekeeping mission and the expectations it creates has been a persistent challenge, because the mission hasn’t been able to achieve what it’s consistently asked to achieve.

There are other things that haven’t worked. For a long time, Kinshasa’s approach to neutralizing armed activity was to negotiate and bring groups on board, incorporate combatants into the army, incorporate political leadership into national government and that fundamentally backfired, because it rewarded armed conflict and is one of the reasons we’ve seen such a proliferation of Congolese armed actors in eastern DRC. But fundamentally, had Rwanda and Uganda been held accountable over these years, we wouldn’t be where we are today. There’s been an overemphasis on Congo as the primary driver of instability, when the region is equally responsible and we haven’t even talked about Burundi. We need to think about this as a regional conflict and address it as such if we want to start chipping away at what’s happening.

Dominic Bowen: You started to talk about the people, and I’d like to dive into that, because so much of what happens in the DRC gets reported as separate issues: the conflict, major towns being taken, disease outbreaks, massive displacement, climate shocks — each with its own headline and statistics. But for people living in eastern DRC, this is daily life; none of it is separate. You’ve been immersed in this region for a long time, including time in Kinshasa. Can you paint a picture of what’s actually happening on the ground right now? What is life like in the east, for an average family today?

Stephanie Wolters: It’s incredibly tough. If you live in a city like Goma or Bukavu now, you’re being controlled by a rebel group trying to embed itself and create parallel administrations. Very basic things, like banking, don’t work — the banks are linked to Kinshasa, and Kinshasa won’t allow them to transact. Last week the Congolese government said it would not continue to provide materials for the new school year, so it’s possible these young people in the east won’t be able to go to school, which is incredibly disruptive — and that’s for those who’ve even been able to attend, given how displacement repeatedly interrupts education, on top of scarce resources and the mental health toll of trauma.

Being cut off from Kinshasa is something we haven’t seen since the 1998–2003 war — it’s psychologically very damaging. I remember back at Radio Okapi, when we were able to open the airwaves on February 25th, and I was in Goma, and we started broadcasting from Kinshasa, the joy and relief people felt at being able to hear a voice coming from Kinshasa was incredible. Many years later, this is again what’s happening to people in eastern DRC.

On top of that, there are constant reprisals, if your village is taken by M23, they may accuse you of having supported whatever group controlled the area before. As a civilian, you have absolutely no guarantee of security; you’re always at risk. The Congolese army, unfortunately, is one of the greatest perpetrators of human rights abuses, so you’re caught between predatory rebel groups, a predatory national army, and a new rebel group that doesn’t allow dissent or criticism. Many civil society leaders are either in exile abroad or fled to Kinshasa in time. There are very few journalists left in Goma. And in the rural areas — which M23 has gradually controlled since 2022 — the situation is even worse: hospitals and schools aren’t maintained, and that’s caused not just by M23 but by other armed groups and by the government’s inability to extend its infrastructure that far east.

Dominic Bowen: You mentioned hospitals not being maintained — I’d love to discuss the current Ebola outbreak, the largest ever recorded in the DRC, in a country that’s sadly no stranger to Ebola.

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The World Health Organization ranks this outbreak as very high risk — nearly 6,000 confirmed cases and nearly 3,000 deaths, a case fatality ratio close to 50%, which is tragic. It spans around 60 health zones across six provinces. Given everything we’ve discussed — armed conflict, displacement, population movement, weak health infrastructure, limited government access — how does all this come together? It seems like an unbearable burden on an already extremely difficult situation. How do the international community and local actors, including health workers, try to get on top of something that requires huge resources and community buy-in, when none of that is readily available?

Stephanie Wolters: It’s terrifying, because all the things you’d need for this to be manageable or containable simply aren’t there. In the past, outbreaks like this happened in much more isolated parts of the DRC, which made them far easier to contain before they spread across wider geographical areas. I don’t know how they’ll manage it this time.

What we’re seeing is huge distrust. We’ve painted a picture of a country where authorities long ago lost the trust of the population, which far more often sees the negative sides of government than the positive. The idea that an authority will come in and help you isn’t something people are terribly familiar with. And this is happening to a population where people are already dying at high rates from malaria, cholera, and other preventable and treatable diseases, simply because health services are so poor. So when an Ebola outbreak happens, you get this influx — again, like a UFO landing — of international money and aid workers to contain something that does affect the population, but who then leave once it’s done, while all the other persistent health issues remain unaddressed. There’s anger, frustration, and a lot of disbelief.

I listened recently to a woman who had helped manage a previous outbreak — I think around 2017 — and she said one of the key lessons was around how they communicated about Ebola, given the suspicion around it. Now, for example, they use transparent body bags, which allow family members to see what happened to their loved one and understand it in a way that’s easier to grasp. There are also places where people can visit and speak to patients while they’re being treated. These are important, because otherwise you’re dropping a loved one at a hospital and never seeing them again — imagine how terrifying that would be, especially in areas where people don’t have much access to information or a smartphone to look things up.

Then there’s armed insecurity, poor road infrastructure, and the fact that some humanitarian agencies have to transit via Rwanda, which is at war with the DRC — that’s a key issue. And M23 running a parallel administration means humanitarian actors have to negotiate with a parallel rebel authority to access these zones, which makes things incredibly difficult.

Dominic Bowen: For anyone doubting the challenges of providing healthcare in these conditions — I remember running health clinics in ISIS-controlled northern Syria, where one of the worst outcomes was bringing in an injured ISIS fighter, because if he died, armed comrades would come in accusing us of killing him. It was similar during the big Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2013–14 — in Liberia, community communication was probably more important than even the life-saving work of doctors and nurses; it was the work of our communicators with local communities that mattered most. And for anyone who doubts how personal public health is, just think back to COVID, where even well-educated countries produced elaborate conspiracy theories about vaccines. Public health is about as personal as it gets, and it’s something we all struggle with — including in countries with decades of instability.

Your forthcoming book, A Disinterested State: War, Violence, and Indifference in the Great Lakes — the title itself suggests something pointed about how the international community has responded to this conflict. What does “a disinterested state” mean to you, and why did you choose it?

Stephanie Wolters: It’s funny. It’s only now becoming formalized, because I’d been looking for something slightly snappier, but it popped into my head. One of the chapters is, to some extent, about how the government in Kinshasa hasn’t always had an incentive to address instability in eastern DRC, it’s something they’ve allowed to continue because it doesn’t threaten their own hold on power, and the political and military elite continue to live the way they want. So: a disinterested central government in Kinshasa, and a disinterested international community, which is a controversial statement; many would say they’re not disinterested, but I think inconsistency is a key issue in the international response, along with an unwillingness to take on the heavy lifting required, especially regarding the motivations of the neighbors, Rwanda and Uganda. So, a disinterest in really going to the root causes.

Dominic Bowen: Thanks for that, we’ll be sure to include a link in the show notes once the book comes out later in 2026. Stephanie, you’ve written for fantastic outlets, Reuters, BBC, The Economist. Looking around the world today, mid-2026, what international risks concern you the most?

Stephanie Wolters: The biggest concern I have at the moment is that we don’t have reliable, objective, good sources of information anymore. We’ve always had propaganda; that’s not new — we had it in World War I and World War II, even before that; it’s just how governments work. But we don’t have trustworthy sources of information anymore, which means people aren’t making choices based on anything tangible or real.

I think for Africa in particular, which has never really had strong independent, objective media, one of the big problems and this is my other hat, running media organizations on the continent, is that a lot of people have grown up with the idea that you get your information from your phone, from TikTok, from Twitter, from Instagram, and that journalism isn’t really seen as a profession where someone does the hard work of verifying and presenting facts as objectively as possible. For me, that’s a massive worry, because I don’t think we’re anywhere near getting back to good independent media, I don’t think that’s in the interest of many of the key actors who pushed us into this situation to begin with. A lot flows from that disorientation.

Dominic Bowen: Very interesting — thanks for raising that, Stephanie, and thank you very much for coming on the International Risk Podcast today.

Stephanie Wolters: It’s been my pleasure, Dominic . Thank you.

Dominic Bowen: That was a great conversation with Stephanie Wolters, and I really appreciated hearing her thoughts on the security situation in eastern DRC, the role of regional and international actors, and what it means for people actually living through the conflict, the health crisis, the displacement, and all the challenges going on throughout the region right now. Today’s episode was produced and coordinated by Marine Christ. I’m Dominic Bowen, your host — thanks very much for listening. We’ll speak again in the next couple of days.