Rwanda’s alleged support for armed groups in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is blocking economic development in the region, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi said.
Tshisekedi said early in his administration he’d approached all of Congo’s nine neighbors, including Rwanda, to propose development partnerships “that would bring peace and guarantee stability” in the region.
“It is obviously because of certain belligerent neighbors that this is unfortunately impossible to achieve,” he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday. “Today’s problem of insecurity in the Great Lakes region is called Rwanda.”
Congo’s government and United Nations experts say Rwanda is supporting an insurgency by the M23 rebel group in eastern Congo that has caused the displacement of more than 450,000 people. The armed group says it is fighting for the rights of Congolese of Rwandan heritage.
Eastern Congo has been wracked by conflict since the 1990s, when violence from the aftermath of Rwanda’s civil war and genocide spread across the border. More than 100 armed groups remain active in the region. Some, like the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, have links to the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that left at least 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead.
Rwanda’s government criticized Tshisekedi’s remarks.
“There is literally no problem in the DRC that President Tshisekedi does not blame on Rwanda,” government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo said by text message. “What will promote economic development in this region is for DRC to stop its support for its over 130 illegal armed groups, including the genocidal militia FDLR, and to allow Congolese refugees to return home safely.”
Tshisekedi was speaking on a panel about developing clean-energy infrastructure when he was asked about ongoing peace talks between Rwanda and Congo to end the violence.
The two countries signed a series of agreements in 2021 to encourage trade and provide Congolese gold and coltan for processing in Rwanda.
Congo’s government announced a deal last week with an Abu Dhabi-based company to buy Congo’s hand-dug gold, saying it was in part because the deal with Rwanda broke down.
Read: Congo Signs Deal to Ship Over $1.5 Billion of Gold a Year to UAE
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