Bukavu

Bukavu was established in 1901 by the Congo Free State, which became the Belgian Congo in 1908, on the peninsulas at the southern end of Lake Kivu, and in 1927 was renamed Costermansville after Paul Costermans, a vice governor-general. Europeans were drawn to the altitude and the climate, and the town became a comfortable colonial centre, with villas in a distinctive Art Deco-influenced style along the lake, a cathedral, hotels and gardens, serving the coffee, tea and quinine estates of the Kivu highlands. The name was changed back to Bukavu in 1953.

After independence the town was caught up in the country's early crises, and under Mobutu it declined along with the rest of the state, though it remained the provincial capital of Kivu and then of South Kivu. The great rupture came in 1994, when the genocide in Rwanda sent hundreds of thousands of refugees into camps around the city and the lake; in 1996 the camps were broken up by a Rwandan-backed rebellion that captured Bukavu on its march west, and the Second Congo War followed from 1998.

The decades since have brought repeated fighting. Rebel forces briefly seized the city in 2004, and the surrounding province has never been free of armed groups. In February 2025, shortly after the fall of Goma, M23 fighters took Bukavu. Through all of it the city has kept growing, absorbing people displaced from the hills, so that the compact colonial town is now the crowded centre of a far larger city.

Bukavu is a Shi city in a Shi region: Mashi is the language of the hills around Lake Kivu's southern shore, spoken alongside the Congolese Swahili of the street and the French of offices and universities. The Lega, Bembe, Fuliru, Havu and Banyamulenge communities of South Kivu are all represented in the city, and its markets and churches are among the places where those worlds meet.

The Catholic Church has been central here since the colonial period — the archdiocese, its cathedral and its schools and hospitals are among the city's oldest institutions — and Protestant and Pentecostal churches have grown strongly. Civil society is unusually dense for a Congolese provincial capital: human rights organisations, women's associations and research and medical institutions have documented the conflict and supported its survivors, work most visible in the reputation of the Panzi hospital and its founder.

It is also a student city, with several universities and institutes, and the young population supports musicians, rappers, choirs and painters who perform in church halls, bars and cultural centres. Football is a shared passion, and the lakeside terraces are where the city socialises in the evening. Bukavu's own image of itself is bound up with its hills and its lake views, and with a sense of being cut off from Kinshasa and closer, in practice, to the countries across the border.

Bukavu has grown from a colonial town of a few thousand to a city with an estimated urban population of about 1,133,000 in 2021, most of that growth driven by families moving in from the countryside for safety or work. The three communes — Ibanda on the peninsulas, Kadutu in the valley and Bagira on the western hills — are built up steep slopes, which makes landslides a recurring danger after heavy rain and places great pressure on water and drainage.

The economy is trade, administration, education and aid. Produce from the hills comes into the markets daily, minerals from South Kivu's artisanal sites pass through the city's traders, and the border with Rwanda carries a constant flow of small commerce, much of it carried on foot. Universities, hospitals, churches and international organisations provide most formal employment, and a large informal economy of stalls, workshops and motorbike taxis carries the rest.

Daily life is shaped by the terrain and by scarcity: long uphill walks, crowded minibuses, irregular electricity and water, and queues at the border in the early morning. Since the events of early 2025 the city's banks, flights and administration have been affected and humanitarian needs have grown, and for many households displacement, high prices and interrupted schooling are the everyday reality.

The food of Bukavu is highland food. Ugali, a stiff dough of maize or cassava flour, is the base of most meals, eaten with beans cooked slowly with onion and palm oil, or with sombe, the pounded cassava leaves stewed with groundnut or small dried fish that appear on tables almost daily. Potatoes, sweet potatoes and matoke, steamed cooking banana, come down from the hills of Kabare and Walungu.

The lake gives the city its specialities. Sambaza, the small sardine-like fish of Lake Kivu, are fried whole and crisp and eaten by the handful, and tilapia is grilled over charcoal or simmered in tomato and onion. Roadside braziers turn out goat and beef brochettes with fried plantain or chips, roasted maize is sold on the street, and everything can be lifted with pili-pili, the hot chilli paste.

South Kivu grows well-regarded arabica coffee on the slopes above the lake, washed at cooperatives around the shore and on Idjwi, though most of it is exported. Banana beer brewed in the surrounding villages is drunk at ceremonies and in rural bars, bottled lager is the city drink, and strong sweet tea, sometimes with milk and ginger, is taken through the day.