Goma

Goma grew from a small settlement on the lava plain at the north end of Lake Kivu into a colonial-era border and trading post, laid out opposite Gisenyi on the Rwandan side and serving the coffee, tea and quinine estates of the Belgian-ruled highlands. Its position at the foot of the volcanoes and on the lake made it the administrative centre of the Kivu highlands, and after independence it became the capital of North Kivu province.

The city's modern history has been dominated by what has arrived from across the border. In 1994, after the genocide in Rwanda, hundreds of thousands of refugees poured into camps on the lava fields around Goma, and a cholera epidemic killed thousands within weeks; the camps also sheltered soldiers and militiamen who had taken part in the killing, and their presence drew the rebellion that swept the country in 1996. The Second Congo War began from Goma in 1998, and for years the city was held by rebel movements rather than by Kinshasa.

Nature has been almost as disruptive. Nyiragongo erupted in 1977 and again in January 2002, when lava poured through the centre of the city, destroyed a large part of the built-up area and covered the northern end of the airport runway; a further eruption in May 2021 destroyed houses on the northern edge and prompted a mass evacuation. The M23 briefly took Goma in November 2012, and in January 2025 the group captured the city again after heavy fighting. Goma today is far larger than its infrastructure was ever designed for.

Goma is a young, crowded and unusually mixed city. Congolese Swahili is the language of the street, French is used in offices and schools, and Kinyarwanda, Kinande, Kihunde and Mashi are heard in the markets, reflecting communities from across the Kivus and from over the border. Questions of land, origin and belonging run through social life here as they do through the wider region.

Churches are at the centre of the week — Catholic and Protestant congregations above all, alongside fast-growing Pentecostal churches whose choirs and all-night services are a familiar part of the soundscape — and they also run many of the schools and hospitals. Aid agencies and the United Nations mission have had a large presence for decades, which has shaped the city's economy, its rents and its social divides.

For all that, Goma has one of the liveliest creative scenes in the country. Musicians, rappers, dancers, painters and photographers work in studios and cultural centres around the centre, the annual Festival Amani has brought performers each February from across the region to the city, and film and theatre collectives have documented life in the Kivus for audiences elsewhere. Football is followed intensely, bars along the main avenues fill in the evenings, and residents speak of their city with a defiant pride that sits alongside a long and clear-eyed familiarity with crisis.

Goma has grown from a town of tens of thousands at independence to a city of some 782,000 people in 2024, swollen repeatedly by arrivals from the countryside; the displaced live in camps on the western and northern edges and with host families across the two communes, Goma and Karisimbi. The result is a city of unpaved lava streets, dense quarters of small plots, and a handful of lakeside avenues of villas and hotels.

The economy runs on trade, transport and services. Goods cross the Rwandan border at the Grande Barrière and Petite Barrière in both directions all day, produce comes down from the Masisi and Rutshuru hills, minerals from artisanal sites in North Kivu pass through traders' offices, and aid organisations, banks, schools and small workshops employ much of the formal workforce. A great many people live by daily trade, portering and motorbike taxi work.

Days start early, with markets open at first light and motorbikes crowding the roundabouts. Electricity and water supplies are intermittent, and generators and jerrycans are part of every household's arrangements. Since the events of early 2025 the city's administration, banks, flights and border traffic have all been affected, and the humanitarian situation in and around Goma — displacement, shortages and disease outbreaks — remains the defining feature of daily life for a large part of the population.

Goma eats what the Kivu highlands grow. Beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cooking bananas and maize come down from Masisi and Rutshuru, and the staple plate is ugali, a stiff dough of maize or cassava flour, eaten with a sauce. Sombe — cassava leaves pounded and simmered long with palm oil, groundnut or small dried fish — appears at most meals, as does a thick bean stew, and matoke, steamed cooking banana, is common.

The lake supplies the city's best-known dishes. Sambaza, small sardine-like fish found in Lake Kivu, are fried whole and eaten by the handful with a squeeze of lime as a bar snack, and tilapia is grilled over charcoal or cooked in a tomato sauce. Goat and beef brochettes grilled at roadside braziers, served with fried potatoes or plantain, are the standard evening street food, and everything is seasoned with pili-pili, the fierce local chilli.

The hills above the lake grow respected arabica coffee, some of it washed at cooperatives in South Kivu and around the lake shore, though much of the crop leaves the country to be sold elsewhere. Banana beer is brewed at home in the surrounding countryside, bottled Congolese lager is the usual drink in the city's bars, and strong sweet tea, sometimes made with milk, is drunk through the day.