Goma, Bukavu & the Kivus

The Kivu highlands have long been densely farmed. Before colonial rule they were home to kingdoms and chiefdoms of the Shi around Bukavu, the Nande and Hunde in the north and many smaller groups, with Kinyarwanda-speaking communities living on both sides of what became the Rwandan border. In the 19th century Swahili-Arab traders pushed into Maniema from the east; David Livingstone reached Nyangwe on the Lualaba in 1871 and witnessed a massacre of market-goers by traders' gunmen there.

Under Belgian rule Europeans settled the cool highlands to grow coffee, tea and quinine, Bukavu was built as Costermansville, and Albert National Park, today's Virunga, was created in 1925. The colonial authorities also encouraged Rwandan settlement in Masisi, laying the ground for later disputes over land and citizenship. In 1961 thirteen Italian airmen serving the UN were killed at Kindu.

In 1994, after the genocide in Rwanda, more than a million Hutu refugees, among them soldiers and militiamen responsible for the killing, poured into camps around Goma and Bukavu, where cholera killed thousands. In 1996 a rebellion backed by Rwanda and Uganda broke up the camps and marched on Kinshasa, and in 1998 the Second Congo War began from Goma. Armed groups persisted after 2003. The M23, formed in 2012 by mutinous ex-rebels, briefly took Goma in November 2012, was defeated in 2013 and resurged from late 2021. UN Group of Experts reports have documented Rwandan troops and support for the M23, which Rwanda denies, pointing to the threat of the FDLR, a Rwandan Hutu armed group. In January and February 2025 an M23 offensive brought heavy fighting to Goma and then Bukavu. A US-brokered agreement between the DR Congo and Rwanda was signed in Washington in June 2025, and Qatar-mediated talks between the government and the M23 produced a declaration of principles in Doha in July, but fighting continued across the Kivus.

Swahili is the common language of the east, spoken in a Congolese form alongside French, Kinyarwanda, Mashi, Kinande and many others. The main communities include the Nande of Butembo and Beni, known as traders, the Hunde and Nyanga, the Hutu and Tutsi Banyarwanda, the Shi and Lega of South Kivu, the Bembe and Fuliru around Uvira, and the Banyamulenge of the South Kivu high plateaux. Questions of land, identity and belonging between these communities lie beneath much of the violence.

The Lega of South Kivu and Maniema are known for the Bwami society, whose ranked members used small ivory and wooden figures and masks in initiation. Goma has a young music and arts scene, and its Amani festival brought musicians from across the region to the city.

Most people are Christian, with strong Catholic and Protestant churches that also run schools and hospitals, and there are Muslim communities in Maniema, Kindu and the cities. Civil society groups, churches and women's organisations have played a large role in documenting abuses and supporting survivors of sexual violence.

Goma and Bukavu are the two largest cities, each with around a million people or more, their populations swollen by people displaced from the countryside. Butembo, Beni and Uvira are the other big towns, and Kindu is the capital of Maniema. Goma faces Gisenyi in Rwanda across a busy border, and cross-border trade shapes daily life.

The Kivus are rich farmland — beans, bananas, potatoes, coffee, tea and dairy cattle — and rich in minerals. Coltan, tin, tungsten and gold are dug by hand in thousands of artisanal sites, including the large coltan workings at Rubaya in Masisi, and UN investigators have repeatedly found that armed groups tax and control parts of this trade. Maniema has tin and gold mining and forest farming.

Everyday routines revolve around markets, motorbike taxis and minibuses, and long walks to fields when roads are unsafe. Displacement camps, checkpoints, power and water shortages, and the disruption of banks and schools during fighting define the present for millions of people.

The highland diet is built on beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cooking bananas and ugali, a stiff dough of maize or cassava flour. Sombe, cassava leaves pounded and cooked, appears at most meals, and roasted maize and grilled goat brochettes are the street snacks.

Lake Kivu supplies sambaza, small sardine-like fish fried whole and eaten as a bar snack, and tilapia. The region grows respected arabica coffee on the slopes above the lake, and tea plantations lie in the hills.

Banana beer is brewed at home, and bottled beer is drunk in the cities. In Maniema the food turns to the lowland staples of rice, cassava, palm oil, river fish and forest produce.

Goma lies on old lava flows at the foot of Nyiragongo, whose eruptions of 1977, 2002 and 2021 sent lava towards and into the city; when the park is open, an overnight climb to the crater rim looks down on the lava lake. Virunga National Park, founded in 1925 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, protects the mountain gorillas of the Mikeno slopes, the Nyamulagira volcano, the savannas and hippos of Lake Edward and the glaciers of the Rwenzori. More than 175 of its rangers had been killed in the line of duty by 2018.

South of Goma, Lake Kivu stretches to Bukavu, whose peninsulas are lined with colonial villas, and the island of Idjwi in the middle of the lake belongs to South Kivu. Just west of Bukavu, Kahuzi-Biega National Park, named after two dormant volcanoes, protects the eastern lowland gorilla, also called Grauer's gorilla, in montane and lowland forest.

West of the highlands, Maniema is forest and river country: Kindu sits on the Lualaba, the upper Congo, and Nyangwe upstream recalls the history of Livingstone and the Swahili-Arab traders.