War in the Congo: Rebels, Rwanda, and Resources – Special Conference

Ryan Cauwenberghs, initiator and director of the event, is an MSc student in African Studies with a background in Diplomacy, Security, and Conference Organisation in West and Central Africa.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has captured global headlines for decades, with the focus often on the country’s ongoing conflicts and rampant mineral exploitation, which together paint a troubling, partial, but undeniable image of the African state. The current crisis sees the expansion of the M23 militia, accompanied by Rwandan (RDF) forces, into Goma and Bukavu, the capitals of provinces North and South Kivu, followed by the forced acquisition of military bases and mining hubs.

On March 4, 2025, Oxford’s Africa Society hosted a pioneering Special Diplomatic Conference featuring H.E. Ambassador Ndolamb Ngokwey of the DRC who delivered an insightful address on the ongoing conflict in North and South Kivu. Ambassador Ngokwey opened the conference with a powerful reminder that the war, having claimed somewhere between five and eight million civilian lives in the DRC’s eastern provinces since 1996, represents not a simply distant problem for the international community, but a test of our collective resolve to protect the most afflicted populations. In this light, the ambassador's remarks concerning the developments of February 2025, culminating in the fall of major cities, Goma and Bukavu, underscored the urgency of this initiative in an environment of accelerating violence.

H.E. Ambassador Ndolamb Ngokwey Presenting At Conference

H.E. Ambassador Ndolamb Ngokwey is a lifelong diplomat and academic, whose career spans over 30 years with the United Nations, where he attained the rank of Assistant Secretary General and served notably as the Adjoint Special Representative during Côte d'Ivoire’s electoral crisis (2010-2011).  Prior to his appointment to the UK in 2023, Ngokwey played a pivotal role as a member of the Presidential Panel for the Mandate of President Tshisekedi at the African Union (AU). His years of experience and deep knowledge of regional diplomacy made him the perfect person to make sense of this immensely complex situation. 

Not only did he present the case of the Congolese state — he mounted a passionate defence of the Congolese people. 

Throughout his address, Ambassador Ngokwey outlined the devastating human toll of the ongoing calamity, citing evidence of M23 and RDF involvement in terrorist activities and civilian massacres, restating the manners in which diplomatic intervention had previously curbed Rwandan aggression in 2013, before providing a careful assessment of the current situation. 

Ryan Cauwenberghs and H.E. Ambassador Ndolamb Presenting at Event

The briefing analysed the responses of key global actors, including the UK, Belgium, the AU, and the UNSC, stopping on four critical axes of necessary international pressure: economic, military, social, and political. As Ambassador Ngokwey noted, multiple nations have successfully imposed consequences, with, for example, the UK pausing aid to Rwanda and the US Treasury sanctioning Rwandan officials.

The presentation concluded with an urgent appeal before the next generation of leaders in attendance:

“The time to act is now. Will the international community choose to uphold peace and justice, and help protect Congolese civilians? What will you, current and future leaders do?”

The conference welcomed over 140 participants representing approximately 50 nationalities, clearly demonstrating the strong international interest in Central Africa's challenges; the highly diverse audience included scholars from prestigious partner universities, members of the Congolese diaspora, Oxford students and professors, and a media team from the Pan-African news station AUKRADIO.

The notably strong turnout showed, if nothing else, that given the opportunity, young scholars are eager to engage with the political and humanitarian issues at stake across the continent.

Closing on an extended Q&A session, participants were invited to raise any inquiries and concern. Attendees asked questions concerning France's relations to Rwanda’s military, the ineffective integration of rebels into the Congolese army, and alleged minerals-for-protection negotiations with the US, demonstrating a solid basis of pre-existing knowledge.

The ambassador answered many of the questions with as much depth and applicability as he could, though some, particularly patterning to the DRC's response to M23, remained somewhat unclear. The sentiment around his responses from the audience were mixed, reflecting both the complexities of the situation and the students’ eagerness to tap into more solutions and ideas about the conflict. Nonetheless, several attendees, particularly those from the DRC, were impressed and content with the event.

Sagel Julia Kundieko, a Congolese student (DPhil Neuroscience) at Oxford stated:

"The ambassador's address was truly enlightening, putting things into perspective and supporting his points with real-time facts and figures. I particularly appreciated hearing about the situation in DRC directly from Congolese people. I believe we should organize more events like this in the future to raise awareness of the war as well as clear up misconceptions about the country."

Goma native Aquilas Koko Ngomo (MSc Diplomatic Studies) remarked that,

“The conference on the war of invasion and aggression of the DRC by the M23/AFC rebel movement supported by the Rwandan army was a unique opportunity to make students, researchers and academics from Oxford University understand different dimensions of the very deadly conflict of which the DRC has long been the victim on the part of Rwanda.”

Similarly, Floris Gast (MSc African Studies) stated,

"His approach fostered an unusually dynamic exchange, allowing attendees—including myself—to directly engage with a seasoned diplomat and former UN Under-Secretary-General. His call for economic and moral sanctions against Rwanda underscored a growing assertion of African agency in shaping the international discourse on conflicts that have too often been framed through external lenses.

It's important to recognize that, as a diplomat during such a challenging time, his role was distinct from that of a politician, and his responses reflected the complexities of the situation"

In organising the event, we also arranged pre- and post- conference meetings between the DRC’s delegation and leading members of Oxford’s Africa network, ensuring a durable relation between the two entities into the foreseeable future.

H.E. Ambassador Ndolamb Ngokwey, AfriSoc Committee and Oxford Students in Pre-Conference Meeting

The event marked not only a crucial opportunity to address three decades of inverse institutional pressure and diplomatic outreach, but also a first step towards fostering deeper, more sincere relations between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the future leaders shaped within the United Kingdom’s higher education system.

As Nina Hardy, President of the Africa Society, so aptly expressed in her closing remarks, the continent abounds with difficult conversations waiting to be had. This event once again demonstrates that the Oxford Africa Society serves as a vital platform for important continental discussions.