How a country with a population around 5 times and an economy 30 times smaller managed to outmanoeuvre South Africa, pushing it to the fringes of the continent’s affairs at the worst possible moment.
But it has been a long time coming…
As inchoate pieces fall into place amidst the fog the war in the eastern DR Congo, one that has pitched Rwandan-backed March 23 (M23) rebels against the fast-retreating DRC army (FARDC) and its allied militias, it appears that nothing short of a geopolitical earthquake has occurred that will reverberate on the continent for years, maybe even decades to come. Apart from the war’s most obvious loser, the DRC, the zero-sum struggle has been Rwanda’s boon mainly at South Africa’s cost, all but casting the latter to the fringes of African affairs for the foreseeable future.
Rwanda dominates not just in eastern DRC but following effective bilateral peacebuilding deployments in the CAR and Mozambique, it now enjoys influence over large swathes of central, east and southern Africa. Darren Olivier, director of the African Defence Review and a prominent voice, predicted last month in a Business Day article, a South African economic media publication, “This is the end of South Africa as a regional power for the next decade at least.”
The flash point may have been the capitulation of the SAMIDRC mission – the southern African-led mission to provide support for FARDC and dominated by SANDF (South Africa’s military acronym) end-January leaving 14 dead and 189 reported injured as Goma fell to the M23 rebels. But the genesis of the problem goes back a decade at least. A culmination of repeated errors and neglected warnings. The disaster was even augured in 2015 by a government-commissioned defence review, following another disastrous peacekeeping foray in CAR two years earlier, where 15 SANDF soldiers met a similar fate.
As far back as January 2024, a year before the disaster in Goma and only a month into the SAMIDRC deployment, Thomas Mandrup, associate Professor at Stellenbosch University, gave a detailed foreshadowing in The Conversation, an Africa-wide publication, of just how dangerously unprepared SANDF was to face the well-equipped Rwandan-backed militia in the DRC. Without any operational air support, essential for such missions, the SANDF was exposed from the start, as it had been previously in its Southern African Development Community (SADC)-sponsored mission in Mozambique, having to rely on notoriously bad roads in the DRC and on the UN MONUSCO mission for foreign air support.
In any other modern open and well-functioning democracy, repeated failures that led to the deaths of military personnel on two separate occasions separated by an ocean of time would have been met with fierce public criticism. An outcry that would have demanded executive-level investigations.
Instead of a cry though, there was a collective whimper and retreat. Given an opportunity to begin to reshape SANDF with a large fiscal injection during recent budgetary wranglings within the government of national unity (GNU), during March and April 2025, the below-inflation increases for military spending hardly raised a defiant voice and all but raised the proverbial white flag for the future of peacekeeping missions in Africa.
And it is not just a retreat on the military front.
Attempts to restart negotiations between the warring parties began on 1st April after Angola’s President, Joao Lourenco who had been coordinating peace talks under the Luanda Process up to then, effectively threw in the towel. The talks had been announced jointly by the EAC (East African Community) and SADC and are led by a group of ex-heads of state from Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria and CAR.
South Africa’s former President Kgalema Motlanthe who had been invited, was notably absent.
Much has been made of the SANDF’s shortcomings in the DRC and Mozambique, but not enough on the disastrous foreign policy errors that underpin them. The government’s muddled, even quixotic international objectives have stretched the military in too many directions, made worse by underfunding. SANDF is used for border control (to which almost half of its personnel is deployed), civilian support functions, especially to fill the vacuum left behind by an ineffective police force, as well as international peacekeeping duties. When conflated with a lack of money and governmental neglect, it inevitably leads to the disastrous events at the end of January this year.
Always cautious and only acting by consensus through multilateral instruments, South Africa’s ability to influence events in Africa has been waning for a while. Especially as those very multilateral instruments wither in the brutish glare of the current global climate. It has neglected its affairs on the continent at a time when stronger relations and the African Free Trade agreement might provide the only real solace in an increasingly hostile world where trade wars and geopolitical fragmentation seem to be the order of the day. South Africa appears more interested in fostering relations with big powers who mostly perceive it as a mere footnote in their priorities.
Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s President and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) government he leads, saw the writing on the wall long ago and began acting accordingly.
This foresight has now transformed Rwanda’s military, the RDF, into the go-to force for an African country whose stability is threatened in eastern, central or southern Africa. It has also given Rwanda some measure of protection from the worst of sanctions because of its involvement in the DRC. Something that Kagame probably planned for, already exercising that leverage during the first M23 incursion back in 2012-13 when Rwanda threatened to pull its peacekeepers from the UN mission in Darfur (UNAMID) following threats from the EU and U.S..
It invested shrewdly in a lean but highly efficient military force, one backed by clearly defined foreign policy goals. The RDF is more than half the size of the SANDF at around 35,000, and spending was around USD$ 178.5 million in 2023 according to World Bank figures. In contrast, the SANDF’s bloated budget came in close to USD$ 2.78 billion in 2023, of which 65% went on wages buoyed by a rare case of a unionised military force.
Rwanda and South Africa’s dichotomous paths are strangely intertwined.
They began with similar visions and approaches to African intervention, both forged out of concurrent events in April and May of 1994. Events that were polar opposites in nature: South Africa’s first post-independence elections and Rwanda’s genocide. Both countries proactively sought to intervene on the continent through multilateral peacekeeping missions and made Africa’s stability part of a defining mission. When the then newly formed AU (African Union) in 2002 itself sought to find African solutions to African problems, both Rwanda and South Africa became important troop contributors. From 1994 onwards, they were at various times part of peacekeeping missions in Burundi, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Liberia, Darfur, the DRC and Somalia.
But there were subtle differences in approach from the start.
For South Africa, it was always an altruistic side-project; To be endured and burdened both in military and fiscal terms, and increasingly a simulacrum of Western intervention elsewhere. For Rwanda though, it was always a defining, existential goal as it fought for legitimacy on the international stage out of the ashes of 1994.
Initially, AU missions were highly successful, especially in Darfur and Somalia and gave hope that at last, Africa would begin to carve out its own geopolitical autonomy. But money for operations continued to flow from outside the continent. When those funds began to dry up after the Financial Crisis in 2008 coupled with changing priorities in the West, the effectiveness and scope of AU missions began to fade. There hasn’t been a new peacekeeping mission in Africa since 2014. The AU mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) has been unable to secure funding since it began in January this year. A decision has been delayed again until May 2025 and with the U.S. recently abstaining, its future looks increasingly bleak.
Kagame began to recognise the limitations of multilateral peacekeeping missions and at the same time became increasingly frustrated with the country’s donor dependence. He began to seek out ways to try and incorporate Rwanda’s drive for African security with its own economic independence. In a 2022 paper, “Rwanda’s New Military Diplomacy” for DGRIS, a division of the French Ministry of Defence looking at international relations and strategy, Federico Donelli cited this as an important reason as to why Rwanda began to pivot. “From Kagame and the RDF’s perspective, the way to overcome its structural weaknesses – lack of natural resources and economic dependence – is through greater cooperation with other African states. This, in turn, is influenced by Kigali’s conception of African security.”
When the opportunity therefore arose in late 2020, at the request of CAR’s President Touadéra and faced with almost certain annihilation by rebel forces, Kagame was ready to deploy bilateral forces with alacrity. Along with Wagner (a Russian mercenary outfit subsumed by the Russian military in recent years), the RDF fought back rebels and recaptured towns up to the Cameroonian border in the west, and re-establishing supply lines and relieving the capital Bangui in the process.
This was quickly followed by another request from Mozambique, which in early 2021 faced a worsening situation in the Cabo Delgado region. Islamic insurgents captured Palma in April, a hydrocarbon centre where French Total Energies had been developing a USD$20 billion LNG project. Then-Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi made a discreet visit to Kigali. Kagame was only too happy to deploy troops. Kagame first sent a few 100 reconnaissance personnel, followed by a 1000-strong deployment almost concurrently with the SADC mission deployed in July that year.
Unlike SAMIM, the RDF engaged with the insurgents almost immediately. ACLED (a conflict-monitoring NPO) reported 27 battle events in the two months after the RDF arrived. The Rwandans quickly re-established a 50km safety zone around Palma that gave Total Energies the freedom to restart its operations. When SAMIM was eventually wound down in mid-2024 to the backdrop of widespread criticism as to the mission’s cost and reported ineffectiveness, the RDF compensated by deploying an extra 2500. It is now the sole external guarantor of security in Mozambique.
Both bilateral deployments were prefaced by wide-ranging agreements. These not only guaranteed the RDF’s autonomy of operation but also increased economic ties with the CAR and Mozambique, mainly in areas of infrastructure, transport, mining and agriculture. In CAR, an agreement signed in August 2021 gave various incentives in mining and agriculture, including concessions in gold mines and a 10-year tax vacation for entrepreneurs setting up in rural areas. Rwandair, the national airline carrier, began making regular flights between Kigali and CAR’s capital, Bangui.
Many in South Africa were surprised by the RDF deployment in Mozambique at the same time as the SAMIM one. This was especially true within the ANC government that had presumed that deep ties between the ruling FRELIMO and ANC that go back to the independence struggle would guarantee South Africa’s predominance through historical bonds, as well as links through SADC. But this was trumped by strengthening economic ties between Rwanda and Mozambique that had fostered trust between the two nations way before Nyusi reached out to Kagame for assistance. Coupled of course with the RDF’s reputation that by then had been sealed in its bilateral operation in the CAR. An economic partnership had been growing between the two ever since Kagame visited Maputo in 2016, and an MoU was signed between the Rwandan Development Board and Mozambique’s Investment and Export Promotion Agency.
In South Africa, the economic benefits that flow to Rwanda are treated suspiciously. Piers Pigou, director of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), a Johannesburg-based think-tank, cites “many unanswered questions about the agreements between Maputo and Kigali relating to the Rwandan security deployment in Cabo Delgado. The total lack of transparency fuels ongoing speculation about the types of concessions, contracts and forward mortgages on the LNG revenue stream that are being secured by Rwandan interests.”
There is indeed a lack of transparency. Some of the biggest Rwandan beneficiaries are the many subsidiaries of a company called Crystal Ventures that has close ties to the upper echelons of the RPF and Paul Kagame himself. But from Bangui, to rural areas of CAR to northern Mozambique, small to medium Rwandan enterprises have thrived. The ties are far-reaching across a spectrum of companies of all shapes and sizes. Rwanda has also gained a reputation on the ground, especially in Mozambique, for public infrastructure work in the territories they occupy. As Donelli elaborates in his DGRI paper, “Rwandan personnel work with the inhabitants of the areas under their supervision to create a liveable environment. In practice, RDF promotes projects aimed at improving the living conditions of local communities, such as rebuilding infrastructure.” This principle has served Rwanda well and is why the RDF was always the go-to force for locals with information rather than SAMIM when the two cohabited in Mozambique.
Through its bilateral missions, Rwanda has evolved into a reliable proxy force able to execute meaningful peacebuilding missions responsibly for the EU in Africa. And not only that, Rwanda has done so at the expense of mercenary forces and in particular Wagner. It is seen as a bulwark against Russian expansion in Africa in the west. In the CAR, the RDF actually pulled out of the operations with Wagner after they felt there to be an unacceptable level of civilian casualties. Rwanda saw the co-engagement as going against their principles. And later on in September last year, Africa Intelligence (an Africa-wide publication) reported that Wagner had become so exasperated by the mining concessions being won by Rwandan companies that they stormed the Ministry for Mines in Bangui looking for documents granting gold exploration rights to a Rwandan company that were too close to their own mining concession for comfort.
It is why, for all the headlines of sanctions for its DRC foray, the West has hardly lifted a collective finger. The EU has slapped sanctions on a few high-level individuals in both M23 and the RDF operating in the DRC, a gold refinery in Kigali and the Rwandan Mines, Petroleum and Gas Board, but left its EU stipend for training Mozambican forces intact. All in all, Bloomberg Africa reported that as of the beginning of March, Rwanda lost about USD$ 108 million in development aid. That amount doesn’t even make up 10% of the entire development budget flowing into the country. The cuts came mainly from Canada, Germany and Britain that are probably more interested in a show of superficial force upholding the international world order while an eye on NATO and Ukraine rather than punishing Rwanda in any meaningful way.
And the U.S., in all its newfound transactional zeal, has recently declared that it may forge an agreement with the DRC offering security assistance in exchange for mining rights and access to a deep-water port development and access on the Atlantic. While it may look ominous on paper for Rwanda, the reality is that the previous Biden administration has been here before and failed to encourage U.S. mining conglomerates to engage in the DRC, given the tough and corrupt business environment and the dysfunctionality of the DRC government. The Trump administration already got a taste of this in early March when the DRC delegation, including ministers from the government, failed to show up to a meeting scheduled to discuss the matter with U.S. House Committee members. The Rwandans were there in force. In time, the U.S. may even come to view Rwanda’s arrogation as more aligned with its own interests, certainly in its own approach to Greenland, for example.
All in all, when the dust settles, what has been described as Rwanda’s misadventure in the eastern DRC with atrocities to boot may soon be transformed into a thriving new proxy state. One that will span the length and breadth of the Great Lakes region and from which Rwanda – with a long history of stable and non-corrupt government, could finally pacify and bring prosperity to, and in so doing, win over its populace, long-neglected by DRC government elites over 1500km away to the west in Kinshasa. Reports out of Goma all point to M23 settling down and starting to try and govern in the city.
And if Rwanda can achieve this, it may even legitimise the revenue streams that flow from the eastern DRC and help turn a landlocked, resource-poor country that mostly depends on multilateral bank loans into an independently wealthy and export-dependent nation – probably one of the driving motivations of the invasion in the first place for Kagame. For all the talk of sanctions, it is a mere drop in the ocean compared to what Rwanda will gain from seized mining operations in eastern DRC. Projected gold export revenues (that mainly flow to the UAE) are set to increase from USD$ 556 million in 2022 to USD$ 2.3 billion by 2026. Its coltan exports (from which tantalum is processed, essential for everything from smartphones, computers to EVs) ballooned by 50% just between 2022 and 2023. And that was before M23 seized one of the largest coltan concessions in the world in April 2024 near Goma.
In South Africa, outside of reporting on the SANDF’s failings, the fiasco in eastern DRC has been framed as one of democracy versus autocracy. One of a malicious dictatorial regime – a one-party state in all but name – against a democratic country that abides by international law and tries to uphold it. Certainly, there is a case to be made here. But with a dysfunctional military force and under the shadow of a new world order, it was always unlikely to succeed.
South Africa, executing an African foreign policy based on long-outdated assumptions, has failed to notice the seismic changes in its own backyard,. and paid a dear price for it. In the more transactional world we live in today, Rwanda – a small landlocked country – instead has taken advantage and excelled beyond expectations. And at a time when looking inwards and forging closer ties with other African states may be the only real hope for the continent as aid dries up and tariffs and trade wars begin to bite.