However,despite these challenges, there is a strong foundation on which to build a different future. Much of the region is peaceful and working well, and is already highly interdependent. Large-scale trading has continued across even the most contentious borders, through successive waves of conflict and displacement, driven by cultural ties and mutual need. Though trade remains predominantly informal, there is a robust cultural and economic connective tissue in place across international borders in the Great Lakes, and a large population of traders, buyers and brokers with transnational roots and connections.
The private sector is also increasingly assertive, driving the construction of key infrastructure regional investment and the local delivery of services in the borderlands. The local private sector has been at the forefront building new roads in Goma, DRC, for instance, and there are now three companies competing with the national provider to supply electricity to its population.[4] The Kenyan banking sector is heavily invested in the DRC, with Equity Bank now the largest in the country, and regional interlinkages for power, oil and data are all accelerating. North Kivu could be producing more energy than it needs in as little as three years and exporting it to a power-hungry region.
Further, there is also a strong foundation for inter-state co-operation in the region. The architecture for regional co-operation is already in place; agreements have already been signed governing trade, cooperation and mutual security, and significant groundwork has been done to agree priority areas for investment and integration,[5] though agreements are not for the moment well-communicated, understood, integrated or implemented. As noted, regional institutions have significant overlap and suffer from conflicts of interest.
In some areas, notably the Congolese copper belt, long-standing co-operation on the exploitation and trade of mineral resources between Great Lakes states is well-established, peaceful and mutually profitable. This is a real-world proof that conflictual cross-border relations are neither inevitable nor necessary, and that co-operation can bring benefits to all. In others, regional states have continued to collaborate on cross-border issues, most strikingly through the CEPGL, which has maintained a joint secretariat between the DRC, Rwanda and Burundi through years of conflict and political fractures at Head of State level, and has continued to work on cross-border energy generation and transmission as well as issuing temporary permits for free movement of populations living in the border areas. The Great Lakes is already deeply interdependent.
[4] Virunga Energy, for example, was supplying over 25% of Goma’s on-grid provision in 2022. See Espoir and wa Rusaati, Electricity Access In Goma And Bukavu City, Democratic Republic Of Congo, International Journal of Progressive Sciences and Technologies (IJPSAT), June 2023.
[5] For instance, 2016 Private Sector Investment Conference, held in Kinshasa at the request of regional Heads of State and organised jointly by the UN, ICGLR and Congolese government, identified 25 flagship cross-border projects that could attract external investment and boost regional integration. A follow up conference is due to be held in Kigali but has not yet taken place due to political tensions.