Trust and confidence will not be built overnight. Short-term challenges of immediate conflict need to be resolved to create sufficient political space for action. But there are several pathways for strengthening cross-border co-operation in the medium term which build on the foundations identified above, creating virtuous cycles of stability and prosperity. Even relatively limited steps could have a disproportionate impact in demonstrating that cooperation is both possible and mutually beneficial.
Locally owned ongoing dialogue
Mistrust is often born from misunderstanding. The success of the Wilton Park roundtable demonstrates that constructive discussion is possible despite regional tensions, and can lead to both practical policy options and enduring relationships between individuals across political and geographical divides, but is just a starting point. Dialogue across geographical, regional and political divides needs to be sustained. An on-going program of exchanges would over time help to develop a network of enablers across the region, prominent individuals and officials alongside the private sector and wider civil society, who share a commitment to finding peaceful pathways to mutual gain.
Follow up events could be stand-alone or in the margins of set piece events such as investment conferences or meetings of regional organisations – informal, out of the spotlight and without externally-set goals, engaging a consistent group of individuals and with regional voices in the lead on shaping the agenda with a view to practical steps forward. In addition, the ICGLR could be supported to move forward with a summit on regional growth and economic dialogue, with the aspiration of shaping a new shared vision of regional economic collaboration, with a particular focus on an enabling environment for investment and scaling-up regional businesses.
Accountability and access to information
Alongside high-level policy discussion, ground-level accountability and information- sharing is necessary to overcome popular mistrust and combat pervasive misinformation, notably in immediate borderland zones. Getting good information to borderland communities and cross-border traders would help tackle inter-community prejudice and stereotyping, enable traders to understand their rights, responsibilities and the market value of goods and services, and actively engage them in value chains.
Businesses also need to be better informed, both about market conditions and their legal rights and responsibilities. This could take place through active and well-supported chambers of commerce, that can also act to focus private sector views into effective lobbying of governments, notably on conducive business environments, both domestically and in the region. Businesses also need to be held to account, a role that chambers of commerce could take forward by developing and enforcing codes of conduct.
Achieving this would demand improved collection and sharing of accurate data on cross-border flows and other economic trends. Technology will have a vital role to play. The use of tracing technologies needs to be made mainstream in the DRC mining industry, and can monitor cross-border flows of people and goods, ensuring tax collection that is fair to traders while generating revenues for the state – currently only 5-7% of the DRC’s border crossings are digital, so there are significant gains to be made.
There will also need to be significant work to tackle the extra-regional players making the majority of profits from illicit and informal trade in the region – contrary to widespread perception of profiteering by Great Lakes states themselves, it is these ‘international bad actors’ that reap the majority of the benefit. State collaboration, notably between Financial Intelligence Units, will be vital, as will closing loopholes in the region’s formal banking system. The certification of mineral production would be a further positive step, building on the work being done by the ICGLR. Effective collaboration is necessary between industry bodies, producers and global consumers.
Support to cross border trade
The extent of cross-border community links and trade is one of the Great Lakes region’s greatest strengths – it is notable that joint Rwanda-DRC border posts continue to operate, despite the tensions between them. Trade is also vital to livelihoods and has thus continued even across areas contested borders and into conflict areas. But cross-border trade remains largely informal, exposed to extorsion, threats and violence. It is also largely carried out by women, who continue to face acute deprivation,[6] sexual and gender-based violence,[7] and political marginalisation across many parts of the region.[8] Support to traders and the transporters, farmers and middlemen that make up the informal cross-border economic ecosystem could help increase profits, allowing micro-enterprises to grow towards formalisation and create both sustainable jobs and tax revenues, funding services, education and infrastructure for enhanced value addition. It could also help to empower women to take a more prominent role in politics and peacebuilding.[9]
Incremental formalisation is in train – during the COVID-19 pandemic, with individuals unable to cross borders on foot, informal traders came together to consolidate their cargoes into trucks. This had the benefit of allowing sellers to negotiate better prices and minimised the opportunities for the imposition of informal ‘taxation’ by security and border officials – and demonstrates the multiple positive knock-on effects from empowered and informed traders. There are several steps that could be taken to achieve this. Key sectors could be identified for targeted support, notably in terms of the provision of infrastructure in transport, marketplaces and electrification. Access to finance is crucial, notably to support business growth in a volatile marketplace, making the provision of export guarantees for small scale traders an important goal.
There is also a clear need to harmonise regulatory frameworks across borders, notably around tax and customs, which would significantly improve the business climate and decrease barriers to scale and formalisation of trade. There is already a COMESA-SADC-EAC tripartite structure in place to work for policy harmonization, and TMA is also pushing free movement of goods and services. These efforts should be expanded and supported. The CEPGL, which already plays a key role in facilitating cross-border trade through issuing permits for visa-free travel between Rwanda, the DRC and Burundi, as well as managing existing cross-border energy sharing and production, is an example of successful cross-border collaboration despite recurrent and ongoing conflict between its members, and offers an existing and tested institutional framework for further collaboration in the most sensitive border regions of the DRC, Rwanda and Burundi.
Sectoral formalisation
Valuable lessons can be learned from areas in the Great Lakes where formalised cross-border commodity trade is managed peacefully. The Congolese copper-belt is exploited on an industrial scale, with mining, transporting and – increasingly – refining managed collaboratively by the DRC, Angola and Zambia, among others. The development of the Lobito Corridor[10] and the establishment of the ‘DRC-Zambia Battery Council’[11] for governance of developing value chains in green energy, are two examples of inter-government co-operation on a large scale. Such an approach could potentially be expanded to other cross-border areas in the Great Lakes.
A pilot project could be taken forward to formalise co-operative cross-border governance of targeted mineral or agricultural sectors, with the goal of establishing a sustainable framework for regional resource governance. Gold might provide a powerful entry point. The Great Lakes has 320 tons a year of refining capacity, but most regional production is exported – much of it illegally – minimising local value addition and benefits to either Great Lakes states or communities. Action to remedy this would be to the benefit of all. A ‘Great Lakes Gold Council’, for instance, could bring transparency to a sector that is subject to significant speculation and misinformation, and ensure the fair distribution of resources and trade. The ICGLR held an artisanal gold mining forum in September 2023 in Kinshasa. Another ICGLR forum, at the ministerial level, on mineral value addition and cross-border trade is scheduled in South Sudan in November 2024, which could provide a starting point.
Importantly, this would need to go beyond bilateral deals on access to resources or revenue sharing, for instance between the DRC and Rwanda or Uganda. Bringing in all stakeholders is vital to combat the misinformation and misunderstanding that has driven past inter-state competition. The major global destinations for mineral production – most importantly the UAE and China – would have to be part of the process.
A sectoral approach could potentially be a first step towards closer regional co-operation, with regional political ties following a ‘proof of concept’ effort in effective sectoral management that would demonstrate the mutual benefits of co-operation over competition. A first step could be a research project to learn lessons from the evolution of cross-border governance dynamics in the copper-belt, and bring them to a wider regional audience.
Harmonised regional organisations
The Great Lakes region needs active, well-resourced and mutually compatible regional organisations. The Great Lakes region does not have clearly defined geographical, economic or political boundaries – it has an economic zone extends across 12 states from South Africa to Sudan, reflected in the ICGLR’s membership, while conflict in Eastern DRC’s crisis zones directly engages just four, the DRC, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda, only three of which are members of the CEPGL. Each of these areas also overlaps with broader regional economic communities, notably the EAC, SADC and ECCAS, as well as COMESA and IGAD.
These different ‘Great Lakes regions’ face markedly different challenges, and regional institutions need to adapt to reflect this reality. The regional institutions currently in place have been built incrementally and piecemeal. They therefore have overlapping remits and divergent priorities, which can lead to confusion of responsibility, forum shopping, and competition for leadership. Institutions themselves also reflect tensions in their regions, often driven by economic competition.
Regional organisations will always reflect the politics of their member states, and cannot be expected to solve complex contestations between them, or enforce compliance. But without clear and transparent frameworks for regional dialogue, coherent action on cross-border challenges will remain extremely difficult, even when political goodwill exists to address them, and external support will be fractured and inefficient. Well-supported and appropriate regional organisations will not alone be sufficient to achieve long-term co-operation in the Great Lakes, but they are a necessary step for progress. Clarification and deconfliction between of the organisations currently operating in the region is urgently required.
A necessary first step in taking this forward would be a review of regional organisations, including mapping and analysis of the role, actions, capacity and resources of the regional organisations active in the Great Lakes, notably the CEPGL, ICGLR, EAC and SADC. This would enable informed discussions by member states, help ensure the appropriate allocation of responsibility for key issues, and identify capacity gaps, opportunities for collaboration or the need for new bodies.
[6] https://ungreatlakes.unmissions.org/womens-platform-1
[7] https://medicamondiale.org/en/where-we-empower-women/east-and-central-africa-great-lakes-region
[8] https://www.justicepaix.be/en/conflict-resolution-what-roles-do-women-play-in-the-peace-processes-of-the-great-lakes-region/
[9] This links to the implementation of ILO Convention 190: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/03/southern-africa-women-cross-border-traders/
[10] The Lobito Corridor is a strategic initiative linking Zambia and the DRC to Lobito port in Angola, including transport infrastructure, trade facilitation, and investments in agriculture value chains, energy, and training. It is based on an agreement between the governments of Angola, Zambia and the DRC, co-ordinated by SADC and with external support jointly led by the EU and US. See here for more detail.
[11] The DRC and Zambia agreed a governance framework for the development of an integrated value chain for the production vehicle batteries in April 2022, termed the ‘DRC-Zambia Battery Council, followed by a tri-partite MoU between the DRC, Zambia and the US in December the same year. Between them the DRC and Zambia hold 70% of global cobalt reserves, alongside large deposits of other minerals critical for battery production, and local processing and production could capture a significant proportion of a fast-growing global market and drive local development. This policy brief offers more detail on the challenges and opportunities.