The Second Congo War, Africa's deadliest conflict

Date

1998–2003 (Second Congo War)

Category

Military & conflict

Region

Central Africa (Democratic Republic of the Congo)

Era

Contemporary

Significance

Beginning on 2 August 1998 and formally ending on 18 July 2003, the Second Congo War in the Democratic Republic of the Congo drew in around nine African states and dozens of armed groups, earning the name 'Africa's World War'.

Rooted in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the 1996–97 war that toppled Mobutu Sese Seko, the conflict pitted the Kinshasa government and its allies against Rwandan- and Ugandan-backed rebels, with fighting concentrated in the resource-rich east. Although large-scale combat formally ended with a transitional power-sharing government, violence persisted in the eastern provinces for years afterward. Estimates of the death toll vary widely and are contested; an influential 2008 International Rescue Committee survey put excess deaths at around 5.4 million, mostly from disease and malnutrition rather than direct violence, which would make it the deadliest conflict since the Second World War, while other scholars argue for figures closer to three million. The war entrenched cycles of displacement, sexual violence and resource plunder that continue to destabilise the region.

Empires active in 1998–2003 (Second Congo War)

• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE

Related military & conflict events

• The September 11 attacks
  11 September 2001
• The Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi
  7 April – 19 July 1994
• Fall of Saigon and reunification of Vietnam
  30 April 1975 (reunified 1976)
• Khmer Rouge Seize Cambodia and Declare Year Zero
  1975
• Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine
  24 February 2022
• The 7 October Hamas attack and the Israel–Gaza war
  7 October 2023

Further reading

The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence

The wider story

The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence

Martin Meredith

Gripping account of Africa's nations from independence to the present.

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