BY SOUMANOU SALIFOU

President Donald Trump claims he has ended eight wars since he came to the White House ten months ago. The claim is exaggerated but not surprising, coming from a Nobel Peace Prize-hungry man who has built his success and image on stretching the facts to his advantage. For sure, despite the administration’s laudable success last June to broker a peace deal to end the war between Rwanda and the DRC, the heads of both Central African states are in Washington this week to seal the peace deal—because it did not end the war.

So far, it’s arguably the administration’s only positive act for the African continent in the wake of Trump’s dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development, the unfounded, racially motivated attacks on the South African government, and more. But the June 27, 2025, peace deal, formally known as the Washington Accord, truly was a landmark development. Signed at the White House by the foreign ministers of both Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with President Trump, flanked by Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in attendance, the agreement has however failed to keep its promise.

The prerequisite for its implementation is the withdrawal of the M23, an active rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo primarily operating in the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu, with the open backing of the Rwandese government, to control the region’s vast mineral resources. The accord also called for the neutralization of the FDRL, a notorious armed group operating also in the Democratic Republic of Congo with roots in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

In the face of this outcome, DRC’s prime minister, Judith Suminwa Tuluka, flew to Washington in mid-October, three months after the landmark June 27 accord, to ask “the Trump administration to put more pressure so that all the parties today on the field do what they have to do to allow the accord to be really implemented.”

In a group interview with The African and other American news organizations, the head of the Congolese government, who was very appreciative of the Trump administration’s brokerage of the peace agreement, said she welcomed the sanctions adopted by the administration against some Rwandese officials, and called for more sanctions “unless Rwanda changes its mind and accepts this peace process.”

Six weeks later, thanks again to the Trump administration’s leadership, the wheels of diplomacy have brought Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, and his Congolese counterpart, Félix Tshisekedi, to Washington in an attempt to seal the agreement, notably with the ratification of the Regional Economic Integration Framework (REIF) negotiated earlier this month by the two countries, as a key component of the broader peace agreement. The implementation of the REIF, which outlines cooperation in areas such as mining, energy, and tourism, is contingent on the June 2025 peace agreement.

While the government of Rwanda denies its involvement in the conflict, DRC leaders point an accusatory finger at the Kagame government, firmly denouncing its support for the rebel groups.

“In this war,” said Prime Minister Tuluka, “the DRC stands to lose the most. Our populations are the ones that are killed, not the Rwandese populations. We are now talking about 7 million displaced people. All we want is peace. Because without peace, we won’t be able to develop this part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

The prime minister also lamented, “We were in a development process, and we want to continue it because, although this war does not reach the entirety of the territory, we can’t continue to have so many deaths, so many women-victims, so many displaced populations.”

Ahead of the December 4 signing, Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, warned that “Some of these processes will not work just because we are meeting in Washington or the powerful United States is involved, but until those people concerned directly are committed to achieving end results.”

It is the hope of the Congolese people and their leaders that Trump’s claim about ending the lingering war between Rwanda and the DRC will be grounded in facts.