The region that is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo was first settled about 80,000 years ago. The Kingdom of Congo remained present in the region between the 14th and the early 19th centuries. Belgian colonization began when King Leopold II founded the Congo Free State, a corporate state run solely by King Leopold. Reports of widespread murder and torture in the rubber plantations led the Belgian government to seize the Congo from Leopold II and establish the Belgian Congo. Under Belgian rule numerous Christian organizations attempted to Westernize the Congolese people.
Human occupation of Rwanda is thought to have begun shortly after the last ice age. By the 16th century, the inhabitants had organized into a number of kingdoms. In the 19th century, Mwami (king) Rwabugiri of the Kingdom of Rwanda conducted a decades-long process of military conquest and administrative consolidation that resulted in the kingdom coming to control most of what is now Rwanda. The colonial powers, Germany and Belgium, allied with the Rwandan court.
Paul Kagame is a Rwandan politician and former military leader. He is currently the President of Rwanda, having taken office in 2000 when his predecessor, Pasteur Bizimungu, resigned. Kagame previously commanded the rebel force that ended the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He was considered Rwanda's de facto leader when he served as Vice President and Minister of Defence from 1994 to 2000. He was re-elected in August 2017 with an official result of nearly 99% in an election criticized for numerous irregularities. He has been described as the "most impressive" and "among the most repressive" African leaders.
North Kivu is a province bordering Lake Kivu in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its capital is Goma.
The Second Congo War began in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in August 1998, little more than a year after the First Congo War, and involved some of the same issues. The war officially ended in July 2003, when the Transitional Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo took power. Although a peace agreement was signed in 2002, violence has continued in many regions of the country, especially in the east. Hostilities have continued since the ongoing Lord's Resistance Army insurgency, and the Kivu and Ituri conflicts.
The East African Community (EAC) is an intergovernmental organization composed of six countries in the African Great Lakes region in eastern Africa: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. John Magufuli, the president of Tanzania, is the EAC's chairman. The organisation was founded in 1967, collapsed in 1977, and was revived on 7 July 2000. In 2008, after negotiations with the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the EAC agreed to an expanded free trade area including the member states of all three organizations. The EAC is an integral part of the African Economic Community.
The Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire was a coalition of Rwandan, Ugandan, Burundian, and selected Congolese dissidents, disgruntled minority groups, and nations that toppled Mobutu Sese Seko and brought Laurent-Désiré Kabila to power in the First Congo War. Although the group was successful in overthrowing Mobutu, the alliance fell apart after Kabila did not agree to be dictated by his foreign backers, Rwanda and Uganda, which marked the beginning of the Second Congo War in 1998.
The following lists events that happened during 1998 in South Africa.
The Great Lakes refugee crisis is the common name for the situation beginning with the exodus in April 1994 of over two million Rwandans to neighboring countries of the Great Lakes region of Africa in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. Many of the refugees were Hutu ethnics fleeing the predominantly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which had gained control of the country at the end of the genocide. However, the humanitarian relief effort was vastly compromised by the presence among the refugees of many of the Interahamwe and government officials who carried out the genocide, who used the refugee camps as bases to launch attacks against the new government led by Paul Kagame. The camps in Zaire became particularly politicized and militarized. The knowledge that humanitarian aid was being diverted to further the aims of the genocidaires led many humanitarian organizations to withdraw their assistance. The conflict escalated until the start of the First Congo War in 1996, when RPF-supported rebels invaded Zaire and sought to repatriate the refugees.
The Army for the Liberation of Rwanda was a rebel group largely composed of members of the Interahamwe and Armed Forces of Rwanda that carried out the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. Operating mostly in the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo along the border with Rwanda, it carried out attacks throughout the Second Congo War against forces aligned with Rwanda and Uganda. In 2000, the ALiR agreed to merge with the Hutu resistance movement based in Kinshasa into the new Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). ALiR was largely supplanted by the FDLR by 2001.
The following lists events that happened during 1998 in Zimbabwe.
Angola–Zimbabwe relations have remained cordial since the birth of both states, Angola in 1975 and Zimbabwe in 1980, during the Cold War. While Angola's foreign policy shifted to a pro-U.S. stance based on substantial economic ties, under the rule of President Robert Mugabe Zimbabwe's ties with the West soured in the late 1990s.
Société Nationale des Transports Aériens du Rwanda, or Air Rwanda as the airline was commonly known as the national airline of Rwanda, with its base at Kigali International Airport in Kigali. The airline operated for 21 years. In 1996 the airline was rebranded and renamed to Rwanda Air which finally led to the formation of RwandAir in 2002.
The M23 rebellion was fighting in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), that occurred between the March 23 Movement and government forces. The rebellion was part of continued fighting in the region after the formal end of the Second Congo War in 2003. It broke out in 2012 and continued into 2013, when a peace agreement was made among eleven African nations, and the M23 troops surrendered in Uganda.
The following lists events that happened during 1998 in Rwanda.
The following lists events that happened during 1998 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The following lists events that happened during 1999 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The following lists events that happened during 1998 in Namibia.
Maestro Oil and Gas Solutions (MOGAS) is a multinational integrated downstream oil marketing company. As of 2015, its business operations include international oil trading, fuels and lubrication services and retail networks. The company is registered in the UAE and has its head office in Kampala, Uganda but is operational in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, DRC, U.A.E, Rwanda and Burundi.
