Important notice: this guide describes Lake Kivu and the city of Bukavu, in eastern DR Congo, a region of great natural beauty that is currently an active armed conflict zone. In February 2025, the M23 rebel group occupied Bukavu, and the whole province of South Kivu is engulfed in war. Most governments advise against all travel there. Read this information as background, not as an invitation to travel: safety is the absolute priority.
Lake Kivu is one of Africa's great lakes, a sheet of water at 1,460 metres above sea level among green mountains and volcanoes, shared by DR Congo and Rwanda. On its southern shore, sprawling over peninsulas and hills, lies Bukavu, a city with a mild climate and colonial architecture overlooking the lake, capital of South Kivu and the traditional gateway to Kahuzi-Biega National Park, the realm of the Grauer's gorilla.
In peacetime, this would be one of the most beautiful regions of Congo: the lake, the mountains, the spring-like climate, the gorillas nearby. But the east of the country has endured decades of conflict, and today war once again makes tourism impossible. This guide explains what the region is, its history and its current tragedy, with a constant reminder to check official advisories and not to travel while the conflict lasts.
Bukavu, founded by the Belgians as Costermansville, grew in the first half of the 20th century into an elegant colonial city on the shores of Lake Kivu, famous for its climate and its art deco architecture. After independence, eastern Congo became the stage for one crisis after another: the impact of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the arrival of millions of refugees destabilised the region, sparking the Congo wars and a cycle of conflict that continues to this day, with Bukavu occupied by M23 in 2025. Its full story is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The mountainous east is home to the mountain gorillas of Virunga, the lava lake of Nyiragongo and the Great Lakes. It is also an area of active armed conflict, so always check the official travel advice.
Read the history of The east: the Kivus, the volcanoes and the Great Lakes →A local guide tells you in half an hour what no sign at the site will ever explain. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 7 activities in Kigali. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Have a look below: tap any of them to see them all.
They depart from Kigali, 141 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Lake Kivu lies in one of the troughs of the Great Rift Valley, the huge geological fault that runs through East Africa, at 1,460 metres above sea level among mountains and volcanoes. It is one of the African Great Lakes and one of the most unusual lakes in the world: its depths hold enormous quantities of dissolved methane and carbon dioxide, which makes it an 'exploding lake' (a phenomenon it shares with very few lakes on the planet) and, at the same time, a source of energy that is now tapped to generate electricity. Its green shores and mild climate made it, in times of peace, a sought-after place.
The Kivu region, around the lake, is one of the most densely populated in Central Africa. Its fertile highlands, with their gentle climate, have supported many farming and herding peoples for centuries. That population density and the fertility of the land are both a source of wealth and a source of tension over access to land and resources, an underlying factor in the conflicts that came later.
Before European colonisation, the area was part of the kingdoms and societies of the Great Lakes highlands, with complex relationships between different groups. The beauty of the lake and the wealth of the region caught the attention of the colonisers, who absorbed it into their empires at the end of the 19th century, drawing borders that would divide peoples and sow problems for the future.
Under Belgian rule, the city now known as Bukavu grew in the first half of the 20th century into a colonial settlement of great beauty, making the most of its spectacular setting on the peninsulas and hills of the southern shore of Lake Kivu. It was named Costermansville (after a colonial official) and became an elegant, pleasant destination, favoured for its mild highland climate, very different from the stifling heat of the Congo lowlands.
The city acquired some remarkable art deco architecture: villas, hotels and public buildings with modern lines overlooking the water, tree-lined avenues and gardens. It was a place where settlers, officials and visitors lived and relaxed, and it came to be seen as one of the prettiest cities in the Belgian Congo. Lake Kivu, with its boat trips and scenery, was the region's great attraction.
After Congo's independence in 1960, Costermansville was renamed Bukavu and remained the capital of the South Kivu region. Like the rest of the country, it went through the turbulent post-colonial years, but its natural surroundings and climate kept some of their appeal. Nothing at the time suggested that, decades later, this privileged region would become one of the epicentres of the greatest humanitarian tragedy in Central Africa.
Kivu's fate changed tragically in 1994. That year, in neighbouring Rwanda, the genocide against the Tutsi took place, in which close to a million people were killed in just a few weeks. When the genocide was halted by the advance of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, around two million Hutu refugees — among them many of those responsible for the killings — fled across the border into eastern Congo (then Zaire), settling in huge camps around Goma and Bukavu, on the shores of Lake Kivu.
That crisis threw the whole region off balance. The refugee camps became militia bases, and tensions between communities, the presence of armed groups and the weakness of Mobutu's regime lit the fuse. In 1996 the First Congo War broke out, with an invasion from the east backed by Rwanda and Uganda that overthrew Mobutu. It was followed in 1998 by the Second Congo War, an even larger conflict that drew in half a dozen African countries and caused millions of deaths, most of them from hunger and disease.
Kivu was the heart of these wars. Bukavu and its region went through occupations, fighting, massacres and extreme violence against civilians, including the systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon of war, a tragedy that left a particularly deep mark on this area. Even after the 2003 peace agreements, eastern Congo never found real peace: dozens of armed groups kept operating in the region, fuelled by ethnic tensions, the struggle over mineral wealth and interference from neighbouring countries.
Over the past decade, the main player in the conflict in eastern Congo has been the M23 (March 23 Movement), a rebel group that, according to the UN and many governments, has military backing from Rwanda. After years of on-and-off clashes, from 2021 the M23 launched a growing offensive in North and South Kivu, seizing territory, displacing millions of people and deepening one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
In early 2025 the offensive reached its most serious point. In January, the M23 took Goma, the capital of North Kivu, on the shores of Lake Kivu. A few weeks later, in mid-February 2025, the rebels pushed south and occupied Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu, meeting almost no resistance from government forces. The fall of Kivu's two main cities to the M23 caused panic, triggered new mass displacement and pushed regional tension to its peak, with fears of a wider war.
The occupation worsened an already desperate humanitarian situation: millions of displaced people, collapsed services, a paralysed economy and a civilian population trapped between armed groups. The international community condemned the offensive and Rwanda's involvement, while one mediation attempt followed another. For the people of Kivu, it was one more chapter in a tragedy that has dragged on for more than thirty years.
The contrast between Kivu's natural beauty and what its people are going through is heartbreaking. This region — the lake among mountains, the mild climate, the nearby volcanoes, the gorillas of Kahuzi-Biega — has some of the greatest tourism and natural potential in Central Africa. During some periods of relative calm in earlier years, a modest tourism scene took shape, with visitors coming to see the gorillas, sail the lake or get to know historic Bukavu. All of that has been put on hold by the war.
Behind the conflict's figures is a civilian population suffering beyond words: families displaced again and again, women who are victims of violence, entire communities caught between armed groups, and a subsistence economy left in ruins. The mineral wealth of eastern Congo — gold, coltan, cassiterite, essential to the world's electronics — is, paradoxically, part of the problem, as it feeds greed and funds the parties to the conflict.
This page describes Lake Kivu and Bukavu as what they are: a destination of enormous beauty that is out of reach today because of the war. The only responsible advice is not to travel while the conflict lasts and to follow the situation through official sources. Let's hope the day comes when peace allows the people of Kivu to live in safety and, perhaps then, to share the extraordinary beauty of their lake and mountains with the world again. Until then, respect for what they are going through must come before any tourism interest.
