Rwanda's New Colonialism in Africa: Troops, Land, Minerals, Enterprises and Sanctions. All on one man Paul Kagame

Rwanda's New Colonialism in Africa: Troops, Land, Minerals, Enterprises and Sanctions. All on one man Paul Kagame

How Kigali is Replicating a Model of Extraction and Dependency Across Africa — and Why US Sanctions Must Hold

The African Rights Campaign | March 2026

 

Introduction

Rwanda has developed what its government presents to the world as a model of post-conflict state-building, regional security, and South-South solidarity. The reality, examined across the arc of Kigali's external engagements over the past decade, is something more troubling: a systematic pattern of military deployment, land acquisition, commercial extraction, and manufactured dependency that constitutes a new form of colonialism. The theatre changes — the Central African Republic, Mozambique, Congo-Brazzaville — but the architecture remains consistent. Rwanda arrives offering security, leaves with economic footholds, and engineers the conditions that make its departure costly for the host.

This article examines that pattern in detail, considers the collapse of Rwanda's attempted land seizure in Congo-Brazzaville following popular resistance, and analyses the implications of the United States Treasury's landmark sanctions on the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF), imposed on 2 March 2026. The sanctions have transformed the legal and political landscape not only for Rwanda's operations in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, but for every government and institution that continues to engage with the RDF — including, critically, the government of Mozambique. This analysis argues that the US sanctions must be maintained, and that Mozambique's continued partnership with a sanctioned military force presents serious legal, reputational, and political risks that Maputo's government and its international partners can no longer ignore.

 

A New Architecture of Colonialism

The vocabulary of colonialism is charged and requires precise deployment. What Rwanda practises in its external military and commercial engagements is not colonialism in the nineteenth-century sense of formal territorial annexation and administrative governance. It is, however, structurally analogous in its essential logic: the use of military presence to create privileged access to the resources and political structures of weaker states, engineered in such a way that the host country becomes dependent on the relationship and resistant — or unable — to exit it.

The colonial powers of the nineteenth century arrived with rifles and trading companies. They offered security against internal rivals, established commercial arrangements with local elites who benefited personally from the relationship, and created infrastructure that served extraction rather than development. When populations resisted, the costs of resistance were made to appear higher than the costs of accommodation. Rwanda's model in the twenty-first century replicates this logic with contemporary instruments: bilateral security agreements instead of protectorates, Crystal Ventures and RPF-linked enterprises instead of the East India Company, and manufactured counterterrorism dependency instead of gunboat diplomacy.

Three cases illustrate the model with particular clarity: the Central African Republic, Mozambique, and the failed land cession experiment in Congo-Brazzaville, which ended in termination when the Congolese people refused to accept it.

 

The Central African Republic: The Template

Rwanda's deployment to the Central African Republic (CAR) preceded its Mozambique mission and established the template. Rwandan troops have been present in CAR since 2014, initially under an African Union mandate and subsequently as bilateral forces operating alongside Russian Wagner Group mercenaries in a complex and often contradictory security environment. Rwanda has positioned itself as an alternative to the Wagner presence in Western capitals, cultivating the image of a professional, disciplined African security partner capable of stabilising fragile states.

Beneath this surface narrative, Kigali has developed substantial commercial interests in CAR. Rwandan entities have engaged in mining, infrastructure, and service-sector activities in the country, capitalising on the privileged access that military presence confers. CAR's government, dependent on external security providers and structurally vulnerable to the leverage they exercise, has had limited capacity to interrogate or challenge these commercial arrangements. The pattern — military entry, commercial penetration, structural dependency — was refined in CAR before being exported to Mozambique.

 

Congo-Brazzaville: The Land Seizure That Failed

The most explicit articulation of Rwanda's neo-colonial ambitions came in the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), where Kigali pursued not merely commercial access but the direct acquisition of agricultural land. In April 2022, the government of Congo-Brazzaville signed a series of memoranda of understanding and a concession agreement with Rwanda granting access to approximately 12,000 hectares of farmland in at least three districts in the southern Bouenza region. The agreement was implemented through Eleveco-Congo S.A.S., a local entity reported to be a branch of Crystal Ventures, the commercial conglomerate controlled by Rwanda's ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front.

The deal was presented officially as a South-South cooperation initiative and an investment in agricultural development. In practice, it represented an attempt to secure productive land in a neighbouring African state for the benefit of Rwandan state-linked commercial interests — land that Congolese farming communities depended upon and that the Congolese public regarded as national patrimony. The reaction was fierce. Civil society organisations, the Catholic Church, opposition politicians, and ordinary Congolese citizens mobilised against what they characterised as a surrender of sovereign territory to a foreign power. The controversy was sufficiently intense that the Congolese government felt compelled to deny that any permanent transfer had occurred, with the prime minister personally travelling to Bouenza to reassure communities.

The Rwandan companies involved in the agreement failed to commence any agricultural activities within the timeframe specified by the contract. In December 2024, after the deadline for project commencement passed without action, the Congolese government formally terminated the agreement. Government spokesman Thierry Moungalla confirmed the termination, declaring the file closed. Congo-Brazzaville's cancellation of the land deal was, in the final analysis, a product of popular resistance: the Congolese people made the political cost of maintaining the arrangement higher than the cost of ending it.

The Congo-Brazzaville episode is analytically significant for two reasons. First, it demonstrates that Rwanda's neo-colonial model is not invulnerable — it depends on the passivity or complicity of host populations and host governments, and when those conditions do not hold, the model collapses. Second, the involvement of Crystal Ventures — the RPF's commercial arm — as the implementing entity confirms that these engagements are not development partnerships but commercial extraction operations using political and diplomatic cover.

 

Mozambique: The Model in Full Operation

Mozambique represents Rwanda's most fully developed external deployment. The RDF arrived in Cabo Delgado in July 2021 in response to the jihadist insurgency that had devastated the province since 2017. The security rationale was real in the sense that an insurgency existed and Mozambican forces had been unable to contain it. But the RDF's deployment was not conceived primarily as a humanitarian response. It was conceived as a strategic investment with anticipated commercial returns.

Cabo Delgado is one of sub-Saharan Africa's most significant resource provinces, containing some of the world's largest proven natural gas reserves, as well as rubies, graphite, and other critical minerals. The RDF secured the port town of Mocimboa da Praia, a logistical hub essential to the gas projects, and established a security perimeter that corresponds closely to the geography of the resource economy. Crystal Ventures and other RPF-linked entities have been reported as active in Mozambican markets across multiple sectors.

The Mozambican government's relationship with the RDF has been shaped by a governance environment defined by endemic corruption within the Frelimo party and its associated state structures. Evidence and credible reporting point to financial arrangements between Rwandan officials and Mozambican counterparts that have created personal and institutional incentives to sustain the RDF presence. The dependency is not merely security-operational; it is financial and political. Maputo's governing elite has been incorporated into a web of relationships with Kigali that makes a clean exit — even if desired — structurally costly.

 

The US Sanctions: What They Mean and Why They Must Hold

On 2 March 2026, the United States Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on the Rwanda Defence Force as an institution, together with four of its most senior commanders: Army Chief of Staff Vincent Nyakarundi, Commander of the 5th Infantry Division Major General Ruki Karusisi, Chief of Defence Staff Mubarakh Muganga, and Special Operations Force Commander Stanislas Gashugi. The designation was made pursuant to Executive Order 13413, as amended, for the RDF's direct operational support to the M23 rebel group in the DRC — support that OFAC assessed as indispensable to M23's territorial seizures, including the capture of Goma, Bukavu, and subsequently Uvira in December 2025, days after Rwanda's President Kagame had signed the Washington Accords with President Tshisekedi.

The sanctions are the most consequential accountability measure imposed on Rwanda's military since the Bruguiere investigation and the publication of the UN Mapping Report. They differ from earlier targeted measures in a critical respect: the designation falls on the RDF as an institution, not merely on named individuals. Every transaction, commercial engagement, financial arrangement, or operational partnership involving the RDF — anywhere in the world — now carries sanctions risk for the counterparty. OFAC made this explicit, warning that financial institutions and other persons may risk exposure to sanctions for engaging in certain transactions or activities involving designated or otherwise blocked persons.

OFAC issued a 30-day global licence for a wind-down period covering existing transactions involving the RDF. When that period expires, any continued engagement with the RDF without specific OFAC authorisation constitutes a potential sanctions violation. The implications extend to every external relationship the RDF maintains — its UN peacekeeping contributions in the CAR and South Sudan, its operations in Mozambique, and its commercial partnerships across the region.

The sanctions must be maintained. Rwanda's government has responded with its characteristic posture of aggrieved victimhood, with Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe characterising the measures as unjust and asserting that Rwanda's troops have been vilified by the very countries that benefit from their deployment. This is a diplomatic deflection. The sanctions are not an attack on Rwanda's sovereignty; they are a consequence of documented, sustained, and deliberate violations of international law and the specific commitments Rwanda made under the Washington Accords. Rewarding a violation of those commitments by lifting the sanctions would signal that international accountability mechanisms are reversible under sufficient political pressure — a lesson that would resonate far beyond Kigali.

 

The Sanctioned RDF in Mozambique: A Legal and Political Crisis for Maputo

The designation of the RDF as a sanctioned entity creates a direct and serious problem for the government of Mozambique. The RDF troops deployed in Cabo Delgado are, as of 2 March 2026, members of a US-sanctioned military institution. The Mozambican government's contractual, operational, and financial relationship with those forces now places Maputo in a position of potential sanctions exposure — a risk that extends to any financial institution, government contractor, or international partner that transacts with the Mozambican security architecture in ways that involve the RDF deployment.

The connection is not theoretical. Human Rights Watch and the European Union have specifically identified RDF commanders who served in Mozambique as among those now sanctioned. Generals Eugene Nkubito and Pascal Muhizi, both of whom had recently served with Rwanda's task force in Cabo Delgado, were sanctioned by the EU in March 2025 for their roles in supporting M23 operations in the DRC. The same individuals commanded operations in Mozambique that the EU's European Peace Facility was funding. The institutional continuity between the RDF that operates in Mozambique and the RDF that operates in the DRC is complete — they are the same military, under the same command structure, serving the same political master.

The European Union faces its own reckoning. Brussels has provided two grants of 20 million euros each under the European Peace Facility to support the RDF's Mozambique deployment. The EU has now sanctioned Rwandan officials and military commanders for their DRC conduct while simultaneously having funded the same institution's operations in Mozambique. This is not a sustainable policy position. Human Rights Watch has explicitly called on EU High Representative Kaja Kallas to pause disbursement of any further EPF funds to Rwanda until genuine safeguards are in place, including the exclusion of commanders who have served in the DRC from EU-funded operations. The EU's decision to end funding — now reported as increasingly likely — would not itself resolve the underlying problem, but it would remove the moral and political cover of European institutional endorsement from an operation that cannot be credibly distinguished from the broader RDF enterprise.

For Mozambique's government, the arithmetic is stark. Continued partnership with a US-sanctioned military force will deter international investment, complicate relationships with multilateral development institutions, and create legal exposure for Mozambican officials who maintain operational relationships with designated RDF personnel. The natural gas projects in Cabo Delgado — the primary engine of Mozambique's long-term fiscal future — depend on the confidence of international energy companies and capital markets. Those actors will not be indifferent to the sanctions risk that RDF presence creates.

 

Rwanda's Withdrawal Threat: Leverage, Not Intent

Rwanda's Foreign Minister Nduhungirehe has stated publicly and explicitly that Rwanda will withdraw its troops from Mozambique if sustainable funding is not secured. The language was designed for impact: not 'could' withdraw but 'will' withdraw. The statement should be read for what it is — a negotiating instrument deployed at a moment of maximum pressure, consistent with Rwanda's established practice of using peacekeeping contributions as diplomatic leverage.

The precedent is the Darfur episode. When the UN Mapping Report — documenting potential genocide crimes attributed to Rwandan forces in the DRC — was being prepared for publication in 2010, Rwanda threatened to withdraw its UNAMID peacekeepers unless the report was suppressed or diluted. The threat achieved partial results: the report was delayed and elements were softened. Rwanda then retained its forces in Darfur. The structure of the current threat replicates that episode: threaten withdrawal, extract concessions, remain.

Whatever Rwanda ultimately chooses to do in Mozambique, the sanctions question is separate from the deployment question. The United States' designation of the RDF is not contingent on whether Rwandan troops remain in Mozambique or depart. The sanctions were imposed for RDF conduct in the DRC. They will only be lifted — if they are lifted — when the US government is satisfied that Rwanda has met the conditions of the Washington Accords and ceased its support for M23. A Rwandan withdrawal from Mozambique, while it would remove one dimension of the sanctions-compliance problem, would not by itself resolve the underlying accountability that the designation reflects.

 

The Resistance Principle: What Congo-Brazzaville Teaches

The termination of the Congo-Brazzaville land deal offers the most important lesson in this analysis. Rwanda's neo-colonial model is not self-sustaining. It requires the passive acceptance or active complicity of host populations and host governments. When the Congolese people of Congo-Brazzaville refused to accept the cession of their land to a foreign power's commercial enterprises, the deal collapsed. The mechanism was not external sanctions or diplomatic pressure from third parties; it was popular sovereignty exercised through public resistance that made the political cost of the arrangement insupportable for the Congolese government.

Mozambique's population has its own interest in this dynamic. Cabo Delgado's communities have suffered years of insurgency, displacement, and insecurity. The RDF's security presence has brought a degree of stability that some communities value. But stability purchased through dependency on a foreign military force that operates according to its own commercial and political logic — and that is now under US sanctions — is not a durable foundation for Mozambican sovereignty or development. Mozambican civil society, political opposition, and the international community should be asking whether the RDF's presence serves Mozambican interests or primarily serves Rwandan commercial and geopolitical interests dressed in security clothing.

 

The EU Funding Question is a Moot Point: The Sanctions Prohibit the Relationship

Much of the commentary on Rwanda's future in Mozambique has conflated two distinct questions: whether the European Union will continue funding the RDF's Cabo Delgado mission under the European Peace Facility, and whether Mozambique can continue working with the RDF at all. The EU funding question, significant as it is, is secondary. The primary legal reality is this: the United States has designated the Rwanda Defence Force as a sanctioned entity. That designation applies to the RDF as an institution — not to a particular operation, not to a named commander, not to a specific activity, but to the entire military force. The Mozambique deployment is not a legally distinct entity. It is the RDF. And the RDF is now a sanctioned organisation under US law.

The legal consequence is not ambiguous. OFAC's designation triggers prohibitions on transactions, services, and material support involving the designated entity for any US person and for any foreign entity exposed to US jurisdiction — which, in practice, encompasses every significant financial institution, every major energy company, and every multilateral development bank operating in Mozambique. The Treasury stated explicitly that financial institutions and other persons may risk exposure to sanctions for engaging in certain transactions or activities involving designated or otherwise blocked persons. The Mozambican government's continued contractual and operational relationship with the RDF — paying for services, hosting troops, coordinating operations — constitutes precisely the kind of engagement that creates sanctions exposure. This is not a hypothetical risk. It is the direct legal consequence of OFAC's designation.

The EU's decision to withdraw funding from the RDF's Mozambique mission, while significant as a political signal, does not resolve this problem. Whether the EU funds the deployment or not, whether Rwanda stays or threatens to go, the institutional relationship between the Mozambican government and a US-sanctioned military force remains prohibited under the sanctions regime. EU withdrawal of funding removes a funding stream; it does not remove the sanctions. Mozambique's government cannot sidestep this reality by pointing to the termination of EU financial support as though that terminates its legal exposure. The relationship itself — the partnership, the operational coordination, the presence of RDF troops on Mozambican soil under bilateral agreement — is the source of the legal problem, not the means by which it is funded.

There is a further dimension that demands attention. The international energy companies whose investment in Cabo Delgado represents Mozambique's economic future — TotalEnergies, ENI, and their financing partners — are themselves exposed to sanctions risk if their operations are secured by, or contractually dependent upon, a US-sanctioned military force. Energy project insurers, project finance banks, and export credit agencies operating under US or EU regulatory oversight face sanctions compliance obligations that they cannot ignore. If the RDF continues to provide security for LNG infrastructure while designated under OFAC, those companies face a stark choice between their Mozambican investments and their sanctions compliance obligations. The consequences for Mozambique's fiscal outlook would be severe. For Maputo, the calculus is not merely political. It is existential for the gas economy that the country has been building its future upon.

Mozambique's Sovereign Option: Expel the RDF and Invite a Legitimate Alternative

The analysis of Rwanda's neo-colonial model and the legal constraints imposed by the US sanctions can create a misleading impression — that Mozambique is trapped, dependent on the RDF by necessity and incapable of exercising genuine sovereignty over its own territory and security arrangements. This impression is false. Mozambique is a sovereign state. It has the unqualified right, at any moment and without external permission, to terminate its bilateral security agreement with Rwanda, require the withdrawal of RDF troops from Mozambican territory, and invite a replacement force of its own choosing. The legal and political instruments for doing so are available. What has been absent is the political will to use them.

Two credible alternatives exist within the regional architecture. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has demonstrated both the institutional capacity and the political legitimacy to deploy peacekeeping forces in precisely this kind of context. The SADC Mission in the DRC — SAMIDRC — represents the most recent expression of that capacity, and SADC member states have a direct strategic interest in stabilising Mozambique's Cabo Delgado province, whose insecurity threatens the wider regional economy and the confidence of international investors across southern Africa. A SADC-led or SADC-authorised mission in Cabo Delgado would carry democratic legitimacy that a bilateral arrangement with a government whose military is under US sanctions cannot provide. Critically, unlike the RDF, a SADC force would not arrive with a separate commercial agenda to pursue at Mozambique's expense.

Burundi presents a second and underappreciated alternative. Burundian forces have accumulated substantial operational experience in African Union peacekeeping missions, most notably as the largest single troop contributor to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) over more than a decade. Burundian soldiers have operated in some of the most demanding counterinsurgency environments on the continent. Burundi shares a border with the DRC and understands the complex dynamics of jihadist and insurgent movements in the Great Lakes region better than most. A bilateral security arrangement between Mozambique and Burundi, or a Burundian contribution to a SADC-led mission, would provide genuine counterinsurgency capacity without the institutional conflicts of interest, the commercial extraction agenda, and the sanctions liability that define Rwanda's presence.

The argument that no alternative exists — that Mozambique is dependent on the RDF because no other capable force is available — is a narrative that serves Kigali's interests, not Mozambique's. It is the dependency narrative that Rwanda has carefully cultivated from the first day of its deployment, and it has been internalised by Mozambican officials whose personal financial interests are aligned with the continuation of the Rwandan presence. The existence of SADC's institutional framework and Burundi's established peacekeeping record refutes the no-alternative argument on its merits. The argument is not analytical; it is political cover for a decision that has already been made for other reasons.

This brings the analysis to its most politically direct conclusion. If the Mozambican government, confronted with a clear legal prohibition arising from the US sanctions, presented with credible and capable regional alternatives, and facing the imminent withdrawal of EU funding, nonetheless chooses to maintain its operational partnership with the RDF, that choice will require an explanation. There is only one explanation that is analytically coherent: that senior Mozambican officials have been financially compromised by Rwanda to the extent that they are no longer capable of acting in the national interest. The manufactured dependency that this article has documented is not merely structural and institutional. It is personal. The financial arrangements that Rwanda has used to cultivate Mozambican complicity have created a class of senior officials whose individual interests are directly served by the continuation of the RDF presence and directly threatened by its departure. If Maputo does not act on its sovereign right to expel the RDF and invite a legitimate alternative, it will have confirmed, beyond reasonable analytical doubt, that the decision is not a security decision. It is a corruption decision.

What Decision Should the Mozambique Government Take Now?

The Mozambican government is not facing a long-term strategic question that can be deferred to future diplomatic rounds or managed through studied ambiguity. It is facing an immediate legal, security, and sovereign governance crisis that demands decisions in the near term. The US sanctions on the RDF came into force on 2 March 2026. The 30-day OFAC wind-down licence for existing transactions involving the RDF expires imminently. When it does, every aspect of Mozambique's operational relationship with the RDF — contracts, payments, joint operations, shared intelligence, logistical support — will carry direct and unambiguous sanctions exposure. Maputo must act now, and it must act on each of the following fronts without delay.

First: Formally notify Rwanda of the termination of the bilateral security agreement.

Mozambique must issue formal written notice to the Government of Rwanda that the bilateral security agreement governing the RDF deployment in Cabo Delgado is terminated, effective immediately or within the shortest notice period that the agreement's terms permit. The notification should be grounded in the changed legal circumstances created by the US OFAC designation of the RDF, and should make explicit that Mozambique is acting to protect its sovereign legal and financial position in accordance with its obligations under international law and its relationships with international financial and development partners. This is not a hostile act toward Rwanda; it is the legally necessary assertion of Mozambican sovereignty in response to circumstances that Rwanda's own conduct created.

Second: Set a clear and enforced timeline for the withdrawal of all RDF personnel from Mozambican territory.

Terminating an agreement and requiring a physical military withdrawal are distinct steps. The Mozambican government must specify a concrete and non-negotiable timeline — measured in weeks, not months — by which all RDF troops, equipment, and personnel must depart Cabo Delgado province. This timeline must be communicated publicly, not managed through back-channel diplomacy that Rwanda can use to delay and to reconstruct the dependency relationship in a different form. The public communication of a withdrawal deadline is also essential for the confidence of international energy investors, multilateral lenders, and development partners who need to see Mozambique taking decisive steps to exit its sanctioned relationship.

Third: Immediately approach SADC for a replacement security mission.

The Mozambican government should open immediate formal consultations with the SADC Secretariat and the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation to request the authorisation and deployment of a SADC counterinsurgency mission in Cabo Delgado. SADC's current deployment experience through SAMIDRC in the DRC demonstrates that the organisation has the institutional capacity to mobilise rapidly. Several SADC member states — among them Tanzania, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Angola — have both the military capacity and the political motivation to contribute to a Cabo Delgado mission. A SADC mandate would provide the international legitimacy, multilateral accountability, and democratic oversight that a bilateral arrangement with Kigali structurally cannot. The European Union's European Peace Facility funding, currently directed at the RDF, could be redirected to a SADC-authorised mission, providing an immediate and credible funding pathway for the transition.

Fourth: Open bilateral security talks with Burundi.

In parallel with the SADC process, the Mozambican government should open direct bilateral security consultations with Burundi. Burundi's record as the largest single contributor to AMISOM over more than a decade — operating in one of the world's most complex and violent insurgency environments — represents a depth of counterinsurgency experience that is directly applicable to the Cabo Delgado context. A Burundian bilateral contribution, whether as a standalone arrangement or as a contribution to a SADC-led mission, would provide operational depth, and would visibly demonstrate to Rwanda, to the region, and to the international community that Mozambique's security is not dependent on the continued presence of a force whose government is conducting an occupation of a neighbouring state in violation of international law.

Fifth: Commission an independent audit of all commercial agreements between Rwandan state-linked entities and the Mozambican government.

The financial relationships that Rwanda has cultivated within Mozambique's state apparatus extend beyond the security arrangement itself. Commercial contracts, resource access agreements, preferential procurement arrangements, and personal financial transfers involving Crystal Ventures and other RPF-linked entities operating in Mozambican markets must be independently audited. An audit of this nature, conducted by a credible independent body with access to government contracting records and financial flows, would serve two purposes: it would identify specific relationships and payments that have compromised officials' independence, and it would signal to the Mozambican public, to international partners, and to the Frelimo party's own membership that the government is prepared to prioritise national sovereignty over the personal interests of officials who have been financially captured by Kigali. This audit should be conducted with the full support and oversight of Mozambique's parliament.

Sixth: Seek an OFAC advisory opinion on Mozambique's current exposure and a specific licence for transitional arrangements.

The Mozambican government should urgently engage the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control to seek a formal advisory opinion on its current sanctions exposure and, if applicable, a specific OFAC licence to cover any transitional arrangements that may be necessary during the period of RDF withdrawal. This engagement would serve the dual purpose of protecting Mozambique from sanctions penalties during the wind-down period and signalling to Washington that Maputo is acting in good faith to exit the sanctioned relationship. The United States has a direct strategic interest in the success of Mozambique's LNG projects — American energy companies and their investors are among those watching the security situation in Cabo Delgado closely. A Mozambican government that proactively engages OFAC to manage the transition will find Washington a willing partner, and will be far better positioned to attract the investment confidence that the gas economy requires.

Seventh: Make a public statement to the Mozambican people.

The Mozambican government must communicate its decisions to the Mozambican public with transparency and directness. The people of Cabo Delgado have lived through years of insurgency and displacement. Their security is real and their concerns about the withdrawal of any force — even a compromised one — are legitimate. A public statement from the President of Mozambique explaining the legal reality of the sanctions, the transition to a SADC and Burundian security arrangement, and the government's commitment to maintaining security in Cabo Delgado throughout the transition would serve both democratic accountability and practical security purposes. It would also remove the information vacuum that Rwanda will otherwise fill with its own narrative — that Mozambique has abandoned its people in Cabo Delgado under Western pressure. That narrative must be pre-empted. The Mozambican government owes its citizens an honest account of why the change is necessary and what comes next.

None of these decisions requires external authorisation. They require the exercise of sovereign authority that Mozambique already possesses. Every day that the government delays is a day in which its sanctions exposure compounds, its credibility with international partners erodes, and the inference that senior officials have been financially captured by Kigali becomes harder to rebut. The decisions are available. The timeline is urgent. The government of Mozambique must act.

The Opportunity to End Dependency: Rebuilding Mozambique's Own Forces with EU, US, and French Support

The expulsion of the RDF and the invitation of a SADC or Burundian bridging force address the immediate security vacuum in Cabo Delgado. They do not address the structural problem that made Mozambique vulnerable to Rwanda's neo-colonial model in the first place: the incapacity of the Mozambican Armed Forces (Forças Armadas de Defesa de Moçambique, FADM) to independently secure the country's own territory. Dependency — whether on Rwanda, on SADC, or on any foreign military force — is a symptom of that underlying weakness. The genuine and lasting solution is not the substitution of one foreign force for another. It is the rebuilding of Mozambique's own national military and security capacity to the point where Mozambique can defend its sovereign territory without foreign troops on its soil.

The current conjuncture presents Mozambique with a rare political opportunity to make that case to its most important international partners. The United States, the European Union, and France are each, for distinct but convergent reasons, invested in Mozambique's stability and in the broader principle that African states should not be dependent on the military forces of a government whose army is under US sanctions and whose conduct in the DRC represents a systematic violation of international law. All three have the institutional capacity, the financial instruments, and — now, after the RDF sanctions — the political motivation to support a serious programme of Mozambican defence force reconstruction. Maputo should present that case formally, urgently, and with a clear long-term strategic vision attached to it.

The United States: Strategic Interest and a Redirected Security Partnership

The United States has a direct and documented strategic interest in the security of Cabo Delgado. The offshore LNG projects in northern Mozambique — including the Rovuma Basin developments — involve US energy companies and US-aligned investment capital. Washington has also invested significant diplomatic capital in brokering the Washington Accords between Rwanda and the DRC, and has publicly tied its sanctions policy to the enforcement of those accords. A Mozambican government that requests US support for the rebuilding of the FADM would be making a request that aligns precisely with Washington's stated objectives: reducing the influence of a sanctioned military force, strengthening African sovereign governance, and protecting the security conditions necessary for US-linked energy investment.

The US Africa Command (AFRICOM) has existing capacity and established relationships for military training, advisory, and capacity-building missions across the continent. A bilateral request from Mozambique for an AFRICOM-led training and restructuring programme for the FADM, focused specifically on counterinsurgency capacity in Cabo Delgado, would be consistent with AFRICOM's mandate and with the broader US policy objective of promoting African security self-sufficiency. Mozambique should make this request directly and at the highest level — President to President — framing it explicitly as the corollary of the RDF termination and as Mozambique's commitment to ending foreign military dependency on its territory.

The European Union: Redirecting the European Peace Facility

The EU's European Peace Facility has already disbursed two grants of 20 million euros each in support of the RDF's Mozambique deployment. With EU funding now effectively suspended in the wake of the US sanctions and the mounting evidence of RDF commanders' DRC activities, that financial instrument needs a new direction. The most logical and strategically coherent redirection is towards a dedicated EU capacity-building programme for the FADM. The EU has extensive experience with military training and institutional reform missions across Africa through its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) framework. An EU Training Mission in Mozambique (EUTM Mozambique), modelled on similar missions in Mali, Somalia, and the Central African Republic, would provide a structured, long-term, and politically accountable framework for rebuilding the FADM into a force capable of independently securing Cabo Delgado.

Such a mission would serve multiple EU interests simultaneously. It would remove the legal and reputational embarrassment of continued association with a sanctioned military force. It would strengthen the EU's relationship with Mozambique and its standing in the SADC region at a moment when European strategic influence in Africa is under sustained pressure. It would protect the conditions necessary for European energy security interests in Mozambican LNG. And it would demonstrate that the EU's stated commitment to African sovereign governance and the rule of law has practical, funded content — not merely rhetorical expression. The EPF funds currently suspended from the RDF should be formally reprogrammed, without delay, towards an EUTM Mozambique framework.

France: A Debt of Strategic Obligation

France occupies a particular position in any serious analysis of the Mozambique-Rwanda security relationship — and carries a particular obligation as a result. TotalEnergies, the French energy company, has the largest single commercial stake in the Cabo Delgado LNG projects. France has historically been among the Western governments most reluctant to apply pressure on Rwanda, cultivating a bilateral relationship with Kigali that reflected a misreading of the post-genocide dispensation and a misjudgement that good relations with Rwanda offered protection for French interests in the region. That calculation has now been comprehensively exposed as flawed. The killing of Karine Buisset, the UNICEF child protection officer killed in Goma on 11 March 2026 — a French national, killed on territory under RDF/M23 occupation — prompted the opening of a war crimes investigation by France's Parquet National Anti-Terroriste. It has forced a reckoning in Paris that France's studied neutrality on Rwanda's conduct was not a strategic asset but a strategic liability.

France is now, for the first time in many years, politically positioned to support a substantive reorientation of its engagement with Mozambique's security sector. French military expertise — delivered through bilateral defence cooperation agreements, the Ministère des Armées, and France's extensive network of defence attachés and training relationships across Francophone and Lusophone Africa — could make a material contribution to the rebuilding of the FADM. France also has leverage with TotalEnergies and with French financial institutions whose exposure to the Mozambique LNG projects gives them an acute interest in a stable and legally uncompromised security architecture in Cabo Delgado. A French bilateral defence cooperation agreement with Mozambique, framed as support for sovereign security self-sufficiency, would represent both a restitution of France's strategic credibility in the region and a practical investment in the security conditions that protect TotalEnergies' commercial position.

A Phased Road Map to Sovereign Security Self-Sufficiency

The transition from RDF dependency to Mozambican sovereign security self-sufficiency cannot happen overnight. A realistic road map requires three overlapping phases. In the immediate term — within the first 90 days — Mozambique should terminate the RDF agreement, secure a SADC and Burundian bridging force for Cabo Delgado, and open formal security cooperation discussions with the US, EU, and France. In the medium term — within 12 to 24 months — a structured EUTM-style training mission and bilateral AFRICOM and French advisory programmes should be operational, focused specifically on counterinsurgency doctrine, intelligence capacity, civil-military relations, and the command and control structures necessary for the FADM to operate independently in Cabo Delgado. In the long term — within three to five years — the bridging force should progressively transfer responsibilities to the rebuilt FADM as capability milestones are met, with full withdrawal of all foreign forces from Mozambican territory as the stated and publicly committed end goal.

This is not an ambitious or unrealistic programme. It is the minimum that Mozambique's status as a sovereign state requires. The natural gas revenues that Cabo Delgado will generate — when production resumes under a legally secure and politically stable security environment — will themselves provide a growing fiscal base for sustained investment in national defence capacity. The dependency that Rwanda has engineered is real, but it is not permanent. It can be dismantled. It must be dismantled. And the moment to begin is now — while the international political window created by the US sanctions, the EU's funding suspension, and France's strategic reorientation is open and the will of Mozambique's international partners is aligned behind the same objective: a stable, sovereign, and self-sufficient Mozambique that no foreign military force can exploit.

Conclusion: Sanctions Must Hold, and Mozambique Has No Legal Option to Continue

Rwanda has developed a coherent model of neo-colonial engagement in Central and Eastern Africa. The model uses military deployment to create commercial footholds, cultivates dependency within host governments through financial arrangements that blur the line between bilateral partnership and institutional corruption, and projects all of this under the brand of Rwanda's international prestige and peacekeeping reputation. The Central African Republic is the template, Mozambique is the most advanced expression, and Congo-Brazzaville is the proof that the model fails when host populations refuse to accept it.

The US sanctions on the RDF, imposed on 2 March 2026, represent the most significant accountability measure directed at Rwanda's military in two decades. They must be maintained. The sanctions are not punitive in isolation; they are structural — designed to impose a cost on the continuation of conduct that Rwanda has repeatedly promised to stop and repeatedly resumed. Lifting them under pressure, without verified and sustained compliance with the Washington Accords, would undermine the credibility of international accountability mechanisms across the continent.

The framing of Mozambique's situation as a binary choice — stay with the RDF or seek an alternative — understates the legal reality. Mozambique does not have a legally viable option to continue its partnership with the RDF under the current sanctions designation, regardless of whether the EU withdraws funding or Rwanda threatens to withdraw troops. The RDF is a sanctioned entity. The relationship is prohibited, not merely inadvisable. Maputo's government must act accordingly: terminate the operational partnership with the RDF, obtain independent legal advice on its existing exposure, and immediately begin constructing alternative security arrangements for Cabo Delgado that do not depend on a military force designated by the United States Treasury. Congo-Brazzaville's people provided the model for how neo-colonial arrangements collapse when sovereignty is asserted. Mozambique's path is now determined not only by political will but by legal obligation.

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the US sanctions on the Rwanda Defence Force?

On 2 March 2026, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control designated the RDF as a sanctioned entity, along with four senior commanders, for direct operational support to the M23 rebel group in the DRC. The sanctions freeze any RDF assets within US jurisdiction and bar American individuals and companies from transacting with designated entities. A 30-day wind-down licence was issued for existing transactions.

Do the US sanctions on the RDF affect Mozambique?

Yes. The sanctions apply to the RDF as an institution. Any government, financial institution, or entity that maintains operational or financial relationships with the RDF — including through the Mozambique deployment — risks sanctions exposure. OFAC has explicitly stated that parties engaging with designated entities may face consequences. EU commanders who served in Mozambique have also been individually sanctioned.

What happened with Rwanda's land deal in Congo-Brazzaville?

In April 2022, Congo-Brazzaville signed an agreement granting Rwandan companies — through Crystal Ventures' local subsidiary — access to approximately 12,000 hectares of farmland in the Bouenza region. The deal provoked intense popular opposition. The Rwandan companies failed to commence agricultural activities within the agreed timeframe and the Congolese government formally terminated the agreement in December 2024, declaring the file closed.

What is Crystal Ventures and what role does it play in Rwanda's foreign deployments?

Crystal Ventures is the commercial conglomerate of Rwanda's ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front. It is one of the largest business groups in Rwanda and operates across multiple sectors. Its subsidiary Eleveco-Congo was the implementing entity in the Congo-Brazzaville land deal. Crystal Ventures and related RPF-linked enterprises have been active in Mozambique and other states where the RDF is deployed, illustrating the commercial dimension of Rwanda's security partnerships.

Will the US sanctions be lifted?

The sanctions were imposed in direct response to Rwanda's violation of the Washington Accords, signed in December 2025. They are conditional on Rwanda's compliance with those accords, including verified withdrawal of RDF troops and cessation of support for M23. Given Rwanda's documented pattern of committing to agreements and then undermining them, and the RDF's continued presence in the DRC at the time of publication, there is no basis to anticipate early removal of the sanctions.

Is Rwanda's model of external deployment colonial?

In structural terms, yes. Rwanda's deployments combine military presence with commercial extraction, the cultivation of dependency within host government structures, and the use of that dependency to secure continued access to resources and political leverage. The instruments are contemporary but the logic replicates the essential architecture of colonial extraction: arrive with security, leave with resources, engineer conditions that make departure costly for the host.

Can Mozambique continue working with the RDF given the US sanctions?

The EU funding question is legally secondary. The US sanctions designate the RDF as a sanctioned entity as an institution — not a specific operation or commander. Mozambique's continued operational partnership with the RDF, regardless of how it is funded, constitutes engagement with a designated entity and creates sanctions exposure for Maputo, its financial institutions, and international energy companies whose projects depend on RDF-provided security. The sanctions do not merely raise a policy question; they impose a legal prohibition. Whether the EU withdraws funding is a separate matter. The prohibited relationship is the partnership itself.

Does Mozambique have an alternative to the RDF?

Yes. Two credible alternatives exist within the regional architecture. SADC has demonstrated institutional capacity and political legitimacy through its deployment in the DRC under SAMIDRC, and its member states have a direct strategic interest in Cabo Delgado's stability. Burundi represents a second alternative, with over a decade of operational peacekeeping experience as the largest contributor to AMISOM in Somalia — one of the most demanding counterinsurgency environments on the continent. Both SADC and Burundi would provide genuine security capacity without the commercial extraction agenda, institutional conflicts of interest, and US sanctions liability that define the RDF's presence. The no-alternative argument is a narrative that serves Kigali, not Mozambique.

What does it mean if Mozambique chooses to stay with the RDF despite the sanctions?

It would confirm that the decision is not a security decision but a corruption decision. Mozambique is a sovereign state with the unqualified right to terminate the RDF agreement and invite an alternative force. If it fails to exercise that right despite a clear legal prohibition, the withdrawal of EU funding, and the availability of credible alternatives through SADC and Burundi, the only analytically coherent explanation is that senior Mozambican officials have been financially compromised by Rwanda to a degree that renders them incapable of acting in the national interest. The failure to act would be, in itself, the evidence.

 

 

References

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DefenceWeb (2026). US sanctions against Rwandan military could impact Mozambican security deal. DefenceWeb, March.

Human Rights Watch (2026). US sanctions Rwandan Army, commanders. New York: Human Rights Watch, 3 March.

Human Rights Watch (2025). Enough red flags have been ignored, EU must reconsider Rwanda relations. New York: Human Rights Watch, 28 March.

Mondaq (2026). Sanctions Update: March 9, 2026 — Export Controls and Trade and Investment Sanctions. Mondaq, 9 March.

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Vines, A. (2022). Rwanda and Mozambique: a transactional security partnership. London: Chatham House.

Wikipedia (2026). Democratic Republic of the Congo-Rwanda conflict (2022-present). Wikimedia Foundation.

 

 

Author: The African Rights Campaign | London, United Kingdom | March 2026