In November 2008, Zimbabwe’s inflation soared to one of the highest levels of hyperinflation in world history. The peak month-on-month inflation rate is estimated to have reached an incomprehensible 79.6 billion percent (79,600,000,000%).
This colossal economic crisis, from which Zimbabwe is still recovering, sparked turmoil within the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and could be argued to have partly led to Robert Mugabe’s ousting on 21 November 2017. By the time he was removed, Mugabe was 93 years old and had governed Zimbabwe for 37 years, 7 months, and 3 days.
The economic collapse stemmed from a mix of disastrous land reforms, a loss of confidence in the Zimbabwean dollar, and excessive money printing to fund military involvement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Zimbabwe serves as a stark example of how wars fought in the DRC are often lost not on its battlefields, but in foreign lands far from the front lines.
Zimbabwe, alongside Angola, was a key supporter of DRC President Laurent Kabila’s government—and later his son Joseph Kabila, who succeeded him after his assassination on 16 January 2001—during the “Second Congo War.” Both nations had been part of the broad alliance, including Rwanda and Uganda, that toppled the corrupt autocrat Mobutu Sese Seko on 16 May 1997, ending his 32-year rule and installing Laurent Kabila. However, this alliance unravelled by July 1998.
Rwanda and Uganda withdrew from Kinshasa but entrenched themselves in eastern DRC. From August 1998, they supported rebel groups like the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD), which launched an offensive to oust Kabila. Opposing them were Zimbabwe, Angola, and Namibia, who became the Kinshasa government’s primary backers. Known then as the SADC Allied Forces, Zimbabwe’s troops—under Operation Sovereign Legitimacy—formed the largest contingent.
Reports suggest that between January and June 2000, Zimbabwe spent $166 million from its Treasury on its military ventures in the DRC. This unbudgeted expenditure drained already strained foreign currency reserves, worsened by economic mismanagement.
Zimbabwe defaulted on loans to international financial institutions in 1999, partly due to the war’s financial burden, leading to further economic isolation and challenges in securing future credit. Western donors also reviewed and slashed aid programmes to Harare, intensifying the economic pressure.
The war became a vehicle for personal enrichment among some Zimbabwean elites. It provided a cover for corruption, with minerals and other DRC resources exploited for private gain, further depleting national wealth without bolstering the country’s economic health. The resulting crisis crippled public services: unemployment skyrocketed, and the government struggled to pay civil servants salaries, triggering strikes and deepening economic paralysis.
Angola’s involvement in the Second Congo War followed a different path but still left a profound mark on José Eduardo dos Santos’s government. Like Zimbabwe, Angola faced substantial military costs. Despite its oil revenues, war spending squeezed the national budget, reducing investment in public services and infrastructure. Angola’s military expenditure hovered between 5% and 6% of GDP in the late 1990s and early 2000s—one of Africa’s highest rates—partly driven by the Congo conflict.
High oil prices during this period masked some of the financial strain, but Angola’s external debt still climbed from $10.2 billion in 1998 to $12.6 billion in 2002, according to the World Bank, with war-related costs a contributing factor. Angola also lost an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers in the conflict.
The war enabled corrupt practices that enriched the elite while living standards for most Angolans stagnated, fuelling public discontent and reinforcing perceptions of the dos Santos regime as corrupt. It also prolonged Angola’s civil war by aligning government interests against UNITA rebels, who were supported by the West and Mobutu’s regime in Kinshasa.
These dynamics indirectly contributed to the political and economic challenges Angola faced post-war, including the succession crisis after a weakened José Eduardo dos Santos stepped down on 26 September 2017, after 38 years in power. His son, José Filomeno dos Santos, was later embroiled in corruption scandals linked to systemic issues worsened by the war years.
In both Zimbabwe and Angola, participation in the Congo War was viewed by their governments as a means to secure strategic interests or resources. Yet the economic, political, and social fallout was severe, sowing long-term instability and governance challenges.
By the time the Southern African Development Community (SADC) deployed the SADC Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) on 15 July 2021 to help Maputo counter IS rebels in Cabo Delgado province, Zimbabwe and Angola were mere shadows of their former military might from the Second Congo War. Zimbabwe couldn’t contribute, while Angola sent only a token force, outstripped even by “peace-loving” Botswana.
SAMIM withdrew from Mozambique in July 2024 and redeployed to eastern DRC as the SADC Mission in the DRC (SAMIDRC), supporting Kinshasa against the AFC/M23 rebellion, particularly around Goma. This force included troops from South Africa, Tanzania, and Malawi.
In January 2025, SAMIDRC suffered a catastrophic setback as AFC/M23 tightened its grip on the mineral-rich North and South Kivu provinces. During the fighting that saw rebels capture the strategic eastern city of Goma on 28 January, at least 14 South African National Defence Force (SANDF) soldiers were killed. Three Malawian Defence Force soldiers also died during this period, alongside two Tanzanian People’s Defence Force (TPDF) soldiers in attacks on 24 and 28 January in Sake and Goma. Reckoning with this debacle, SADC announced SAMIDRC’s withdrawal, hampered by funding shortages—DRC failed to finance the operation as agreed—and a lack of external support.
Unlike previous peacekeeping missions, SAMIDRC engaged directly with well-equipped M23 rebels, suffering heavy casualties and equipment losses near Goma.
Rwanda and Uganda, like the SADC nations, also funded their roles in the First and Second Congo Wars from state coffers, but they didn’t crash and burn.
In Rwanda, post-genocide recovery gained momentum in 1997. GDP growth hit 13.8% in 1997, followed by 8.9% in 1998, 7.6% in 1999, 8.4% in 2000, 8.5% in 2001, and a sharp rise to 13.2% in 2002. Even in 2008, as Zimbabwe grappled with astronomical inflation, Rwanda posted 11.2% growth. By 2017, as Mugabe fell and dos Santos exited, Rwanda’s growth stood at 6.1%, with poverty dropping from 77% in 2001 to 55%. In contrast, Zimbabwe’s poverty rate rose to 84.1% in 2017—a 7.96% relative increase from 2011—while Angola’s edged up slightly to 34–35%.
Uganda, one of the world’s fastest-growing economies in the late 1980s and early 1990s, maintained its momentum. Growth reached 5.1% in 1997, peaked at 8.1% in 1999, hit 8.7% in 2002, and breached double digits at 10.8% in 2006. Though it dipped to 4.0% in 2017 amid drought and election uncertainty, it had earlier climbed to 9.7% in 2011.
Geography and a guerrilla warfare tradition in their militaries partly explain why DRC wars were less costly for Rwanda and Uganda. Critics allege they got a cushion from exploiting Congo’s minerals, but if that were the sole factor, Zimbabwe and others like South Africa in subsequent years might have reaped similar rewards. Instead, it seems African nations funding foreign wars, especially in DRC, from their treasuries face steep penalties.
Zimbabwe had to fly all military supplies in and out of the DRC, while Rwanda and Uganda—bordering the DRC and led by armies forged in guerrilla campaigns (Uganda 1981 to 1986, Rwanda 1990 to1994)—relied on low-cost models: soldiers’ boots. In 1996–97, Rwanda’s march to topple Mobutu saw troops walk most of 2,679 kilometres from their border to Kinshasa over six months, traversing a DRC with few motorable roads. In 2002, 20,000–25,000 Rwandan soldiers marched home from the Second Congo War, some covering 200–500 kilometres in days to weeks, following the Pretoria Agreement that ended the conflict.
Uganda’s withdrawal was surreal. Between 6,000 and 10,000 Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) soldiers trekked home—some covering over 500 kilometres—alongside their Congolese wives and children, laden with weapons, mattresses, chickens, and goats in queues stretching hundreds of metres. From Bunia, Kisangani, Butembo, and Beni, they marched through dense forests and rough terrain, foraging or trading for food, and preserving transport for heavy equipment.
Operating this way, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Rwanda and Uganda could easily achieved for $800,000 what cost Angola and Zimbabwe $8 million, while toughening their troops and forging new knowledge of Congolese terrain—knowledge that might have proved useful in subsequent conflicts.
