Join us for a talk with Dr Philip Roessler – Andrew Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations – and Mr Harry Verhoeven – a DPhil student at the Department of Politics & International Relations – University of Oxford, based on interviews with key players on each side of Africa’s Great War, explores the internal dynamics that led to the breakdown of the post-Mobutu government and the onset of the August 1998 war in the DRC. In late July 1998, a mere fifteen months after taking power, Kabila, in a hasty move designed to catch the Rwandans off-guard, expelled his comrade-in-arms and all foreign forces from the Congo, igniting a second war that would draw in nine regional governments and become the most devastating conflict since World War II.