17 December 2025
By Angeline Abuor and Douglas Drake Onen from the African Youth for Transitional Justice Platform (AY4TJ).
Long after independence, successive generations in the Great Lakes Region of Africa (Burundi, DRC, and Rwanda) continue to navigate the effects of divides where identity is not simply who one is, but what one has been classified as. One need only recall how, during colonial rule, being inscribed with ethnic and socio-political identity such as Hutu, Tutsi, Twa, ‘native’ or ‘non-native’ became a bureaucratic stamp that dictated access to land, education, leadership and at times, even the right to life. What were once fluid social categories hardened into immovable fault lines. The legacy endures in the regional political culture: identity is not simply descriptive, but determinative. It can confer power or strip it away, open doors or enforce exclusion.
“Just as a tree cannot stand without its roots, a generation without its history cannot find its identity.”
These classifications distorted pre-existing social dynamics and entrenched divisions that endured beyond independence, ultimately fuelling present-day conflict. Today, across Burundi, Rwanda, the DRC – and for most of colonial Africa – youth grapple with identities that are inherited. The politicisation of difference which was first institutionalised by colonial rule, has become part and parcel of modern governance. The bitter inheritance is this: many young people learn early that in the Great Lakes Region identity is a weapon as much as belonging. It can mobilise fear, loyalty, violence, or exclusion.
In this new policy brief, “Politicised divides: The legacy of colonial identities and their centrality to conflict in the Great Lakes Region”, we argue that ongoing instability, conflict, and violence in the region cannot be disentangled from enduring colonial identity systems. While colonial administrators eventually departed, the classification tools they introduced were passed on to post-colonial elites, who often redeployed them as instruments of statecraft and political mobilisation. Merely eliminating formal colonial rule did not remove colonial ideology – which can be often traced as the root causes of today’s identity-based conflicts.
Contrary to narratives that view identity conflicts as timeless hatreds or ethnic rivalries, our brief demonstrates that these tensions were consciously engineered, institutionalised, and weaponised as instruments of rule. In the aftermath of independence, governments lacking inclusive frameworks failed to eliminate these colonial constructions of belonging. Indeed, many regimes reinforced them, often exploiting division for political gain.
We argue that any pathway toward (national and regional) reconciliation must begin with deconstructing the colonial identity architecture. The region must confront inherited and politicised divides.
In our policy brief, we call for dismantling colonial structures that keep young people on the back foot and prevent them from realising or reaching their full potential. Young people today require historical honesty, civic truth-telling, and an opportunity to reconstruct belonging on inclusive, indigenous foundations. Lastly, we must revive African shared values such as the Ubuntu spirit, which reminds us that identity and humanity are inseparable, so that we move away from isolation to the unity and socialism that African communities once had.
Ultimately, the policy brief makes one central claim: the Great Lakes Region cannot build sustainable peace until it confronts, unlearns, and repairs the colonial systems that continue to organise power, identity, and opportunity. The future of the region’s youth and the stability of its states depend on a deliberate reimagining of identity beyond the borders and hierarchies inherited from colonial empires.
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Want to dig deeper into this topic? Join the authors in our webinar on Thursday, 18 December (11:00-12:30 CET / 13:00 EAT)! Register now.
This brief is the fifth and final in a five-part youth-led series, ‘Legacy’, exploring the linkages between historical injustices, their enduring impacts in different African contexts, and the insufficiency of efforts to address these atrocities. Find out more.