Nigeria, March 22 -- On 4 December, 2025, Rwanda's lean, spare president Paul Kagame and his Congolese counterpart Felix Tshisekedi - known at home as "Fatshi" - sat in the Oval Office on either side of Donald Trump, who was presiding like a referee at a championship boxing match.

But this was no reprise of Muhammad Ali's famous "Rumble in the Jungle," where he knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round at a stadium in Kinshasa.

The two leaders could barely look at each other. Yet, they signed a peace deal meant to end one of Africa's most intractable conflicts: the war in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The optics were powerful. The reality was something else entirely.

Before the ink was dry, Rwandan-backed M23 rebels clashe...