Eugène Serufuli Ngayabaseka

Who is Eugène Serufuli Ngayabaseka?

Eugène Serufuli Ngayabaseka is a Congolese politician, the ex 2nd Vice President of the Congolese Rally for Democracy-Goma and was the governor of Nord-Kivu province from July 31, 2000 until 2007, when was succeeded by the RCD-K-ML candidate, Paluku Kahongya Julien.

Serufuli is a Hutu member of the Banyarwanda ethnic minority, who had migrated to Congo from Rwanda over the previous two centuries. He was born in Ruruma, Rutshuru district, North Kivu province. He studied at the Kinshasa University and worked as an anaethetist at the Goma General Hospital. He was head of the hospital trade union and was an activist in the MAGREVI organisation which campaigned for Banyarwanda rights.

In August 1998 he joined the political board of the RCD and in October 2000, in the middle of the Second Congo War, he was appointed Governor of North Kivu by the Congolese Rally for Democracy. The appointment of a Hutu Banyarwanda was designed to bring them into an alliance with the predominantly Tutsi Banyarwanda led RCD and their Tutsi Rwandan government backers against the anti-Tutsi Army for the Liberation of Rwanda and indigenous Congolese ethnic groups such as the Hunde, Nyanga and Tembo.