- In the last decade, there has been a steady increase in the number of Indigenous Twa families leaving forests their ancestors relied on in the Congo Basin for urban centers in northern North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo.
- According to reports seen by Mongabay, the number of Indigenous peoples climbed by 5,000 in some small towns.
- For some Twa people, moving to the city is not only a consequence of expulsion from protected areas, but also a choice motivated by insecurity, trying to escape land conflicts with Bantu communities and finding alternative livelihoods as extractive activities take up forests.
- These displacements have profound social, cultural, and environmental consequences, say environmental activists, as Twa people severe ties with the forest, and traditional ecological knowledge built over millennia declines.
NORTH KIVU, Democratic Republic of Congo — Over the last decade, towns in the north of North Kivu province in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have seen the increasing migration of Indigenous Batwa people, according to censuses seen by Mongabay. Traditionally living by hunting and gathering in the Congo Basin forests, many Twa people (also known as Batwa) have now abandoned their forest-based livelihoods to settle in towns, far from ecosystems their ancestors relied on and developed deep knowledge about.
According to Batwa people who spoke to Mongabay, the reasons are various. Some have long been expelled from protected areas, while others are fleeing the growing insecurity in the region. Other groups of Batwa are seeking to escape land conflicts with neighboring Bantu communities, or to find alternative livelihoods in the face of difficulties accessing forest resources, thus severing their ties with the forest.
Filipo Anania, one of the Twa community leaders we met in Mavivi, at the Ngite camp, says the outmigration from the forest began with the expulsion of his community from Virunga National Park around 1994. He says they hadn’t initially planned to live in the city and that this move to an urban environment was by no means a conscious choice, but a decision linked to a series of events that forced them to relocate several times.
“At first, we were asked to leave the area around the park. We went to settle in Kubeti, near PK25 [in the middle of the forest in outside the city of Beni],” he recalls.
After a few years in this forest area, security deteriorated sharply with the occupation of Twa areas by militants from the antigovernment Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in 2014 and 2015.
“They arrived in the forest and began slaughtering people without mercy. Seeing our loved ones massacred, we were forced to flee, and at that point we went to settle in Mbandaka [another village located not far from the town of Mavivi],” Anania tells Mongabay.
There again, living conditions proved unbearable, forcing the community to move once more. “Finally, we ended up here in Mavivi, where we live today,” says Anania, a 60-year-old father of four.
His story is far from unique and mirrors the reality of many Twa people now living in urban areas of North Kivu province.
In 2015, the Pygmy Assistance Program (PAP), an Indigenous rights organization based in Beni, identified a total of 339 Twa households living in urban centers and along the Beni-Oicha road. The same report seen by Mongabay estimated the total number of people from Twa communities living in seven camps in this area at 1,794 during the same year.
Ten years later, the situation has changed radically. According to data from the same area that the Beni Territory Social Affairs Office, based in Oicha, provided Mongabay, there are currently more than 1,282 households spread across 13 sites sheltering Indigenous Twa peoples, with approximately 6,784 Twa — an uptick of nearly 5,000 people no longer depending on forests as their ancestors did traditionally.
Challenges accessing land
According to Reginald Masinda, project manager at the Peasant Association for the Rehabilitation and Protection of Pygmies (Preppyg), other Twa people are also settling in urban centers to escape recurring land conflicts with Bantu communities, especially in the Lubero territory, south of the city of Butembo in North Kivu province.
“Beyond security reasons, these displacements are also motivated by challenges in accessing land and forest resources, which form the basis of these Indigenous peoples’ way of life and livelihoods,” he tells Mongabay. “Thus, in the hope of finding safer living conditions and alternative economic opportunities, some Twa are gradually migrating to the cities.”
Agricultural expansion and logging, carried out mainly by Bantu communities, are also among the reasons for the exclusion of the Twa from lands their ancestors relied on, gradually forcing them to leave the forest for towns and cities.
Masinda points out that sometimes traditional chiefs sell land belonging to Indigenous peoples to other Bantu communities for agricultural or logging purposes, out of carelessness or ignorance.
Once considered by conservationists as keepers of the forest, many members of the Twa communities are now struggling to survive in urban areas. Their livelihoods depend largely on occasional or spontaneous aid provided by humanitarian organizations, which identify them as displaced persons due to armed conflict. In most cases, some find small daily jobs, while others resort to begging to provide for their families.
In some areas, the Twa are accused of stealing crops and tools belonging to neighboring communities, which fuels social tensions with other communities. This situation is confirmed by Filipo Anania, who explains that their children grow up in these urban environments through luck as their parents have no stable employment to provide for them.
Without the forest, the ancestral knowledge fades
According to Baudoin Ambiane, co-host of the program “Sauti ya Mumbuti” (“Echo of the Mumbuti,” as the Twa are known is parts of the DRC) at Beni-based broadcaster Radio Télévision Graben, the repeated displacement of Twa communities is severing their ancestral ties to the forest and making it difficult to continue certain traditional practices.
This rupture undermines the Twa’s historical role in protecting the forests and biodiversity of the Congo Basin, he says.
“Before, we knew the rules of the forest. For example, we knew when we could hunt, which trees to cut down and which to leave standing in order to preserve the forest, and which species to protect,” Ambiane tells Mongabay. Today, far from their ancestral environment, they no longer participate in the transmission of this traditional ecological knowledge, he says.
The loss of access to the forest affects not only their culture, but also their way of life and social balance.
“For example, we are no longer able to practice certain customary acts such as Lusumba,” a traditional initiation rite that takes place only in the middle of the forest, Ambiane says. “What’s more, here in the city, we consume foods that are not part of our culture. This is also why we are now seeing a decline in our health and earlier mortality within our communities.”
But according to Masinda, despite being cut off from their original forest territories, some Twa are trying to preserve and promote their ancestral knowledge of traditional medicine by offering herbal remedies to meet the health needs of urban populations. This economic and cultural conversion is proving to be a survival strategy in urban areas for a handful of Twa, he says.
This is the case for Dr. Linga, a well-known Twa in Beni who runs a private traditional health facility in the city center. Masinda also cites the case of Safari Isigo, another Twa figure involved in promoting traditional medicine, who does not yet have a formal facility but practices on an outpatient basis in Butembo. Through his informal work, he tries to ensure a minimum subsistence in an urban context marked by precariousness.
Hoping to return to the forest
Despite a 2022 law on the protection and promotion of Indigenous peoples in the DRC, to date there is no policy or mechanism in place to support Indigenous peoples in urban areas. According to Masinda, this constitutes a violation of the rights of Indigenous peoples.
The urban division of social affairs of the city of Butembo recognizes the presence of Twa communities in the city, but indicates that only Twa children living in the city, such as war refugees or orphans, are considered a vulnerable group and receive humanitarian support on the same basis as other vulnerable groups.
However, some members of the Twa community say they hope to return to the forest one day. Constant Boibeto, another Twa leader and deacon in the 8th Community of Pentecostal Churches in Central Africa (Cepac), is counting on an initiative to identify forests located on the outskirts of Virunga National Park, as well as in other areas belonging to Indigenous peoples, to demarcate them and secure them by obtaining land titles.
In addition, in the Lubero territory, the NGO Preppyg has launched a community forest security project aimed at reducing land conflicts between Bantu peoples and Indigenous communities, in order to enable the latter to regain lands and continue to play a role in forest conservation.
This article was first published here in French on Feb. 9, 2026.
Banner image: Two Twa women and children are resting under the shade of a cocoa tree next to the Ngite/Mavivi Twa camp in Beni, DRC. Image of Jackson Sivulyamwenge for Mongabay.
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