Bukavu, city, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, central Africa, on a peninsula extending into Lake Kivu. It is a commercial and industrial centre, a lake port, and a tourist city with road access northwest to Kisangani, southwest to Kasai, south to Lubumbashi, and to East Africa. There is also air transport to other Congolese cities and to Burundi. The region is known for agricultural products (coffee, tea, tobacco, quinine, strawberries), livestock, and tin and gold. More than 100,000 tons of cargo pass through the port annually, and the city is headquarters for tourists bound for Goma and the Virunga National Park. The city has a school of social studies, a teacher-training college, and a scientific-research institute. It also has a brewery, printing plant, and the Mururu hydroelectric installation.
Bukavu is in one of the most densely populated areas of Congo. In the 1970s and ’90s the city received thousands of refugees fleeing ethnic violence in neighbouring Burundi and Rwanda and was itself the centre of a fierce civil war that raged in eastern Congo in the late 1990s and early 21st century. Pop. (2004 est.) 471,789.