Nyamuragira is Africa's and one of the world's most active volcano. It erupts roughly every two years, producing large fluid lava flows.

Nyamuragira is is a massive high-potassium basaltic shield volcano located about 25 km north of Lake Kivu in the East African Rift Valley NW of Nyiragongo volcano. It has a volume of 500 cubic km, and extensive lava flows from the volcano blanket 1500 square km of the East African Rift, some lava flows having travelled more than 30 km from the summit. The broad shield volcano, 3058 m high, has a summit caldera, about 2 km wide and walls up to about 100 m high. During some eruptions, a lava lake is contained within the caldera. As typical for shield volcanoes, it has both eruptions inside the summit caldera and from extensive rift zones on the flanks, producing numerous fissures and cinder cones.