New book about Goma

Goma is a fascinating city of around one million people caught up between volcanic eruption and armed conflict. Capital of Congo’s North Kivu Province, it is living hell for some but a city of promise for others. In contrast to dominant discourses, this book relates the population’s attitudes about well-being, resilience and opportunity. Resigned and hardened by struggle, they give the impression that life is neither beautiful nor ugly, but an unending skirmish with destiny.

Based on twelve personal narratives, we recount the story of an urban landscape in an authentic and humanizing way. The revelations are sometimes agonizing, often surprising but always full of meaning. This qualitative approach helps make sense of this vast enigma of a city and the relationships between the population and their economic, social, ecological, political and religious environments.

This new book is an invitation to discover the intimate feelings and multiple realities of ordinary people determined to define their future.

Why Kabila won't give up

The Kabila family business interests according to Kavanagh, Wilson & Wild. And it all makes sense.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-12-15/with-his-family-fortune-at-stake-congo-president-kabila-digs-in

19 December 2017

“Dear friend, the wolves have always eaten the sheep; are the sheep going to eat the wolves this time?”

        Quote from Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power.

Article 64 of the 2005 Constitution of the DRC

       All Congolese have the duty to oppose any individual or group of individuals who seize power by force or who exercise it in violation of the provisions of this Constitution. Any attempt to overthrow the constitutional regime constitutes an offense against the nation and the State, an offense which is not subject to the statute of limitations. It is punished in accordance with the law.

Integrated land use planning

One of the many State-building weaknesses of Congolese authorities and their international partners is the total absence of an integrated land use strategy. One blatant bit of proof is the allocation of mining and oil concessions within protected areas; another is the lack of effort to reconnect the fragmented national territory through an integrated road and rail network.

Agriculture, forests, energy and water tend to be viewed by policy-makers and development experts as distinct challenges: an integrated (sometimes referred to as holistic or systemic) approach is practically non-existent. This is one of the main issues discussed in Congo’s Environmental Paradox. The policy landscape relating to these sectors is covered by vertical silos with few horizontal connections.

There are however a few counter examples: USAID’s Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE) has designed and adopted an ambitious ‘landscape’ approach and the European Commission is pursuing an integrated conservation management strategy in and around the Virunga National Park. USAID implemented its Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs) approach in Africa in the 1980s but with limited results.

More broadly however, efforts to improve the sustainable management of Congo’s forests focus on the forest sector sensu stricto. This is necessary but not enough because sustainable use of forests can only be achieved by looking beyond the sector itself. There are inevitable linkages between forests, water, energy (ranging from cooking charcoal to the mega Inga hydroelectric dam) and agriculture.

Deforestation throughout the Congo Basin and in the DRC in particular is driven by specific human activities (agricultural practices, the development of roads and cutting down trees) and social processes (demographic growth, urbanization, trade, governance and culture). All of these causes and processes are interconnected.

The underdevelopment of hydroelectric capacity causes deforestation and therefore contributes to climate change. Food insecurity in the DRC clearly stems from production and transportation weaknesses but there are other causes too. Artisanal mining is one example because it has tempted large numbers of farmers to trade their hoes and machetes for picks and shovels.

Inadequate transportation infrastructure, like the energy deficit, is a cross-cutting problem with negative implications for land, forests and water management. This pertains to difficulties in getting crops from field to market and timber from forest to sawmill or port.

Resolving ambiguous land tenure systems is an institutional challenge is something that no Congolese government has been willing or able to tackle. The conflicting logics that oppose customary views of land ownership with those the State appear to be intractable. Coming to grips with this conflict is also a social challenge because forests are embedded in social contexts that influence how and why people use, depend upon and exploit other resources, such as agricultural land and water.

This is just one more urgent priority that the government and opposition groups should be discussing in the months ahead of electoral deadlines.

Congo's underdeveloped agriculture sector

Political discussions in and about the Congo continue to be off track. The crucial debate about how to feed the hungry is completely absent from the political agenda - from both the government and opposition sides. Once an exporter of food, the DRC now grows too little to meet even the basic nutritional needs of its citizens. Congolese are amongst the hungriest people on earth today. Food production increases at a slower annual rate (2%) than demographic growth (3%). Only ten percent of Congo’s 800,000 square kilometres of arable land (a surface area larger than France and the United Kingdom combined) is under cultivation.

Congo could feed over a billion people – or the equivalent of approximately the entire African continent. But the gap between potential and development in the agricultural sector is striking. Historically this wasn’t the case. Although achieved at an exorbitant social cost, the Belgian Congo could boast a number of real accomplishments in the agricultural sector.

- Agricultural exports represented 39% of total exports in the late 1950s, down to practically zero today.
- Congo grew more cotton than any other African country.
- It was the world’s leading exporter of palm oil following World War II.
- Unilever, the world’s third largest consumer goods company after Proctor & Gamble and Nestlé, owed much of its early success to the Lever Brothers’ palm oil concession in Bandundu Province. It was established in 1911 to provide the raw material for their soap making factories in England.
- The Yangambi agricultural research institute in the heart of the country’s tropical rainforest was a world-renowned centre of excellence in the 1950s.
- The production of quinine, the only known cure for malaria, is closely associated with the microclimate of the South Kivu highlands.

The productivity of food production has declined steadily since the early 1960s. This is the case for subsistence farming and cash crops. As Congolese agricultural capacity deteriorated, other countries have been revolutionizing their food production strategies and boosting productivity rates. It has, therefore, become cheaper to feed Kinshasa with imported rice (primarily from Thailand, Vietnam and India) than produce and transport it from the hinterland. The same can be said for Malaysian cooking oil or American chicken wings. Local production cannot compete with these cheap imports.

Reliance on imports is a major economic problem but it is an even greater social calamity because no other sector could put as many people to work as food production and processing.

Economic policies that encouraged capital accumulation through agricultural exploitation were abandoned after independence. They gave way to a lack of vision that continues today. The beginning of the downward spiral came with the wave of Mobutu nationalizations in 1973. The lootings of the early 1990s and the two wars that shattered lives and the economy from 1996 to 2001 had devastating effects on production and ranching. President Laurent-Désiré Kabila never really had the opportunity to promote agriculture because much of his time at the helm of the nation was devoted to the war effort - and making shady deals in the mining sector to pay for it. President Joseph Kabila has also focused on mining without encouraging the government or investors to give adequate attention to food production. There has also been insufficient investment in agricultural research and training. The misguided tax system privileges imports instead of local production. The inexorable disintegration of transport infrastructure and poor distribution networks exacerbate these problems.

As the country emerged from war, Congo’s international partners funded all kinds of state-building initiatives but they also neglected agriculture. With so many other urgencies to address, their focus was on reform of the security sector, economy and public finance, improved governance and rule of law and the physical rehabilitation of infrastructure. Some important donors such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Commission do however have specific projects targeting improved food security. Others, like the Belgian Technical Cooperation fund initiatives that benefit farmers such as work on rehabilitating rural feeder roads. In the past decade, international partners have spent between $100 million and $150 million per year on agriculture. For reasons of comparison, the United Nations peacekeeping and stabilization operation in Congo (MONUSCO) costs $1.5 billion per year.

President Joseph Kabila signed into law a new Agricultural Code in December 2011 (Loi portent principes fondamentaux relatifs à l’agriculture) which responded to a serious policy gap. Congo had lacked a comprehensive agricultural policy framework for several decades, just as it did in other sectors such as mining and forestry. In an attempt to address this policy vacuum, the Code sets outs general guidelines. Its stated purpose is to promote and increase agricultural production to ensure food security and rural development. Provisions apply to food production, training and research, taxation and customs, financing, marketing and environmental protection. It does not, however, apply to livestock, fisheries and aquaculture, which undermines its capacity to deal sufficiently with food security issues.

Application of the law is contingent upon two prerequisites. One is respect for the decentralisation process outlined in the Constitution. Agricultural policy, according to the law, must be implemented at the national, provincial and local levels, involving stakeholders from the government, civil society and the private sector. But decentralization has not been given adequate political attention and is on hold. This has direct negative consequences for the implementation of the agriculture law. The second problem pertains to the slow progress made in elaborating the law’s operational by-laws. They are needed to stipulate funding and taxation issues and rights and responsibilities of the different stakeholders. The general framework is not enough to meet targets without these by-laws.

Although the government signed the Maputo Declaration in 2003, it has devoted only between one and two percent of the national budget to the sector in recent years. The little money that is available in this envelope is largely spent on salaries in Kinshasa with minimal trickle down into the field. More than 95% of state-employed agronomists and veterinarians work in Kinshasa or provincial capitals. Like the forest and water sectors, agriculture is far from being a real priority for key decision makers in Congo today. The absence of government funding is one indicator. The fact that Parliament does not have a permanent agricultural commission is another.

On the institutional landscape, there is an overall lack of professionalism and capacity in terms of human resources and material. Government offices responsible for agricultural priorities are under-funded, under-staffed and in need of competent experts with up-to-date professional skills and vision. They also lack data management systems and basic equipment such as filing cabinets, copiers and computers, let alone Internet access.

An additional hurdle is the number of Ministries involved in managing the sector. The Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Rural Development, the Ministry of Environment Conservation, Water and Forests, the Ministry of Scientific and Technological Research and the Ministry of Women and the Family all share rural development and agricultural responsibilities. In theory, the Ministry of Planning coordinates the financing of these five ministries but is, in reality, overwhelmed with other urgencies. The problem here is that when priorities are supposed to be dealt with by multiple partners, responsibility essentially lies with none - so no one really does anything. There is an absence of coordination, tasks get passed on to someone else, disagreements arise over costs and there tends to be a generalized absence of accountability and ownership.

These priorities need to be addressed in public debate by the government and opposition politicians before they can be taken seriously.

Congo’s natural resource development hostage to electoral politics

It won’t be a surprise to anyone if the presidential elections slated to take place the end of this year don’t take place. Not a surprise but certainly a disappointment; especially to opposition politicians, ordinary Congolese and some Western partners who have stuck their necks out voicing the importance of rule of law and democratic process.

President Joseph Kabila doesn’t care what the Constitution says about two mandates and will cling to power as long as he can. Some analysts consider he will more likely be assassinated than walk away from power voluntarily. Why? Because he controls access to substantial natural resources; so the incentive to remain at the top of the pyramid is strong.


Legal instruments relating to the mining and oil sectors (designed with international advisory – mainly World Bank) put him at the top of the decision-making process. His signature is needed in the awarding of exploitation concessions in these sectors. 

Oil is the country’s third most important export earner (after copper and cobalt). Global Witness has reported frightening stories involving Kabila, Dan Gertler and the Congolese oil business.

Mineral exports may have slumped in the past year, negatively impacting export earnings. But Congo’s resource base is resilient and will bounce back. One indicator is China’s increasing control of cobalt supply chains and investments in DRC. About half of the world’s cobalt comes from Katanga and demand is going to increase as automotive manufacturers from Teslar to General Motors increase production of electric batteries. Cobalt is necessary to build them.

Some natural resource sectors are more sensitive to the political context than others. Last month the World Bank suspended financing to an Inga 3 technical assistance project. The underdevelopment of energy capacity is a major driver of deforestation.

The Belgian Federal Parliament, also last month, adopted a resolution to freeze direct aid to Kinshasa if elections aren’t held. Belgian projects in the agriculture, conservation and infrastructure sectors would consequently be put on hold.

US Senators Richard Durbin, Edward Markey and Christopher Murphy introduced a Senate resolution calling on Kabila's government to fulfil its constitutional mandate for a democratic transition while calling for targeted sanctions such as visa bans and asset freezes.

Opposition candidates/Kabila rivals like Etienne Tshisekedi and Moise Katumbi are preoccupied with getting into the Presidential palace but have been relatively silent about their macro-economic and social programs. 

They should be called upon to outline their strategies for regaining sovereignty over the Congo’s natural resource base.

Endorsements for Congo's Environmental Paradox

 Thank you Ed, Daniel, Crawford, David, Tom and Jeroen.

‘Congo’s Environmental Paradox is a fascinating read, giving a no-nonsense view of the multitude of problems besetting Congo’s natural resource sectors, how they affect ordinary people’s daily lives and how well-meaning donor initiatives are often intrinsically flawed. The book puts today’s problems into historical perspective and will serve as a reality-check to politicians and activists.’

Daniel Balint-Kurti, Global Witness

‘An invaluable contribution … the succinct and sparkling summation of the key elements of the political economy is most useful. The author’s capacity to convey a rich treasure chest of information and acute analytical skills make this a landmark work.’

Crawford Young, University of Wisconsin

‘Most studies of natural resources and development delve into the details sector by sector. Linkages to violence, politics and state-building are treated separately for different resources. This eloquent and richly documented book focuses attention on the connections, and on the global forces adding complexity to these interactions and altering the political economy of possible change.’

David Booth, Overseas Development Institute

‘This remarkable, fact-filled study will undoubtedly rank as required reading for anyone with an interest in the DRC – whether for specialists or for the general reader. Following his Congo Masquerade, this should confirm Trefon’s standing as one of the most perceptive observers and analysts of that central African giant.’

Edouard Bustin, Boston University

‘The first successful attempt to take stock of emerging trends in Congo’s natural resource sectors. Well-written, clearly structured and thoroughly documented, Trefon offers fresh analysis on the gap between resource potential and socio-economic development.’

Jeroen Cuvelier, University of Ghent

‘A remarkable guide to the tangled relationships between minerals, water and other sectors of the political economy in the Congo. It goes beyond slogans such as “rich land, poor people” to explain how the rich get richer while the poor struggle to survive. Indispensable reading for humanitarians and human rights advocates, both Congolese and international.’

Tom Turner, author of The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality

Natural Resource Management in the Congo

A preview to the book. Publisher information here: Congo’s Environmental Paradox: Potential and predation in a land of plenty. 

Book launch in London at SOAS Monday 9 May 5:15 PM

Book launch in Oxford Tuesday 10 May Nuffield College, Clay Room, 5:00 PM 

Book launch in Birmingham Wednesday 11 May 4:00 PM

Congo matters. It is land of plenty with the natural resources the world needs. No other country in Africa, and few countries worldwide, has such an impressive concentration and diversity of natural wealth. Congo has over 1,100 mineral substances and is home to the world’s second largest tropical rainforest. Endowed with abundant arable land, its farmers could feed a billion people. More than half of Africa’s water is located in this troubled nation, whose hydroelectric capacity could light up the entire continent. And Congo has oil too. But after a decade of robust growth driven by the extractive sectors, there is little evidence of social development.

Neither optimistic nor pessimistic this book intertwines three main threads of information: an overview of what we need to know about the natural resources themselves; analysis of the sectors through an institutional and political economy framework; and the challenges, pathways and opportunities for improved natural resource management.

The primary ambition of this book is to present up-to-date data and analysis of Congo’s natural resource sectors. Congo’s Environmental Paradox is essentially empirical and argues, sector by sector, that state-building initiatives cannot be successful without improved natural resource management. Efforts consequently need to be embedded in locally realistic and appropriate perspectives, including in the framework of the stalled decentralization process.

Part of my motivation for writing this book stems from frustration about mainstream discourse and analysis of Congo’s natural resources. Most information tends to be sector specific and lacks historic depth. Articles, NGO reports and policy documents suffer from extreme fragmentation. The scholarly landscape about these resources is covered by vertical silos with few horizontal connections. The urgency in trying to come up with management solutions or policy recommendations also means that these writings usually lack historical depth.

The book therefore includes historical accounts about natural resource management because the trajectory of Congo’s resource exploitation does not exist in an historical vacuum. The main focus, however, is the period since President Joseph Kabila came to power in 2001. Much has evolved in the area of resource use and management since then, despite many patterns of continuity.

Congo’s Environmental Paradox adopts – and advocates for - an integrated approach in analysing the potential of Congo’s natural resources. Integrated (sometimes used synonymously with holistic) refers to the interconnectedness of natural resources themselves, combined with governance practices, economic activities and the stakeholders involved – such as Congolese officials, farmers and miners, international institutions, Western multinationals, new commercial partners and actors in unofficial trade and trafficking networks. The book identifies relationships between all of these elements and highlights the lost opportunity costs of not pegging development policies to them.

The following examples support my argument of why an integrated approach is necessary. Efforts to improve the sustainable management of Congo’s forests focus more often than not on the forest sector sensu stricto. This is necessary but not enough. Sustainable use of these forests can only be achieved by looking beyond the sector itself. Links need to be made between forests, water, energy and agriculture. Agriculture is a major driver of deforestation and consequently contributes to global climate change. Food insecurity in the DRC clearly stems from production and transportation weaknesses but there are other causes too. Artisanal mining is one example because it has tempted large numbers of farmers to trade their hoes and machetes for picks and shovels. Oil production undermines protected area management threatening Congo’s amazing biodiversity.

The section on industrial mining draws attention to DRC’s energy deficit, which is a serious obstacle to the creation of added economic value. While extraction of bulk ore is not particularly energy dependent, its transformation is. The central government wants the country to export value added products but processing by mining companies is not economically profitable with inadequate electricity supplies.

Dilapidated transportation infrastructure, like the energy deficit, is another cross-cutting problem with negative implications for each of the five sectors analysed. This pertains to difficulties in getting crops from field to market, timber from forest to sawmill or port, or minerals from mine to rail and road networks. The oil sector is not seriously handicapped by transport issues today because production takes place in the vicinity of the Atlantic coast. Nevertheless, a looming logistical problem faces upcoming oil production in eastern Congo: the pipeline question remains unresolved for national political concerns and regional rivalry. These are some of the other connections that are highlighted in an integrated way.

All of these sectors merit entire books in and of themselves but this one has the merit – for the first time – of pulling together this information in a single volume. It is intended primarily for people interested in the Congo and in African environmental issues. But students wanting to learn about global climate change or hydropower politics, wildlife lovers fascinated by Congo’s outstanding biodiversity, food security experts interested in fish farming, NGO campaigners tracking land deals or struggling to end the trade in conflict minerals, companies exploring investment opportunities and donors trying to think creatively about aid delivery strategies, as well as students of development more broadly, should all find some parts of this book conceptually useful and socially pertinent.

DRC in the Panana Papers

The Panama Papers are an unprecedented leak of data from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. They reveal how the rich and powerful take advantage of secretive tax regimes. President Kabila’s twin sister Jaynet Désirée Kabila Kyungu, an MP since 2012 and boss of Digital Congo (a media company with TV, radio and internet activities) is one of a few African elites caught up in the scandal.

Mossack Fonseca has been involved in the DRC. The company registered Caprikat and Foxwhelp in the British Virgin Islands. In 2010 Joseph Kabila signed a presidential decree awarding Caprikat and Foxwhelp an oil exploration contract to blocs 1 and 2 in Lake Albert. This award sparked cries of corruption and foul play, in part because no one really knows who controls these two little-known companies. The Financial Times quoted the Congolese Oil Minister saying Dan Gertler was associated with Caprikat and Foxwhelp. More on Dan Gertler and Caprikat and Foxwhelp in Le Monde, here.

It is generally believed that Gertler and the late Katumba Mwanke were behind this award. Antoine Ghonda, a close Kabila ally is also reported to have been involved. The South African press reported that Khulubuse Zuma, President Jacob Zuma’s nephew and the president’s legal advisory, Michael Hulley, owned Caprikat and Foxwhelp. Deployment of South African troops in the Intervention Brigade set up by the United Nations in March 2013 to reinforce MONUSCO in eastern DRC is an indication of President Zuma’s motivation to stabilize the region for economic reasons. South Africa is also present in Congo’s oil sector through its firm Engen Petroleum Ltd, which is a major petroleum distributor.

More information about Caprikat and Foxwhelp is avaible in the chapter on the DRC oil sector in Congo’s Environmental Paradox, forthcoming this May.

Happy New Year from UK Ambassador

Graham Zebedee, the British Ambassador to the DRC highlighted some important facts about Congolese public finance in his New Year address.

The government spent just as much money on the Parliament as on the country’s health system in 2014.

12% of public finance went to the Presidency, the Prime Minister’s office and Parliament; the equivalent of funding for primary, secondary and technical education.

Public services are funded by ordinary people, diaspora groups, Church associations, NGOs and foreign partners.

Few countries worldwide are as aid dependent as the Congo.

With annual disbursements of $550 million annually, the UK is Congo’s second most important donor after the US.

As emphasized in the Congo Masquerade book, the Ambassador drew attention to the gap between policy design and policy implementation.

Source : QUOTIDIEN 14ème Année Edition n°4029 APA du 8 janvier 2016 OLB-BBOS.