Great Lakes of Africa Centre

Studying statehood in DR Congo

Study of the state, public services and public administration in the Democratic Republic of Congo has featured prominently in the research carried out at the Institute of Development Policy (IOB) of the University of Antwerp. Through a number of research projects over the last fifteen years (on education, public policy, the civil service, and urban governance, as well as the politics that underpin them), typically employing a combination of approaches, from ethnography to political economy, and mixed methods involving analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data, this page summarises key outputs and provides links to the papers.

Public administration and public services

  • De Herdt, T. (ed.) (2011). À la Recherche de l'Etat en RD Congo: Acteurs et enjeux d'une reconstruction post-conflit, Paris : L’Harmattan.
    This edited volume investigates the post-conflit reconstruction process of the state in the DRC, via an introduction devoted to this issue, and viewed through a number of case studies: the political economy of charcoal supply in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, the governance of urban agricultural land in Kinshasa and Kikwit, and the governance of primary education (there is also a near-identical public report version available).
  • Moshonas, S. (2013) 'Looking beyond reform failure in the Democratic Republic of Congo', Review of African Political Economy, 40:135, pp. 132-140.
    This article problematizes the trope of ‘reform failure’ frequently invoked to qualify relations between the DRC and donors, privileging instead the lens of mutual accommodation, which state reform processes enabled.
  • Moshonas, S. (2014), 'The politics of civil service reform in the Democratic Republic of Congo', The Journal of Modern African Studies, 52:2, 251-276.
    This article examines Congo's aborted civil service reform process from 2003 to 2008, through a detailed exploration of some of the project's components, analysed through a framework attentive to the tensions between democratisation and liberalisation, and reconstituting the political logics that have pervaded and affected implementation.
  • Moshonas, S., De Herdt, T. & Titeca, K. (2017), DR Congo: The case for taking the administration seriously, Africa at LSE blog series, December 2017.
    This blog post stresses the importance to take public administration dynamics seriously, both in the design of government-launched domestic reforms and in donor projects and programmes, which typically remain dependent on collaboration with administrative services, but which tend to neglect those in practice.
  • Moshonas, S. (2018) Aid relations and state reforms in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The politics of mutual accommodation and administrative neglect. London: Routledge.
    Based on his PhD, this monograph focused on aid relations and state reforms in the DRC, viewed through the prism of the public administration and its reforms, and arguing that the politics of reform in the 2001-2011 period largely consisted of mutual accommodation patterns between donors and the government, albeit for different reasons.
  • Moshonas, S. (2018) 'Power and policy-making in the DR Congo: The politics of human resource management and payroll reform', IOB Working Paper, University of Antwerp.
    This working paper provides an overview of past and ongoing reforms in the public administration in the DRC, via a review of the literature, offering a preliminary analysis of key dynamics in the governance of human resources and civil service reform, including payroll management, whilst also engaging with the political settlements analysis literature.
  • Edmond, P. & Titeca, K. (2018) Chicken now, not eggs later: short-termism, underdevelopment and regime stabilisation in the DRC’s oil governance, IOB Discussion paper 2018.01.
    This discussion paper explores the issue of why the DRC’s possibilities for oil development are actually stunted, due to the privileging of regime stability, and the extensive prioritization of patronage and rent extraction. It provides a detailed exploration of both political involvement in the oil sector (by the presidency) and of the functioning of the ministry of oil.
  • Titeca, K., & Edmond, P. (2019). The political economy of oil in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): Corruption and regime control. The Extractive Industries and Society, 6(2), 542-551.
    This article examines in detail the dynamics of corruption and regime stabilisation which define the shape of the oil sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a major source of patronage and rent extraction, the latter circumscribed by upper and lower limits, thus providing a deeper understanding of how political control and corruption function within the DRC, while operating to the detriment of developmental outcomes.
  • Moshonas S. (2019) ‘The political economy of human resource management and payroll reform in the DRC’, ODI Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium Working paper series 71, January 2019.
    This working paper provides an overview of the management of human resources and payroll in the DRC’s public administration, centred on the functioning of the expenditure chain, and exploring the political and financial stakes surrounding the wage bill (including political patronage in recruitment, clientelist arrangements around payroll management, the rents deriving from ghost workers, and leakages/embezzlement of remunerations).
  • De Herdt, T. & Titeca, K. (eds.) (2019), Negotiating Public Services in the Congo. State, Society and Governance, London: Zed Books.
    This edited volume examined the issue of how public services are negotiated in the DRC (where the state is just one actor among many – whether local, national, and international – and not necessarily the most important).
  • De Herdt, T. & Titeca, K. (2019) ‘Introduction: Negotiating Public Services in the Congo’, in De Herdt, T. & Titeca, K. (eds.), Negotiating Public Services in the Congo. State, Society and Governance, London : Zed Books, pp. 1-23.
    The introduction to the volume revisited a number of concepts informing the different contributions – real governance, practical norms – whilst situating governance and the negotiation of public services in the DRC alongside their broader context, made of a layered rentscape where the central state budget coexists with other sources of funding, both domestic and international, including parafiscal revenue.
  • Moshonas, S. (2019) ‘Reform of the public wage system in the DRC: The Système intégré de gestion des ressources humaines et de la paie and its prospects’, in De Herdt, T. & Titeca, K., Negotiating Public Services in the Congo. State, Society and Governance, Zed Books, pp. 26-51.
    This book chapter provided an analysis of the implementation of a key component of the World Bank-funded civil service reform in the DRC: the attempt to introduce a computerized, integrated human resource and payroll management system; the chapter focuses on the political economy dynamics that complicated implementation, including inter-ministerial tensions and frictions, the ambivalent role of different actors involved, and vested interests related to the rents deriving from payroll management.
  • Moshonas, S. & Baharanyi Naciyimba, S. (2020), ‘Enjeux et défis de la réforme de l’administration publique en RD Congo’, Congo-Afrique, 545, 414-428.
    This article provides an overview of civil service reform efforts in the DRC, focusing in particular on the period from 2012 onwards, reviewing and assessing the different components of this World-Bank funded reform, in light of the broader context of the public administration, and providing an appraisal of their prospects.
  • Malukisa, A. (2024). “Alternance politique de la corruption en RDC ». Alternatives sud 31:3(2024), p. 53-68
    Despite official statements, large-scale corruption scandals have continued, and at a high rate, in the Tshisekedi era. This article demonstrates two closely related realities. On the one hand, the public actors who must fight corruption are the very ones who profit from it. On the other hand, the fight against corruption risks accentuating tensions that could lead to the defection of the powerful political networks that protect the regime.
  • Malukisa, A. (2021), ‘Lutte contre la grande corruption en RDC avec Félix Tshisekedi au sommet de l'État: une justice à deux vitesses’, in Ndayiragije, R. et al. (eds.), Conjonctures de l’Afrique centrale 2021, Tervuren & Paris : MRAC & L'Harmattan, pp. 107-130.
    This book chapter analyses anti-corruption initiatives targeting grand corruption during the early years of the presidency of Félix Tshisekedi. It provides an overview of the political economy of corruption, before zooming in on several case studies, showing how in the fraught context of a tension-laden coalition government, anti-corruption cases are highly politicised and based on power struggles within the government, thereby leading to a two-tier justice system which reflects the lack of accountability of ruling elites vis-à-vis the population.
  • Moshonas, S., ‘La corruption au sein de l’administration congolaise’, Masolo Ya Kati, Congo Research Group podcast series, New York University, May 2022, 45 minutes.
    This podcast covers the issue of corruption in the public administration, drawing on the author’s research since 2010, and particularly his recent work at the university of Antwerp.
  • Moshonas, S., De Herdt, T., Titeca, K. & Balungwe Shamavu, P. (2022), Bureaucratic fragmentation by design? The case of Payroll Management in the Democratic Republic of Congo, African Affairs, 121(485), 509-534, African Affairs, 121(485), 509-534.
    This article examines the sources of bureaucratic fragmentation and coherence in the DRC by exploring the connections and tensions between interface bureaucracies and the back-office administration tasked with managing the public payroll system. It does so by using the ‘real governance’ lens combined with the concept of ‘infrastructural power’, enabling in turn to situate trends in the public administration since 2001 (such as budgetary expansion alongside a massive growth in staffing levels).
  • Sánchez De La Sierra, R., Titeca, K., Xie, H., Lameke, A. A., & Malukisa, A. J. (2024). The real state: Inside the congo’s traffic police agency. American Economic Review, 114(12), 3976-4014.
    This article investigates unofficial revenue collection by the traffic police in Kinshasa, and the way this is reproduced within the police administration, offering new quantitative data on the way unofficial revenue is collected and distributed.
  • Bahati Mastaki, O. (2024), ‘Structures standards ou une réforme de l’administration publique de trop en RDC. Cas du ministère de l’Environnement et du Développement Durable’, in Bashizi, A., Jamar, A., Augustin Samnick, D. & Cituli Alinirhu, V. (eds.) Conjonctures de l’Afrique Centrale, Paris : L’Harmattan, pp. 149-174.
  • Moshonas S., De Herdt, T., Titeca K. & Balungwe Shamavu, P. (2024), Increasingly wageless?
  • The political economy of salary supplements in the Congolese civil service, IOB Working Paper, University of Antwerp // Moshonas S., De Herdt, T., Titeca K. & Balungwe Shamavu, P. (2024), La désalarisation de la fonction publique ? L’économie politique des primes dans l’administration publique congolaise, IOB Working Paper, University of Antwerp.
    This working paper, available in both French and English, examines the fragmented and informalised system of salary supplements in the Congolese civil service, analysing their drivers, their distribution across ministries and their impact on governance. Based on extensive fieldwork, it shows how these supplements shape the political economy of remuneration and the internal dynamics of the public bureaucracy.

Political economy of the education sector

  • Titeca, K., & De Herdt, T. (2011). Real governance beyond the ‘failed state’: Negotiating education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. African affairs, 110(439), 213-231. This article explores public service provision in the DRC through a case study of the education sector, arguing that despite state retreat, the role of the latter has been redefined rather than evaporated, on the basis of an evolving negotiation process between state and non-state actors, where power differentials between those lead to diverging outcomes both in time and in specific localities.
  • De Herdt, T., Titeca, K., & Wagemakers, I. (2012). Make schools, not war? Donors' rewriting of the social contract in the DRC. Development Policy Review, 30(6), 681-701. This article investigates the effect of state retreat, public-private partnerships and the turning of schools into tax units (which fund the administrative services of the higher levels of the education pyramid), on donor interventions in the education sector, which, instead of changing the current system, have become part of existing configurations and led to its expansion.
  • De Herdt, T., Marivoet, W., & Muhirigwa, F. (2015). Vers la réalisation du droit à une éducation de qualité pour tous : Analyse de la situation des enfants et des femmes en République  Démocratique du Congo. Kinshasa: UNICEF. This report, funded by UNICEF, provides an overview of the evolution and reforms of the education system in the DRC, its history and political economy, focusing on the challenges faced by the sector in terms of both efficacy and equity. It does so by exploring a number of themes (such as issues of resource allocation, high disparities in educational outcomes across and within provinces, implementation of ongoing public policies at different levels).
  • De Herdt, T., & Titeca, K. (2016). Governance with empty pockets: The education sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Development and Change, 47(3), 472-494. This article analyses the different practical norms at play in the reproduction of the education sector in the DRC by different actors, both state and non-state, in a context where despite the virtual disappearance of this sector from the state budget, schools have managed to survive on school fees. However, this resilience of the sector, it is argued, may have come at the price of building a more inclusive and higher quality education system.
  • Brandt, C., De Herdt, T. & Moshonas, S. ‘Everything Changes, Everything Stays the Same: Congo’s Education Crisis’, ROAPE blog series, May 2020. This blog post looks at the implementation of the Free Primary Education policy (gratuité) introduced by Congo’s new President, the struggle over payroll management, the tensions between people allied to the current and the former president and the Covid-19 pandemic.
  • Brandt, C. O., & De Herdt, T. (2020) ‘Reshaping the reach of the state: the politics of teacher payment reform in the DR Congo’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 58(1), 23-43 This article analyses the politics of the reform of teacher payment modalities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (through the bancarisation reform) in light of the uneven territorial reach of the state; drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, it shows how despite official declarations of success, intended effects were almost completely offset in rural areas, complicated governance arrangements, and increased opacity and unevenness of the geography of statehood.
  • Brandt, CO., Moshonas, S., De Herdt, Taty Mwakupemba, J., & Marchais , G., Fraude dans l’éducation en RDC : le nouveau ministre peut-il changer la donne ?’, Congo Research Group blog series, New York University, June 2021. This blog post focuses on payroll fraud in the education sector, exploring the timing of media coverage over the issue, the political stakes and battles behind their eruption in the public sphere, whilst drawing attention to their longer historical roots, based on decades of administrative neglect.
  • Brandt, C.O., Marchais, G., Taty Mwakupemba, J., Moshonas, S. & De Herdt, T., ‘Why payroll fraud in the DRC’s education sector will be hard to fix’, The Conversation, July 2021. This blog post examines the challenge of addressing payroll fraud in the DRC’s education sector, revisiting its history across the Mobutu years, highlighting the patronage networks that underpin it, and assessing the new minister’s prospects for bringing change.

Urban governance

  • Malukisa A. (2024). Réforme de la police de la circulation routière à Kinshasa : stop à la « dose unique » contre la corruption. Nouvelles dynamiques africaines, 5, 20-41. The police are a key state service for maintaining public order. However, in many fragile states, this police can also be a vector of disorder, as observed in the urban transport sector in Kinshasa, with the road traffic police. The latter was reformed in 2014 with the aim of combating corruption at the root of road harassment and non-compliance with the highway code. This article demonstrates the limits of institutional approaches when little attention is paid, on the one hand, to the socio-economic, political and professional context in which state agents and users operate, and on the other hand, to the informality that determines the functioning and/or dysfunction of public services.
  • Malukisa A. (2020). Coronavirus à Kinshasa : face à face économie informelle à préserver et économie informelle de la coercition. In Economie informelle et emplois en Afrique : regards des sciences sociales et économiques. Batibonak, S. (dir.) : 251-274. This chapter examines how the informal economy in Kinshasa has been affected by the coercive measures taken by public authorities to combat the coronavirus. Empirical research demonstrates that the application of these measures has stopped where they risked blocking the functioning of the informal economy, which plays a palliative role in the failures of the State and the formal economy. At the same time, it has been highlighted that the restrictive measures of public authorities have resulted in an expansion of the informal economy of coercion, which carries many risks of spreading the coronavirus.
  • Malukisa, A. (2017). Gouvernance hybride des parkings publics à Lubumbashi : quand la fiscalité informelle supporte la fiscalité formelle. Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines, 51(2), 275–291. This article draws on the concept of ‘hybrid governance’, analysing the interactions between private and public actors involved in the governance of public motor parks in Lubumbashi, demonstrating that that informal taxation can be a decisive support for the perception of an official parking tax.
  • Albert Malukisa, « « Courtoisie routière » à Kinshasa et à Lubumbashi : un instrument politique pour le maintien de l’ordre public », Revue internationale des études du développement, 231, pp. 9-31. This article, centered on ‘road courtesy’, shows that contrary to what is often asserted in the literature, ‘petty corruption’ generates a certain degree of social order in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi. The article demonstrates why public authorities find an interest in turning a blind eye to such practices, intervening solely when public order is threatened by a breakdown of relations between police and road users. An English version was published in 2022 by the same journal.
  • Malukisa Nkuku, A. & Titeca, K. (2018) Market governance in Kinshasa: the competition for informal revenue through ‘connections’ (branchement), IOB Working Paper, University of Antwerp. This working paper focused on the informal organisation of urban governance in Kinshasa, explored via the prism of urban markets; using the concept of ‘branchement’ (referring to personal connections with higher-level officials), the paper emphasized the salience of politicization and informal financial flows (‘rapportage’) as mechanisms structuring the complex political eco-system surrounding the struggle over control over market revenue
  • Titeca, K. & Malukisa Nkuku, A.  (2019) Urban governance through personal connections: Kinshasa and its unlawful constructions.  Secure Livelihoods Consortium Working Paper, February 2019. This working paper shows how urban governance is a multi-actor and multi-policy affair – the way in which the city is governed, planned and regulated is not the monopoly of the state regulatory framework, but enacted, contested and protested through a variety of other actors; and in which particularly personal connections have a profound effect on the expansion of the city and the continued existence of unlawful constructions.
  • Malukisa, A., (2019), Régulation et gestion des parkings publics : associations des chauffeurs et des chargeurs à Kinshasa, in Ayimpam, S. (ed.), Aux marges des règles et des lois : régulations informelles et normes pratiques en Afrique, Academia-L'Harmattan, pp. 235-269. This book chapter focuses on the governance and regulation of public parkings in Kinshasa, through the analysis of the practices of the professional associations led by actors involved in the urban transport system.
  • Malukisa, A., (2019), La professionnalisation des petits opérateurs de transport à Kinshasa à l’épreuve des intérêts divergents des acteurs locaux, Revue Africaniste Inter-Disciplinaire, 4, pp. 53-67. This article analyses the divergent interests at play between state and non-state actors at the local level, through the case of the professionalization of private operators involved in Kinshasa’s transport system, by moving the focus beyond a sole emphasis on political clientelism and financial struggles between vehicle owners and their employees.
  • Malukisa Nkuku, A. & Titeca, K. (2019), ‘The Public Transport Sector in Kinshasa: The Battle Around the “Spirit of Death”’, in De Herdt, T. & Titeca, K. (eds.), Negotiating Public Services in the Congo. State, Society and Governance, London: Zed Books, pp. 142-167. This chapter discuses the politics of the transport sector in Kinshasa, and how the informal organization of this sector is used as political capital for Congolese politicians.
  • Titeca, K., & Malukisa Nkuku, A. (2022). The politics of football in Kinshasa: power, profit and protest. IOB Working paper: University of Antwerp. This working paper discusses the politics of football in Kinshasa, with a particular focus on their dynamics during the regime of Joseph Kabila.