Introduction
On the last weekend of March 2009, the sleepy provincial capital of Kindu was overtaken by an influx of Congolese military personnel. Somewhere between 3000 and 6000 FARDC (armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo) soldiers arrived in town with orders to deploy to the forest area bordering Maniema and South Kivu provinces, near the town of Shabunda. They were there as part of Kimia II, an organised military campaign designed to drive out FDLR (Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda) rebels, the remnants of the Hutu groups that perpetrated the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The group of soldiers that arrived in Kindu was to advance several hundred kilometres eastward, while other troops coming from South Kivu would force the rebels to retreat westward into the forest. However, the demoralised FARDC troops that arrived in Kindu, some with their wives and children in tow, had received no salary for months and had no barracks to sleep in.
The soldiers therefore relied on the only assets they had, their weapons, to prey on the local population for food and shelter. The several weeks they were in Kindu were incredibly tense, leading to international organisations giving their staff sundown curfews, the burglary of the Vodacom cellular telephone store downtown, and numerous reports of civilian harassment. It became increasingly clear that the troops had not been provided with transport to leave town and fulfil their mission, although a few did begin to walk toward the frontline, while others rode there on bicycles and motorcycles confiscated from locals. As the situation persisted, the local Catholic church grew weary of threats to the population, and the insecurity was ended only when the bishop of the Kasongo diocese sent a large truck to begin shuttling the soldiers from Kindu to their battlefront.
This anecdote raises a number of interesting questions. Weber tells us that one of the most defining duties of states is providing security, or having a monopoly of violence in a territory. However, despite having a national army which has military objectives, the Congolese state was unable to provide this most basic task of governing. The Catholic Church, not the Congolese government, ultimately provided the necessary means for the soldiers to perform their duty. As such, we are left to ponder the central questions of this article: How does social welfare get provided in Africa's weak states? How and why are faith-based organisations (FBOs) stepping in to collaborate with or fill in gaps left by a failed or weak state?
Undisputedly, more than a decade of war in parts of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (hereafter DRC) has had an immensely negative impact on both the social fabric of communities and on individual lives. However, tales of woe and destruction are not all that have arisen out of the ashes of the Congo wars. This article demonstrates how the minority Muslim community has capitalised upon this historical moment of state weakness and desperate human need to mobilise for the benefit of the larger society. Despite decades of marginalisation, discrimination, and withdrawal from political and development realms, in post-conflict DRC, Muslim associations are organising to provide social services. Although Catholic and Protestant groups, with the support of the central state, have for example been providing educational facilities since colonial times, Islamic organisations have increasingly become involved in the provision of education since the formal end of the conflict in 2002.
This article examines the involvement of the Muslim community in social service provision, especially education, supported by empirical evidence from comparative fieldwork in post-war DRC. It argues that the opportunity provided by this unique post-conflict setting encouraged the mobilisation of a heretofore withdrawn and marginalised minority population. In particular, Muslim provision of education has been possible because of what amounts to a system of hybrid governance in the Congo, where public education provision requires the cooperation and resources of both the Congolese state and faith-based organisations. This finding thus leads us to argue that the ‘failed state’ literature must be nuanced to recognise that non-state actors, such as FBOs, do not simply fill a void left by the failed state. Instead, many citizens of so-called failed states actually experience a system of ‘hybrid governance’, where social service provision is the result of state and non-state collaboration. While the phenomenon of state and non-state collaboration in service provision is also common in developed countries, the key distinction is that this article focuses on FBO provision of public education in the Congo.
State capacity in the DRC has been incredibly low for several decades, since at least the 1980s, and as a result scholars and practitioners have repeatedly labelled the DRC as a failed or extremely weak state. Joel Migdal (1988, p. 4) defines state capability as the ability to ‘penetrate society, regulate social relationships, extract resources, and appropriate or use resources in determined ways’ (emphasis in original). According to Migdal, strong states do this well but weak states have low capabilities to perform these tasks (for discussions of the DRC as a failed state in the 1990s see Young 1994 and Lemarchand 2003). The capacity of the Congolese state was eroded by over a decade of civil and regional war. However, the Foreign Policy Failed State Index for 2011 ranked the DRC as the fourth most failed state in the world, eight years after the Congo wars (1996–2002) formally ended. Herbst (2000) defines a weak state as one that is unable to prevent the movement of people, arms, finances, rebel groups, wars and resources within the territory, and is unable to protect its citizens from external threats. Much emphasis has been placed on examining the causes and consequences of state failure, but relatively little research has been done on how and via whom government functions, such as the provision of social services, are carried out in the context of state weakness. In fact, the provision of public services that are normally the purview of central governments such as security, education, health care and humanitarian relief, has increasingly become the work of non-state actors.
Posner (2004) discusses how civil society groups are often left to do the work of their state. Traditionally, ‘governmental performance entails the provision of fundamental public goods like security, basic infrastructure, education, sanitation, and public health’ (p. 237). However, when states have failed, they are unable to meet these tasks and civil society organisations are often left to assume the role of ‘substitutes’. Therefore, the provision of social services in many developing countries experiencing weakened state capacity is especially dependent on non-state actors, including international organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and religious institutions or faith-based organisations (FBOs).
Several scholars have identified functional alternatives to the African state such as religious associations, specialised United Nations agencies, and groups who profit from weak state capacity.1 One recent work directly addresses this theme with empirical research carried out in Kinshasa. Giovannoni, Trefon, Banga and Mwema (2004) discuss the explosion in the number of NGOs and community associations in the capital from the 1990s onwards, reflecting people's need to survive as the increasingly dysfunctional state withdrew from their lives. They find the proliferation of these organisations has been directly linked to the failure and withdrawal of the central state and people's need to care for themselves.
Non-state actors, especially FBOs, have become important actors in governance and development. In fact, they are usually doing so with the support and encouragement of sovereign states and key political actors. Particularly in Africa, major outside donors such as the World Bank, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID), are supporting FBO participation in health care, education, environmental initiatives and poverty reduction.2 The World Health Organisation estimated that FBOs provide 30–70% of health care in Africa. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) increasingly works in partnership with these organisations to improve AIDS prevention and treatment on the continent (PlusNews 2009). In a speech in January 2011, the USAID administrator stressed collaboration with religious associations on development projects, and described how ‘in Kenya for example, thirty percent of all healthcare services are provided by Christian hospitals’ (Shah 2011).
In addition to practitioners, scholars have also increasingly focused their attention on the role of FBOs in development. For example, Tyndale's (2006) volume compiles 13 case studies from around the world of religious associations engaging in development work, with a positive impact for local populations. Haynes, a scholar of religion and politics in the developing world and particularly in Africa, noted that because many governments in the developing world are weak, ‘there is now widespread acceptance that desired development outcomes can more likely be achieved if the energies and abilities of various non-state actors – including faith-based organisations – can be tapped into’ (Haynes 2007, p. 3). Haynes examined the developmental role of Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists across Africa, Asia and Latin America, particularly in the areas of conflict resolution, fighting poverty, the environment, health and education.
Bornstein (2003) provided an empirical case of the role of religious non-governmental organisations in Africa. Her research examines Christian NGOs operating in Zimbabwe, and the ways in which these FBOs often provide social services in sectors such as agriculture, health care and education when the state is unable to do so. Her analysis highlights the need to examine the ability of FBOs to adequately provide such services, considering their specific motivations and spiritual goals. Of key importance, she argues, is the fact that the aim of such organisations is not simply providing services to needy populations, but also obtaining religious converts.
Nishimuko's (2009) work on Sierra Leone contains many similarities to the Congolese case, with the recent end of civil war and a state lacking the means to provide adequate education or even rebuild the numerous schools destroyed during conflict. Therefore, FBOs have played an increasing role, in so much as ‘about 75% of primary schools are owned and managed by FBOs in Sierra Leone’ (p. 284). Nishimuko finds that a weakness of religious involvement in development is the possible restriction on who is provided for, but that an important strength is their earned trust of the community due to long-term interaction. She concludes ‘that when the government's ability to provide education is not adequate, collaboration between the government, NGOs and FBOs brings about effective outcomes and their involvement in development projects is vital’ (ibid., p. 293).
In the context of education in Tanzania, Mallya (2010) finds that collaboration between the state and FBOs is complicated. This is because, whilst the weak government cannot adequately provide for its people, it nevertheless insists on regulating the involvement of capable religious associations (p. 132); as this article will show, a similar dynamic is at work in the DRC today. In the late 1980s, the Tanzanian state asked for the increased involvement of NGOs, both religious and secular, in the provision of education and health. These associations rose to the challenge – by 1993, NGOs were providing 61% of secondary schools, 87% of pre-schools and 43% of hospitals in the nine regions surveyed. Recent studies show that FBO-run schools have the best examination performance (ibid., p. 143).
Jenkins (1994), in an examination of the historical role of missionaries and Christian churches in Africa, finds that religious associations have played a unique role in their provision of social services. Although their original goal was to convert colonial subjects, when faced with the poverty of such communities, missionaries acknowledged the need for development in general, not just in the spiritual realm. Therefore when colonial governments were unwilling to provide social services for their subjects, religious associations became the primary providers of education and health care. In the Belgian Congo in particular, Jenkins finds that ‘until 1946, the entire school system was composed of mission schools, with the few government-run schools staffed by missionaries’ (p. 88). Jenkins argues that contemporary service-provision FBOs have benefited from their historical experience at such tasks and long-standing infrastructure. While this may strengthen their performance compared to other non-state actors, it is important to recognise that they also differ from secular NGOs because their primary purpose is to expand their faith community.
In the contemporary post-conflict period, religious associations in the DRC have had to expand their assistance to Congolese citizens. A recent study of the role of religious networks in the country asserted ‘as the government tries to consolidate its authority and build security, faith-based organisations will continue to find themselves, perhaps, as the only actors that are capable of delivering “public goods”’ (Whetho and Uzodike 2008, pp. 73–74). As well as providing traditional services such as education and health care, religious communities have been involved in peacebuilding, for example during the 2003 Inter-Congolese Dialogue peace process, and in encouraging an end to political violence in Kinshasa after the 2006 presidential elections. FBOs played a large role in providing civic education and election preparation prior to the historic 2006 elections. They have been key actors in the rehabilitation of former combatants as well as war-devastated infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and roads. Indeed, it is difficult to talk about governance in the Congolese context without acknowledging the major role played by religious associations.
The eastern provinces of the DR Congo, despite the formal end of the conflict and the holding of elections, continue to experience insecurity and are frequently perceived as ungoverned spaces, in part because of the geographical distance from the capital. Exploring the role of Christian FBOs in governance in North and South Kivu provinces, Seay (2009) concludes, ‘in a situation of state collapse, civil society organisations [CSOs] step in to substitute for the state's role as the provider (and, in many cases, regulator) of social services. In the eastern DR Congo, that CSO is most likely to be a church’ (p. 202). This article makes a similar argument, although with regard to Muslim associations, but also seeks to highlight that FBOs do not step in to replace the supposedly ‘failed’ Congolese state, but rather work with it.
Therefore, we argue that the DRC's education sector is an example of hybrid governance. Titeca and De Herdt (2011) similarly argue that while the ‘failed state’ literature focuses on the undoubted inadequacies of the DRC government, scholars would learn more about governance in the DRC by exploring the ways in which it functions in practice. Titeca and De Herdt assert, ‘the specific case of the education sector enables a demonstration of how the Congolese state continues to survive and transform itself. As an administrative framework the state has never ceased to exist, and its role in providing public services has been redefined rather than having evaporated’ (ibid., p. 214). FBOs play an important role in the Congolese education system, as indicated by the fact that three-quarters of primary school children attend religious schools (ibid., p. 220). Although it may appear that these institutions operate independently of the weak DRC state, in reality they are part of a system of hybrid FBO-state governance. This hybrid system is analysed here to explain why Muslim FBOs, which are not discussed by Titeca and De Herdt, have increased their involvement in education as a result of the opportunity provided by the near collapse of state provision in this sector.
Indeed, scholarship on the governance functions of FBOs in the Congolese context focuses exclusively on Christian associations. This is reflective of a broader phenomenon where ‘overall … there is a lack of reliable information on Islamic NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa’ (Haynes 2007, p. 185). As such, this case study of the role of Islamic organisations in providing education in post-war DRC will provide empirical analysis of the role of Muslim religious non-state actors in social welfare provision in weak African states.
A history of marginalisation: Islam in the Congo
Demographic estimates suggest that Muslims constitute 5% of the total Congolese population, while Catholics comprise 50%, Protestants 35% and Kimbanguists (a Christian sect, founded by Congolese prophet Simon Kimbangu) 5% (US Department of State 2011). The history of the Congolese Muslim minority community is one of repression and marginalisation. Islam arrived in eastern Congo in the precolonial period (c.1860) as Swahili-Arab traders from the east African coast, most famously the notorious figure of Tippo Tip, penetrated the interior as far as present-day Maniema province in search of ivory and slaves.3 Their aims were economic, not evangelical in nature. However, some local communities began to emulate the foreigners and many adopted the new religion.
Crawford Young (1966, 1969) wrote about Muslim politics in the Congo in the colonial period. In the early 1890s, the Swahili-Arabs were defeated by the Belgian colonial forces and expelled from eastern Congo. The new colonial regime was hostile toward Congolese Muslims, fearing that the minority represented ‘a potential breeding ground of insurrection politically’ that would threaten the regime and possibly lead to rebellion (Young 1969, p. 256). In fact, the Muslim community remained generally quiescent so as to avoid reprisals from the colonial administration. Despite its initial isolation, by the 1930s the Muslim community was prospering, as the result of increased relations with Islamic communities from other countries, particularly Tanzania. More mosques and Qur'anic schools were built, men were sent to neighbouring colonies for Islamic instruction, and most Congolese Muslims embraced Qadiriyya Sufism. The colonial regime reacted harshly to this new religious activity by forbidding Muslim foreigners from entering the country, destroying several mosques, and relegating outspoken and potential ‘rebellious’ leaders to remote regions of the Congo (Lazzarato 2001, pp. 73–74). However, according to oral history accounts, this had the unintended effect of spreading the religion to new converts in areas that would have remained untouched by Islam.4
However, the education sector was where Muslims experienced the most severe forms of marginalisation during the colonial years. Muslim children were effectively barred from colonial missionary education, denying them the chance for personal advancement in colonial society (Young 1969, p. 260). In the Belgian Congo education was provided almost exclusively by Christian missionaries, primarily the Catholic Church, and the result was that Muslim children were harassed, forced to convert, or expelled from school. Older Muslims in Maniema recount that harassment in colonial schools included forced conversion, beatings, being forced to eat pork, snakes and other forbidden meats, and to drink water during the fasting month of Ramadan.5 As a result, most Muslim parents forbade their children from attending mission schools, fearing they would convert to Christianity. Consequently, generations of Muslims did not receive modern education, never learned to speak the colonial French language, and thus were ostracised from the colonial state.
As the Congo gained independence, the position of the Muslim minority improved, particularly with the 1960 law guaranteeing freedom of religion that was enshrined in the 1964 constitution. In March 1964 a national Muslim conference was convened in Maniema province, to select community leaders and state representatives. Despite these signs of progress Young concluded that ‘Islam … remains as quiescent and isolated as it had been during the colonial period’ (Young 1966, p. 464). Even today, few Muslims hold significant political or leadership positions in the DRC, despite the holding of democratic elections. The consequences of the historical legacy described above can be seen today in the underrepresentation of Muslims at all levels of Congolese government and in senior professional posts. At the level of national politics, in 2009 there were only four Muslims in the 500-person national assembly and three out of 120 senators. There are no Muslims in the Maniema provincial assembly, even from those regions which are predominantly Muslim.
Despite the difficult legacy he describes, Crawford Young encourages us to see how unexpected it is that Islam survived at all in the Congo, and argues that it was able to do so because ‘Islam has responded to the hostility of the state by indifference and withdrawal’ (Young 1969, p. 263). Although this characterisation accurately describes the colonial and early independence period studied by Young, there is virtually no literature examining the role of the Congolese Muslim community in national politics in the post-Mobutu period. This article, in increasing our understanding of the political activities of the Muslim minority, aims to demonstrate that there is significant evidence of a Muslim community awakening, mobilising and breaking their long-standing tendency to isolate itself from the state.
The post-war proliferation of associations in Maniema and the DRC
The eastern province of Maniema, with a total population of around 1.8 million, is the historical and present-day home to the majority of Congo's Muslim population (Ngongo et al. 2007, p. 20). Kindu, Maniema's ethnically and religiously mixed provincial capital, has a population of about 254,000 (ibid., p. 23). Muslims represent about 25% of the city's population. In contrast, in Kasongo, Maniema's second largest city and the historical birthplace of Islam in the Congo, the Muslim community constitutes as much as 80–90%.6 There are substantial Muslim communities in other parts of the country. In Kisangani, the DRC's third largest city, estimates of the Muslim population rage from 10–30%. Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, is home to prominent Muslims and is the headquarters for the national Muslim organisation, the Communauté Islamique en République Démocratique du Congo (COMICO), discussed below.
In contemporary Maniema one finds a plethora of local, regional, national and international organisations performing development functions. Compared to other provinces, especially North Kivu, which has witnessed the brunt of post-war conflict and humanitarian disasters, Maniema is home to probably the fewest regional offices of international organisations. The handful of international organisations active in the province, which include German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), Belgian Technical Cooperation (BTC), Coopi, Care International, Merlin, and a few United Nations bodies, have only begun operations in Maniema in the last few years, even though some have a long-standing presence in the country. Of the few organisations working in the province, very few carry out activities outside the provincial capital, because of the terrible state of Maniema's roads, the expense of petrol for transportation, and the high cost of importing goods to the province, often by chartered plane.
In addition to international organisations, various local associations have emerged in post-conflict Maniema to address the community's needs, such as providing for those orphaned or handicapped by war, reintegrating former combatants into society, and caring for female victims of sexual violence. When association leaders were asked their motivations for participating in such activities, most asserted that because their local and national governments provided little to no assistance, community members worked together to meet their own needs.7 Indeed, a few asserted that they are performing the tasks of the government.8
Christian and Muslim associations are among those helping to provide much-needed services and assist in the rebuilding of their community. Contrary to the portrait painted by Young (see above), today one finds a vibrant and organised Muslim community with associations that focus on a wide variety of tasks, whether spiritual or providing important services for their community that the state has failed to provide. COMICO, the primary organisation of Congolese Muslims, was founded in 1972 at the behest of President Mobutu who permitted only a single organisation for each section of society. Muslim women's associations affiliated with COMICO have been established in recent years, including Comité National Féminin de COMICO (CONAFEM), and Comité Provincial Féminin (COPROFEM) at the provincial level. The Union des Femmes Musulmanes du Congo (UFMC) also has national and provincial offices; the one in Kisangani ran a therapeutic nutritional centre during the wars, beginning in 1997. Fondation Zam-Zam was established nationally in 2003 and has branches in each province. In Maniema the dynamic leader of Zam-Zam has created a private Muslim primary school, which also provides free education to war orphans and offers women's literacy courses.
Muslim associations in Maniema are many: Collectif des Femmes Musulmanes pour le Développement du Maniema (CFMUDEMA) an umbrella body of 18 Muslim women's development groups; Ami Santé, a health-care association for Kindu residents; Bureau Islamique des Droits Humains (BIDH), a Muslim human rights organisation with offices in Kindu and Kasongo which (among other activities) received funding in 2006–08 from the United States organisation National Endowment for Democracy to work with the Muslim population on a project for peace and democracy; and the Conseil National des Droits de l'Homme en Islam (CONADHI), which has an office in Kasongo. Over 130 Muslim women's associations in southern Maniema are primarily active in community agriculture projects; women's associations are also affiliated with the largest mosques in Kasongo such as the Dawa'tu Islamiyya of Mosque 18, Jumiatu Islamiyya from Mosque 17, and Association de Développement Communitaire pour les Mamas Musulmanes from the Central Mosque.
Elsewhere in the DRC, Kisangani boasts an active Islamic community, especially amongst women's associations. They include Mamas Musulmanes pour le Développement et Droits Humains (UMDDH), Centre Sociale pour le Développement Communitaire (CSPDC), Mapendo, Maendeleo and Dawati. One can see from the myriad Muslim associations mentioned thus far that the Islamic community is no longer quiescent, and has begun to take an active role in rebuilding the DRC's war-torn society. This general phenomenon can be best observed by examining the activities of Islamic associations in the education sector.
Education in the DRC
Educational provision in the DRC suffered greatly as the result of two disastrous wars, making it one of the worst countries in the world for the number of children attending school (World Bank 2005). Because education receives only 6% of government expenditure, Congolese citizens cannot rely on the central state to adequately address their educational needs. In fact, ‘households finance between 80–90 percent of total expenditures in public sector institutions’ (World Bank 2005, p. xviii). Indeed, in contemporary DRC much of the administration of the school system falls to FBOs.
Congolese public education encompasses both government-run schools (écoles non-conventionées or écoles publiques) and schools managed by religious associations (écoles conventionées), all subsidised by the government. In colonial Congo, the Catholic, and to a lesser extent Protestant, missions were the exclusive provider of education. In the 1970s the Zairian dictator President Mobutu, following his nationalisation of much of the economy, sought to control the education system in an effort to consolidate his power and contain the influence of the prominent Catholic Church. In 1974, Mobutu nationalised all educational institutions, the majority of which had been controlled by FBOs. This proved disastrous for the school system, and parents clamoured for a return to religious-run schools which, they perceived, provided better quality instruction as well as moral instruction. Given the rapid deterioration of the education sector during this period, the Congolese government also wished to return school administration to the churches, but equally sought to retain a greater degree of control of the sector than the state had prior to the secularisation initiative. The state therefore created a ‘convention’ system, a formal agreement signed by both the state and churches regulating the management of the school system.
Thus in the late 1970s, the state and a representative of each of the four main religions – Catholic, Protestant, Kimbanguist and Islamic – signed agreements requiring religious-run public schools to register with and be recognised by the state. COMICO signed such an agreement in 1979, on behalf of the Muslim community. The resulting schools fall under the jurisdiction of the provincial and district teaching authorities, allow state inspectors to determine whether they are following national standards and regulations and teach according to the national curriculum. Religious associations became wholly responsible for the day-to-day running of their institutions, but the state retained organisational authority over them, at least on paper. Through the convention system education in the Congo became and remains a hybrid sector comprised of public schools managed by both the state and FBOs.
As part of the convention, the Congolese state is required to provide salaries for educational staff, such as teachers and administrators. Despite the state's weakness, it generally fulfils this agreement, but is often a few months behind in payments. The most pressing problem for the sector is that the rate of pay from the state is not sufficient to provide a livelihood for staff. For example, in 2009 teachers earned CDF30,000 every month, which was only about US$40 or US$60. The state's ability to fund the education sector was severely limited since the implementation of structural adjustment in the 1980s, when ‘real expenditure per pupil dropped from US$159 in 1982 to US$23 in 1987 and finally to around US$4 in 2002. Teachers’ salaries dropped from US$68 to US$27 per month between 1982 and 1987, reaching an absolute minimum of US$12.90 in 2002' (Titeca and De Herdt 2011, p. 221). In addition to the effects of structural adjustment in the 1980s, the state's ability to provide education was further complicated in the early 1990s as Mobutu's financial resources for state functions and patronage were drying up with the withdrawal of United States support, with the end of the Cold War. The effect on the education sector was profound and teachers began a major strike in 1992 because of their low rate of pay and the frequent failure of the state to pay them at all.
In 1993, as children were missing school because no teachers would work, the Catholics devised a plan to create a new kind of ‘convention’, this time between schools and parents, in which teachers would return to work motivated by additional salaries paid for by parents. As Titeca and De Herdt report, ‘although this was seen as a temporary coping mechanism to compensate for the lack of salaries, it soon became an institutionalized practice’ (ibid., p. 222). The other religious organisations running schools quickly followed this trend, which continues today, despite significant improvements in the state's educational budget. The Ministry of Primary, Secondary and Professional Education had a budget of US$20 million in 2003, but (largely because of the Congo's debt being cancelled through the Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative) by 2007 it had increased to US$170 million (De Herdt et al. 2010, p. 27). Teachers' unions and the government negotiated the Mbudi Agreement in 2004 which raised teacher salaries from US$13 a month in 2001 to US$35 in 2007 (ibid., p. 28). However, as De Herdt et al. remind us, ‘though the Mbudi Agreement nearly tripled salaries, they remained below the poverty line: in other words, teachers could not live on the official salary only’ (ibid.).
Therefore, the system of relying on parental contributions remained central to the continued functioning of the school system. Each school year, parents and administrators determine the monthly parental contribution toward salaries. For example, in 2008–09 Kindu primary school parents contributed CDF1000 (around US$2) per child. However, the parents' contribution, initially intended solely to fund teachers' salaries, evolved into a fee structure to keep the entire school system operational in the absence of state support. New fees were instituted, so that a proportion of parental contributions was passed by schools upwards to the school district to finance the religious and state education bureaucracies, from there to the provincial level, and even up to the national administration (Titeca and De Herdt 2011, p. 222). About 60% of the parental fees remains at the district level, but one-third funds the provincial level and 6% is passed on to the national level, resulting in a ‘tax system [that] generates around 4 to 5 million dollars’ (De Herdt et al. 2010, p. 20). Thus, we arrive at the figure compiled by the World Bank cited above, that parental contributions to public education covered between 80 and 90% of the operating costs of the sector.
Article 46 of the Congolese Constitution of 2006 states that ‘education in primary public schools is free and compulsory’, but the Congolese state has clearly been unable to enforce this provision (Titeca and De Herdt 2011, p. 226). Today, the system of augmenting teacher salaries has spread from the religiously affiliated institutions to the official state public schools. Although the parents' contribution seems like a small sum, it is often very difficult for parents to find the funds to pay for their children's nominally ‘public’ education, leading to widespread pupil absenteeism. Despite repeated efforts by teachers and administrators, the Congolese state seems unwilling to remove this hardship from parents by increasing teacher salaries. This hybrid education system in Congo, where religious associations carry the brunt of school management and parents pay the bulk of operating costs, clearly benefits the state, an issue which will be further discussed below.
Muslim organisations in the education sector
Given the history of Muslim marginalisation (and over a decade of conflict in the DRC), it is perhaps unsurprising that the provision of education by Muslim organisations is a very recent phenomenon. Although the community had run a few schools off and on since the 1970s, prior to 2003 there were very few Muslim schools open to the public. From academic year 2003–04 to 2008–09, the number of Muslim public primary schools in Maniema increased from 29 to 76. Similarly, during the same period the number of Islamic secondary schools jumped from 19 to 42.9 The proliferation of Muslim public schools was also evident in other provinces and nationally. Despite having a relatively low Muslim population, the number of Islamic schools in Orientale province increased from 10 in 2007 to over 50 by 2008–09.10 Nationally, in the academic year 2005–06 there were 368 primary and 142 secondary Muslim public schools. Three years later, the Islamic community was responsible for over 800 institutions in Congo, about 500 primary and 300 secondary schools.11
It is important to stress that these Islamic schools are not madrasas, but hybrid state-religious public institutions that provide a service that can be accessed by any Congolese child, regardless of religious affiliation. It is estimated that 50% of students attending Muslim public schools in Maniema were non-Muslim, and many of their staff are also non-Muslim.12 In Kindu, Kasongo and Kisangani extensive research was conducted at numerous Muslim public schools, as well as at institutions run by the other religious confessions and by the Congolese state. Religious public schools, or ‘convention’ schools, are those that were created as a result of the conventions between the Congolese state and the four main faith communities (see above). Under these conventions the state agreed to pay salaries, set the national curriculum and monitor schools through its inspection bureaucracy. The religious communities in turn agreed to provide daily management and are granted permission to teach a religious course.
The Muslim public primary schools visited for this research teach two 30-minute religious classes each week. These are taught by the class's regular teacher, who is provided with teaching materials by the school director or local religious leaders if he/she is not Muslim. The religious instruction received by primary school students is not rigorous and the majority of Muslim pupils attend Qur'anic schools in the evenings and on weekends to augment their Islamic education. This fact also demonstrates that religious conversion is not a primary motivating factor for the Islamic community in running Muslim public schools. These schools are identical to those run by Catholics, Protestants, Kimbanguists and the Congolese state, with the exception of the content of religious classes. State schools, for their part, give instruction in ‘civic and moral education’ twice a week.
Evidence suggests that these Islamic public schools provide a comparatively good educational experience for students. In 2006–07 and 2007–08, Muslim public schools were the highest ranked in Maniema, based on the number of students passing national exams.13 This is noteworthy, given that Catholic public schools have historically earned the distinction of best schools, in part due to their institutional history with its roots in Belgian colonialism. In Maniema however, during the 2007–08 academic year Catholic schools ranked third, well behind newer Islamic schools. Muslim schools in Kisangani came in second place with 95% of students passing national exams in academic year 2006–07.14 The year before, 96% of students from Muslim schools in Orientale province passed their exams, giving Islamic institutions the top rank. Institut Hodari, a Muslim public school in Kisangani, was recognised as the best secondary institution in the city because of its record of examination performance between 2000 and 2008. Based on these data, recently created Islamic public schools appear to provide Congolese children of any religious background with a high quality education.
Seizing an opportunity
Despite its historical marginalisation from both other religious communities and the state, which resulted in a quiescent and segregated Congolese Muslim minority, post-conflict DRC has witnessed an explosion in the number and activities of Muslim associations and Islamic public schools. What has led to such a profound change? Here it is argued that a key cause of the recent proliferation of Islamic associational involvement in DRC is opportunity.15 The political opportunity provided by this moment in Congolese history has allowed Muslim organisations to mobilise and provide the social service of education.
In numerous interviews with members of the Muslim and other religious communities, people described a substantial shift in the level of interest and involvement of the Islamic community in development activities in the post-conflict period. Part of this change is likely the result of external factors such as economic liberalisation and the changing nature of development assistance, which began prior to the Congo wars of 1996–2002. In order to meet the requirements of conditional international lending in the 1990s, many African states including the DRC had to cut government budgets and expenditure on social welfare. International financial institutions directed funding towards development NGOs because they believed central states were squandering development monies through corruption and poor governance. As documented by Giovannoni et al. (2004) this process of the consequent retreating Congolese state, coupled with the new availability of external finance, spurred the creation of large numbers of NGOs. The two Congo wars caused further deterioration of the economy and state structures. For those seeking a means of survival and recovery from war, the non-state development sector, able to access international funding for post-conflict reconstruction, was particularly attractive. The Muslim community has also participated in this process, by forming Islamic NGOs and drafting development project proposals in French.
By providing Muslim public schools, the minority community not only ensures that its children obtain necessary skills, such as language proficiency, but also successfully procures salaries for teachers and administrators through funds pledged by both the state and parents. Employment opportunities in post-conflict Congo are extremely limited, as evidenced by a study finding that only 4% of workers have salaried positions (Lukoki 2007, p. 5). NGOs and the public sector offer the greatest possibility for formal employment. In fact, the education sector is responsible for one-third of all public positions in the DRC, as the number of officially recognised schools has increased by 65% and the number of newly enlisted teachers by 61% between 2001 and 2007 (De Herdt et al. 2010, p. 29). This reflects the rise in the number of new schools seeking state funding and accreditation. In fact, one-third of Congolese teachers are still not recognised or paid by the state, but ‘until they are officially recognised, these teachers have to count on parents’ contributions and on the expectation that they will be paid officially one day' (ibid.).
It is of course not only Muslim organisations that are seeking to create jobs through their development efforts. A leader of a secular women's organisation in Kindu described her organisation's creation of a primary school in 2000 as both helping children receive an education and providing employment for teachers.16 Administrators at the Protestant Education Coordination Office for Maniema, asked about the rapid rise in the number of their schools in recent years, described this as a response to the demand for schooling, as well as assisting teachers in obtaining employment.17
The weak Congolese state is unable to supply all of the services that the post-conflict Congolese society demands. During the wars much of Maniema's infrastructure was destroyed and insecurity led to substantial rural migration to the capital Kindu. The growing number of girls enrolling in school has also increased demand for school places. In fact, statistics demonstrate that ‘between 2002 and 2007 the number of children attending school increased by 11 percent per year’ (Titeca and De Herdt 2011, p. 221). Thus, the number of children in towns seeking an education is much larger than before the war, requiring new schools to be built and managed. The Muslim community has also been able to become involved in development because older associations, such as Protestant and Catholic FBOs, were unable to adequately respond to the substantial demands made on them. Far from being in competition with each other in the education sector, Christian and Muslim leaders asserted that the demand for education is so large that there are still an insufficient number of institutions.18
However, there is nothing inevitable about the increased interest and involvement of the Muslim community. In fact, the history of the Islamic minority suggests the opposite. Therefore, one must acknowledge that the opportunity of this moment in Congolese history reflects not only the weak capacity of the central state, but also increased religious and political freedom. The historical marginalisation of the Muslim community from public engagement has been reversed and, as a result, a new cohort of well-educated Muslims interested in expanding their community's prosperity and societal role now hold leadership positions in the Muslim community, the education bureaucracy, and newly formed associations. This freedom is also reflected by the state's willingness to incorporate Islamic providers into the hybrid system of schools that operate on a state–faith-based organisation partnership.
Conclusion
The DRC, widely understood as one of the weakest states in the world, could therefore be expected to lack both order and functioning institutions. Yet the public education sector is apparently flourishing, something which requires explanation. The Congolese state remains very weak and unable to provide adequate social services for its citizens, yet the Congolese population is not fleeing the state by creating fully private institutions, as one might expect. In fact, 75% of Congolese school students receive an education in public schools, albeit those run by partnerships with religious organisations (Titeca and De Herdt 2011, p. 220). Through the convention school system, the state is ostensibly responsible for the financial aspects of such institutions. However, the state does not hold up its end of the arrangement, and 90% of financing for these public schools comes from contributions made by parents. Their fees pay not only for the functioning of their child's local school, but also fund district, provincial- and national-level bureaucracies (ibid., p. 223). This finding alone suggests that the post-conflict state has not broken from its history of predatory, rent-seeking and kleptocratic tendencies.
Why then would citizens continue to express demand for public schools when they could easily use their resources to create private institutions? In the DRC the state–religious organisation hybrid model is still widely supported, not only by the religious associations, but also by the wider populace. Why would Muslim organisations in particular, with little previous involvement in the public education sector, aggressively pursue this model when they could be creating more flexible private institutions that would be free to provide more overtly religious education?
The answer, it is argued, is the fact that the state as an idea is still strongly supported by of Congolese citizens. As Englebert has suggested (2003, 2009), the idea of the Congolese state still persists against all odds, despite the actual state's evident inability to earn that legitimacy by providing for its subjects. State education officials, who don their uniforms and report for work despite not being paid or receiving inadequate salaries, reinforce the idea of the state in diverse localities. Parental contributions, coupled with demands for public education (despite the fact that they are the primary financial contributors that keep the system afloat) equally reify the idea of the state. Indeed, De Herdt et al. affirm this logic when they suggest that we should ‘be impressed by the efforts of non-state actors … to contribute to the reproduction of the state at the meso-level. Given the dismal record of the Congolese state in recent decades, one might have expected a much greater inclination to opt out of the state's framework, but the contrary seems to be the case’ (2010, p. 23).
FBOs in particular play a vital role in reproducing the idea of the Congolese state, such as those which provide social services such as public schools and health clinics, rehabilitating war combatants and victims, and (as illustrated in the anecdote in the introduction) even ensuring that the rag-tag Congolese army arrives to the battlefront in a timely manner. This echoes Clunan and Trinkunas's analysis that ‘in the world as it is in the early twenty-first century … the state is joined by a number of other actors, benign and malign, who sometimes compete and sometimes collaborate in providing governance and security’ (Clunan and Trinkunas 2010, p. 6). The Congolese state is still weak, but it continually negotiates with non-state actors in the realm of social service provision, thus creating hybrid institutions that are run by a combination of state and non-state actors.
Most strikingly, the historically marginalised and long-suffering Muslim minority of Congo has chosen in recent years to also mobilise to create public schools that reinforce the legitimacy of the Congolese state. Catholic and Protestant organisations in the DRC have of course provided social services, such as education, since the colonial era. However, since the end of the 1996–2003 wars a large number of Islamic associations and public schools have been created. Overcoming their historical marginalisation, the devastation of the post-war period provided an opportunity for this minority community to mobilise and become incorporated into mainstream Congolese institutions, leading to the proliferation of Muslim public schools since 2002.
An interesting element of this increased involvement in associational life and welfare provision is that the Muslim community has demonstrated its willingness to participate as part of mainstream Congolese institutional life. Perhaps because of their history of exclusion by the state, parents hope that by supporting Islamic public schools of the ‘convention’ type, they can equip their children with skills that will enable them to more fully engage in Congolese society. Numerous Congolese Muslims expressed hope that with increasing post-conflict democratic accountability members of their religious community will soon be present at all levels of government and in all levels and types of professional posts.
Conventional analysis of such developments might suggest that non-state actors are replacing the fragile Congolese state, but the situation is far more complicated in reality. It is certainly true that the weak state cannot meet the increasing demand for public education on its own and allows (indeed, is dependent on) FBOs to carry out the daily tasks of school administration and income generation. However, religious organisations operating under the convention system do not have free rein because the government provides the framework of regulations within which FBOs must operate. Here we must acknowledge that the central state maintains control over education in several ways: formulating the convention system for religious public schools, setting the national curriculum to determine the content of what is being taught each year, hiring inspectors to enforce government rules in every FBO-managed school, and granting (or in theory withholding) permission to FBOs for the creation of and payment to such schools and their staff.
The active role of the weak Congolese state in the education sector seems to contradict the failed-state literature that focuses solely on the government's institutional incapacity, where non-state actors such as FBOs are seen as direct competitors to the state's authority, in which, ‘alternative authorities arise. New actors and institutions fulfil roles previously considered the preserve of the state. Gangs, militias, thugs, local men of influence and religious political parties … establish authority through services to the community' (Baylouny 2010, p. 136). This does not appear to be the case in the Congolese public education system, where schools are hybrid institutions that are created, managed, regulated and financially supported by a partnership between the central state and FBOs.
Note on contributor
Ashley E. Leinweber is an assistant professor in political science at Missouri State University. She earned her PhD from the University of Florida in 2011. Her research focuses on the provision of public goods by non-state actors in weak/ failed African states. With funding from the African Power and Politics Program, she conducted dissertation research on the role of the minority Muslim community of the Democratic Republic of Congo in providing public education in the post-conflict period. Dr Leinweber was also a United States Peace Corps volunteer in Niger from 2002 to 2004.