DR Congo: Where to for Goma ?

IRIN reports

Goma’s aid economy a blessing and curse

                                    Roads in Goma’s central business district are paved and well-lighted

GOMA, 11 September 2013 (IRIN) - As construction workers put the final touches on a five-story apartment-hotel complex in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) city of Goma, foreman Lucien told IRIN its future occupants would likely not be locals.

“Here in Goma, hotels are in very high demand because many aid workers come because of the violence here. They have nowhere to stay when they arrive because hotels are always normally fully booked,” he said.

This expatriate demographic has shaped more than Goma’s skyline: few cities in the world have had their economies affected quite as extensively - and, some argue, with such mixed blessings - by the international humanitarian industry as the capital of North Kivu province.

Congo: Worst per capita income Congo's economy is growing at a relatively rapid clip of 6% to 7% a year as it recovers from years of internal conflict over the nation's substantial resources -- including tin ore and diamonds. But its total gross domestic product remains small at around $25 billion. Coupled with a population that exceeds 73 million, Congo occupies the final spot on the IMF's list of per capita gross domestic production, with a total production of just $231 per person.
Much of the nation's economic activity takes place in the informal sector, and is not counted in official GDP estimates.

WHO 2009: Gross national income per capita (PPP international $) 340

The figures are of course for the DR Congo rather than eastern provinces. I actually think they seem a bit low. The most recent figures seem to suggest a per capita income of US $400. The problem in Goma is of course far more complex. To get food to Goma internally there is a tax imposed if it is coming from the North by M23 that is fairly close to extortionate Charley Kasereka who readers of this blog will be familiar with wrote last year. 

" Currently, there is not much for sale in the Goma markets, and everything has become very expensive: corn, green beans, milk, all basic food products… Before, a 100 kg bag of cassava cost between 25 to 30 US dollars; today, this amount costs in the 45 to 50 dollar range [35 to 40 euros]. And, for instance, a kg of green beans, which used to cost half a dollar, now costs almost a full dollar [0,80 euros]. These basic food products have nearly doubled in price! In a city where the population is already very poor, people are really suffering. Many people are unemployed, and the average salary of someone who owns or works in a small shop is only 20 to 30 dollars per month [16 to 24 euros]. Food has basically become unaffordable.

Food has become unaffordable. To add to the complication we also have IDP ( Internally Displaced Person ) camps on the outskirts of Goma last year I blogged on Louise and her situation.

Even though Baseme arrived a fortnight ago, she is considered as one of the new faces of Kanyarucinya. Because of the number of IDPs who arrived before her, she stands at the back of a long waiting line. In fact, she still hasn't received any attention from the NGOs working in the camp, and continues to wait for one of the much-coveted food stamps they distribute.

The lack of shelter also means that Baseme lives outside in a 4 foot-square perimeter she's build using small volcanic stones. She sleeps on a homemade mattress made by weaving together bamboo leaves that soften the rocky floor. During the day, she roams the village in search of food, carrying her baby under a formerly white cloth in order to protect his small lungs from the winds of ash swirling in the camp. Baseme says she has survived this long, strictly because of the generosity of other IDPs and nearby villagers who share the little they have.

"We get by, barely, but we do," said Baseme, "by asking those who receive food. But we cannot sustain this type of living."

Back to Charly.

A couple of days ago, I met truck drivers who were complaining about their work conditions. One of them, who has been driving food products between Goma and Lubero (215 km away) for the last ten years, told me that whereas it used to only take eight hours to reach Goma, it now takes him 14 hours. When the rebels took Rutshuru in early July, the M23 rebels put up numerous roadblocks and now undertake lengthy inspections of each trucks’ contents. On his last trip, he was taxed about 350 dollars [285 euros] for his cassava cargo. Before the rebels came, he used to pay at most only 50 dollars [40 euros] in taxes. Trucks containing wood planks for construction are taxed even more harshly. [According to Radio Okapi, each truck carrying planks is taxed 1,000 dollars, or 815 euros]. On other parts of the road, he told me that soldiers from the Congolese army had also asked for small fees in order to buy cigarettes.

If anyone wanted another reason why there should be no negotiations with M23 I think you might find several above.

“Goma’s business people rent out transportation and housing services to NGOs. These NGOs hire labour force and provide for part of their procurement locally. This represents an important turnover, which translates into more businesses, including new buildings, hotels, cars, etc.,” Fidel Bafilemba, a researcher with the Enough Project, told IRIN.

Oscar Kambale, 34, who runs a fleet of vehicles that he leases out both to NGO workers and other foreign visitors, told IRIN his business is booming. 

“There is no day passing by without me getting a phone call about somebody looking for a car to hire. They will tell you they want to visit the many internally displaced persons’ camps around Goma. For a whole day, I will charge between US$100 and $120. It a brisk business for me,” he said.

“At times I have to borrow cars from my friends to bridge the deficit when mine are all leased out,” he added.

On any given evening, the car parks of some of Goma’s most popular nightclubs are largely occupied by 4X4 vehicles bearing either registration plates of the UN or the insignia of aid organizations. 

“We have to keep this place clean, and we have priced our beers high because we are mostly targeting foreigners who are working for non-governmental organizations,” Fabrice, a doorman at Chez Ntemba, told IRIN.

In early August the situation became even more complex with the failed M23 siege of Goma.  

“I live on transportation of beers from Rubavu ( Rwanda ) to neighboring Goma. I used to cross the border many times a day and earnings were huge, but look at me now, I am sitting as if there is no demand, I have gone to Goma only five times while I used to go there more than 10 times until midday,” she said.

When she carries 36 bottles of Mutzing across the border, Nyirakabanza said that she earns $3 (around Rwf 1900).

Driving the economy
Waves of conflict over the past two decades have led to the presence of some 500 aid agencies in North Kivu. Around 100 of them are international; the rest depend largely on foreign funding. In 2012, the UN and its partners appealed for $718 million to meet humanitarian needs in DRC, much of it for programmes in the east. 

The growth of the humanitarian presence in Goma has led to a high demand for housing, shopping malls, private car hire and other amenities.

“Some of the changes that occurred in Goma are a result of sheer urbanization, but much of it [is] due to an influx of humanitarian agencies. These have created jobs both for locals in Goma and Congolese from other regions,” Tariq Roland Riebl, Oxfam’s humanitarian programme coordinator in DRC, told IRIN.

“Aid agencies’ staff have created an emerging middle class in Goma who are able to spend and drive the economy. Their presence also means there is an increased need for services,” Patrick Lavand'Homme, head of coordination at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Eastern Africa (OCHA), said.

That is a very uncertain blessing. Africa in general needs to develop a strong middle class but in Goma of course the result is increasing cost of living for all but only those with jobs associated with the welfare sector or extractive industries are in a position to increase their incomes. The ultimate irony was when this popped up out of a search relating to this blog.

Emergency Food Program Project Manager, Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo 

It closes next Wednesday for any interested punters. 

“But it is also important to recognize the fact that even Congolese businessmen and the mining activities in the eastern part of the country also contribute a substantial amount of money that circulates within the economy of Goma,” he added. 

According to Karen Büscher and Koen Vlassenroot of Ghent University’s Conflict Research Group, “Goma’s new economies and industries, driven by the humanitarian sector, have literally shaped the city’s economic and social layout.”

Reinforcing divisions, conflicts

In a March 2013 article published on opendemocracy.net, they said that in addition to  “creating a strong stimulus in the local urban economy… the concentration of international humanitarian organizations and their expatriate staff has also resulted in additional conflicts and contrasts. 

“In a particular context of a weak institutional framework, informal urbanization and a highly contested economic, social and political urban arena, the international humanitarian presence has become a significant factor in reinforcing patterns of conflict and competition across the urban political and socioeconomic space,” they wrote. 

“The inflation of rents, increasing prices of houses and land, and the profound dollarization of local markets in these central districts further sharpened the socio-geographic urban fault lines,” they added. 

The reality is that the US dollar is now the currency of choice in Goma.

It is a sentiment echoed by one Congolese employee of a major NGO, who asked to be identified only as Mubenga.

“The real beneficiaries of economic prosperity brought about by aid organizations are the same people who have benefited from the extraction of minerals. They are the people with access to aid executives and can build hotels and expensive restaurants,” he told IRIN.

Or, as Oxfam’s Reible put it, while aid workers “are paid well and can pay high rents, the poor are affected because they don’t have the money to cope with an increasing cost of life.” 

“Housing has become very expensive because NGO staff pay high rents for decent housing, and the landlords know this. Some have removed people from their houses because they want to refurbish them to give out to those who can pay good money,” Jeanne, a local resident, told IRIN.

“Some apartments near the town which used to cost $400 to rent now go for $1,000.”

While roads in the central business district and the gentrified east of the city tend to be paved and well-lighted, this is not the case in most outlying areas of Goma, where most buildings are shanties.

On the upside, countered Reibl, “there is also the knock-on effect: these skilled people need the services of cleaners and nannies, which could benefit those with low skills. And the supermarkets and malls that come up provide employment as well”.

The problem with the trickle down theory is that bugger all trickles down and what little does takes a long time. The solution of course is wealth redistribution through taxation. Build a strong middle class and tax them to provide social services something that just isn't possible in the Goma situation.

Social services

The double-edged sword of the aid workers’ presence also extends to the sphere of social services: in the relative absence of the state, it is UN agencies and NGOs that provide or at least support much of the region’s education, health, water and sanitation services.

International medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), for instance, runs 40 health centres, nine health posts and four referral clinics, and supports 11 government-owned health clinics.

“It is correct to say that the government is absent from humanitarian assistance,” said Reibl, “both in terms of coordination and direct assistance. But it is a chicken-and-egg situation because you can’t certainly say whether the presence of aid agencies has caused this or it is the absence of the government that has resulted in huge presence of aid agencies.” 

The Congolese government is to a large extent a military and a police presence. Chantal Faida another blogger that readers will be familiar with wrote a piece a few weeks ago for Radio Netherland Worldwide that pointed out just how batshit crazy things are in the Congolese civil service. 

According to Büscher and Vlassenroot , “Due to a lack of means, capacity, motivation, vision, corruption and mismanagement, state services have been constantly hollowed out and have increasingly been replaced by new coalitions of local and international development actors.”

They added, “Today, international aid agencies have not only replaced the state in several key sectors, but also development is understood locally as a responsibility of the humanitarian sector.”

Marc-Andre Lagrange, Central Africa Senior Analyst at the International Crisis Group, explained that the “DRC national government is fully engaged in a governance by substitution policy, something that is not new as it was the [1965-1997] Mobutu regime that introduced that practice of weakening the state apparatus and handing over social services to humanitarian and charitable organizations”. 

He added, “Education and health care have since long been taken over by the Catholic Church in most of the country. Organizations such as MSF were present in DRC long before 1994.”

There is a general consensus that this trend urgently needs to be reversed. One of the pillars of Peace Security and Cooperation Framework for DRC, signed in February by a host of African leaders and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, is a commitment “to consolidate state authority” and to “further economic development, including with respect to the expansion of infrastructure and basic social service delivery.”

The Ghent University academics warned in their article of the potential “disastrous long-term impacts” of the reduction of state sovereignty in eastern DRC.

“Humanitarian organizations’ dominant role in local urban governance processes has significantly reduced the bargaining position of the new state administrations, which today have no capacity at all to attach conditions to international agencies’ interventions and are continuously forced into a position of negotiation,” they wrote.

“The biggest question is: what happens to the economy when those international organizations and UN agencies finally pull out or scale down their presence in Goma?” Lagrange told IRIN.

“The absence of [an] exit strategy is disastrous given the lack of capacity both within the national and provincial authorities to provide services and protection to civilians.” 

I suspect there is no exit strategy because it is seen as being so far in the future as to be pointless at this stage to speculate on how and when it will happen. It would be sensible though for a change to start now. Part of that start means eliminating the armed groups that infest the Eastern DR Congo.