The border city of Goma: zone of contestation or laboratory of change?

In order to assess the remarkable paradox of Goma’s dynamic development and transformation from a peripheral town into an important regional economic hub in a generalized context of state collapse and armed conflict, this article tackles the city as a zone of contestation and a centre of opportunity. The semi-autonomous development observed is strongly linked to the city’s connection to the extensive and flourishing transborder trade in natural resources. These dynamics have had a considerable impact on urban socioeconomic activities, have strengthened the position of the city as a ‘borderland’ and have redefined the relations between city, state and region

In search of chiefly authority in ‘post-aid’ Acholiland : transformations of customary authorities in northern Uganda

This paper investigates the complex relation between protracted donor interventions and the production of customary authority. More specifically, the paper analyses the impact of post-conflict donor interventions (and their withdrawal) on the position of customary chiefs in the Acholi region in northern Uganda. As important brokers between international aid agencies, the Ugandan government and Acholi communities, customary chiefs became key actors in post-conflict peacebuilding programmes. Using the concepts of extraversion and development brokerage, the paper demonstrates how dwindling access to external donor funds has strongly affected Acholi customary authority. To secure their authority and legitimacy, customary chiefs re-shifted from an 'outward' to an 'inward' orientation, a process that we call 'introversion

Recruiting a nonlocal language for performing local identity: indexical appropriations of Lingala in the Congolese border town Goma

This article describes discursive processes by which inhabitants of the Congolese border town Goma attribute new indexical values to Lingala, a language exogenous to the area of which most Goma inhabitants only possess limited knowledge. This creative reconfiguration of indexicalities results in the emergence of three "indexicalities of the second order": the indexing of (i) being a true Congolese, (ii) toughness (based on Lingala's association with the military), and (iii) urban sophistication (based on its association with the capital Kinshasa). While the last two second-order reinterpretations are also widespread in other parts of the Congolese territory, the first one, resulting in the emergence of a Lingala as an "indexical icon" of a corresponding "language community," deeply reflects local circumstances and concerns, in particular the sociopolitical volatility of the Rwandan-Congolese borderland that renders publicly affirming one's status as an "autochthonous" Congolese pivotal for assuring a livelihood and at times even personal security. (Lingala, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Goma, orders of indexicality, language community, autochthony, Kiswahili)

African cities and violent conflict : the urban dimension of conflict and post conflict dynamics in Central and Eastern Africa

This article forms the introduction of a special issue on the relation between dynamics of violent conflict and urbanisation in Central and Eastern Africa. The aim of this collection of articles is to contribute to a profound understanding of the role of ‘the urban’ in African conflict dynamics in order to seize their future potential as centres of stability, development, peace-building or postconflict reconstruction. This introduction argues for the need to bridge both the ‘urban gap’ in African conflict studies as well as the ‘political’ gap in African urban studies. Building on empirical and analytical insights from multi-disciplinary research in different African conflict settings, the author presents urban centres in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo, South Sudan and Kenya as crucial sites of socio-spatial and political transformations and productions. The main argument running through its analysis is that emerging urbanism in the larger Great-Lakes region and its Eastern neighbours present fascinating lenses to better understand the transformative power of protracted violent conflict. This will be demonstrated by elaborating on the conflict induced production of urban landscapes, urban governance, and urban identities. Finally, this will lead us to crucial insights on how protracted regional dynamics of political violence, forced displacement, militarised governance and ethnic struggles strongly reinforce the conflictual nature of emerging urbanisation and urbanism

Urbanisation and the political geographies of violent struggle for power and control : mining boomtowns in Eastern Congo

This chapter addresses rural–urban transformations in the Kivu provinces, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and more particularly focuses on the complex relationship between dynamics of violent conflict and the emergence of urban mining ‘boomtowns’. Mining towns offer fascinating sites from which to investigate the socio-economic and spatial effects of a protracted history of violence, displacement and militarisation. They are the spatial outcomes of dynamics of the transformative power of violent conflict. Moreover, this chapter demonstrates how they also offer interesting spatial as well as analytical starting points from which to study the political geographies of war dynamics in Eastern DRC. It will be argued that the reason why these mining towns evolve into strategic ‘resources’ in violent struggles for power and control is to be found in their urban character as much as in the presence of natural resources. As such, this chapter analyses the process of mining urbanisation in the Kivu provinces as part of (armed) elites’ spatial politics of power and control. As demographic concentrations and economic nodes, mining towns represent important political, economic and social resources for ‘big men’, armed groups and the Congolese state in their broader political struggles for power, legitimacy and authority. In a context of fragmented and multi-scalar governance, the urbanisation process of these towns is the outcome of a complex interaction and contestation of different forms of agency. Based on three ethnographic cases of mining towns that emerged from diverse dynamics of artisanal mining activities and forced displacement, this chapter contributes to broader academic and policy debates on the political nature of mining urbanisation in a context of conflict and fragmented governance

Urbanizing Kitchanga : spatial trajectories of the politics of refuge in North Kivu, Eastern Congo

This article presents the historical and political trajectory of Kitchanga town in North Kivu, to demonstrate how current processes of urbanization in a context of civil war in Eastern Congo are strongly intertwined with regional politics of refuge. Kitchanga, an urban agglomeration that emerged from the gradual urbanization of IDP and refugee concentrations, has occupied very different positions through different episodes of the wars, ranging from a safe haven of refuge, to a rebel headquarter, to a violent battleground. On the basis of a historical account of Kitchanga’s development, the paper argues for a spatial reading of broader geographies of war, displacement and ethnic mobilization in North Kivu. It shows that these urban agglomerations as ‘places’ and their urbanization as ‘processes’ are crucial to better understand the spatial politics of refuge in North Kivu. The article builds on original empirical data

The NGO-fication of Goma

How does the arrival of nearly 100 humanitarian and development organizations’ logistics headquarters and staff change a developing world capital? In the case of the D.R. Congo’s Goma, the answer is: a lot. And not only in good ways