Hanging from the door of a mini-bus taxi as it jerks and jinks through traffic, 16-year-old Gires Manoka calls out the van’s destination to potential passengers as it crosses Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

One pedestrian asks the fresh-faced teen if he shouldn’t be in school instead of working.

“I was in grade seven last year,” Manoka replies, “but I had no one to pay my school fees. I got no choice but to hustle; this work keeps my family alive.”

There are thousands of teenagers across the Democratic Republic of Congo who, like Manoka, have to work to support themselves. Many of them have dropped out of school to sell sweets, peanuts, tissues and other small items to passersby.

Boniface Mbalu, a parent, told IPS: “The tough economic situation forces youngsters to work part time to meet their growing needs while going to school. The least fortunate leave school to earn a living.”

He pointed out that education is not free in DRC, and many poor families can’t afford to buy uniforms and other required items.

Dr Paul Basikila, head of the United Nations Children’s Fund office in Kinshasa, said that his agency had taken steps to improve the quality of teaching and help children to go to school. “These measures would be more effective if school fees were also waived, as announced by the government,” he added.

“At the start of the 2012-2013 school year,” he told IPS, “UNICEF launched an awareness campaign in Kasaï-Occidental province to register 40,000 children, including 18,000 girls, in primary school. We have also worked to raise awareness among parents whose children have reached school age.”

Cécile Tshiyombo, a member of the Congolese teachers’ union, said that the problems facing the DRC’s education system are complex. “These kids left to hustle for themselves, children who already work for a wage just like adults: they don’t want to go to school any more. They’re already independent at their age, which is not normal,” she told IPS.

Tshiyombo thinks that many children also turn away from school because what’s on offer is no longer attractive. “The diploma issued at the end of a course of study (at secondary or university level) leads nowhere. If there are graduates selling sweets or ice water to make a living, then what future will younger people see for themselves?”

Joseph Paulusi has been shining shoes since he was 11. Now 16, he told IPS: “I went to school until primary six. But after my father died, my mother couldn’t afford to pay for me to stay in school, so I chose to become a shoe-shiner.”

He has become the household’s breadwinner. “This work lets me help my mother out. With the money I make, about 15,000 Congolese francs per day (around 16 dollars), she is able to feed the whole family.”

Déogratias Nendumba, national coordinator of the government’s effort, said “The Congolese government is well aware of the situation of thousands of children having abandoned school. In response, it has launched a national inquiry.”

The 35,000 children who were surveyed – including more than 25,000 girls – dropped out of school in 2011-2012 for various reasons, such as poverty, war, and the exodus from rural areas, said Nendumba.

“These children have the right to be cared for by society so they can flourish as adults. It’s a paradox that they have to look after their families. Those who do stay in school are often discouraged and lose their motivation when they are regularly chased out of class for non-payment of school fees,” he told IPS.

According to statistics from the service for planning and education statistics, the number of students registered in school at all levels for the 2011-2012 school year rose to 3,158,193, of whom just 624,720 were girls.

“Facing a declining quality of life, we fear there will be far fewer students who finish the present school year (2012-2013),” said Mathieu Kembe, an official at the planning office.

A disused cemetery in the heart of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been transformed into a profitable urban garden. Relying on compost they make themselves on the site, a small group of gardeners are enjoying plentiful returns.

IPS visited the eight-hectare site in the Kasa-Vubu commune, where market gardeners are growing a variety of vegetables, including amaranth, tomatoes, cabbage, spinach, and sorrel.

Antoine Musho, from the National Seed Service, explained that there are two rainy seasons in Kinshasa. But with strong demand for vegetables year-round in this city of more than ten million, the group in the Kasa-Vubu cemetery have made growing vegetables their main activity, even in the dry season. Access to water on the site comes from wells the farmers have dug every 300 metres.

There is a police station here responsible for security in this part of the commune. “The police have granted this space to the market gardeners so they can take care of it,” Captain Denis Ngombo, the station commander, told IPS.

Despite the presence of the police, the gardeners keep their tools – hoes, rakes, watering cans – at home. At dawn each day, they come with bags and basins to wait for customers who come to buy vegetables. Others bring organic waste to the site to sell to the gardeners for compost.

Richard Biemo, an engineer from the National Service for Fertiliser and Related Inputs, told IPS that the soil in Kasa-Vubu is very sandy and that crops won’t do well without fertiliser.

Biemo said the compost is essential for growing vegetables, which should be produced and harvested naturally, without using chemical fertilisers.

The gardeners learned to use compost from Cornellie Niongo, an agriculture technician from the National Service for Peri-urban Horticulture. “I’ve trained this group of gardeners since 2011. I encouraged them to always use this kind of fertiliser because it poses no health risks.”

Adolphine Misenga supervises purchases of organic waste for making compost. She told IPS she buys dried cassava leaves and stalks, and shikwang (a popular dish of fermented cassava) from households and restaurants for around five dollars a cart-load.

She agreed that compost makes a huge contribution to the harvest here. Where previously the gardeners had to wait more than six weeks to harvest 10 tonnes of amaranth per hectare, since the composting started in 2011, they have been able to harvest 25 to 30 tonnes in just four weeks.

Nathalie Mayato, who has a dozen plant beds, told IPS that when she started out, she had to wait six or seven weeks to harvest and sell her produce.

“Now, four weeks is enough to bring several beds of amaranth to maturity, each worth 20 dollars. The compost has also allowed me to increase my tomato harvest, which has risen from one tonne between 2009 and 2011, to two and a half tonnes today,” said Mayato.

She told IPS the Kasa-Vubu site is a “green gold mine” because it allows her to earn a good income.

Philémon Mulekita, who is in charge of the group’s relations with the police, feels the same way. “I don’t regret abandoning my former job, making business trips into the countryside, since my new work is more profitable,” he said.

“Other than the buyers who come for our produce from the municipal markets around the city, we are also exporting around five tonnes of vegetables to Paris and Brussels every month,” he told IPS.

But there is one cloud on the horizon. “The site is wanted by wealthy developers who want to build a shopping complex. But we’re here for the moment, and we’re taking advantage of the favour the police have done us to profit from our work,” said Mulekita

The Association for Integrated Rural Development is one of a number of rural organisations on the periphery of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which are strengthening the city’s food security while demonstrating how to maximise sustainable use of agricultural land.

Joseph Ngandungala, an agricultural engineer and one of the association’s twenty-odd members, guided IPS through a tour of ADRIM’s 25 hectare plot in Mbenkana, a settlement just west of Kinshasa.

The site was purchased from the local chief for 300 dollars in 2005. Ngandungala explained that the project encompasses livestock and aquaculture as well as agriculture. Eight hectares are given over to cassava, dwarf palms, pineapples and bananas. The grunting of pigs can be heard from another section and seven fish ponds are partly concealed by the healthy plantains growing up around them.

“Our objective is to contribute significantly to the food security of our people and to improve the living conditions of smallholder farmers in this area,” ADRIM president Justin Katumbue told IPS.

Since ADRIM began its project here on the outskirts of Kinshasa, the crop varieties planted have been carefully chosen to achieve these ends. Five hundred pineapple stems were brought from Kisangani, in northeastern DRC, back in 2008, Katumbue said. They have done well, and he expects the association will harvest around four tonnes of pineapple in November from the two hectares planted with this year’s crop.

The Kinshasa office of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has offered practical support, providing agricultural equipment and cuttings of a disease-resistant, high-yield variety of cassava known as Matuzolele.

“Since switching to this variety of cassava in 2008, we’ve harvested 10 to 15 tonnes per hectare,” said Elisabeth Mafuantala.

She told IPS that before the introduction of Matuzolele, the yields from another variety called Diaki ranged between four and seven tonnes per hectare. In 2011, the ADRIM project produced nearly 27 tonnes of cassava from a little over 2.5 hectares – worth about 1,200 dollars.

“Our harvest is made into fufu or shikwang (popular cassava dishes) or cassava chips sold in the city’s markets,” said Mafuantala.

Gerry Mantoto Manitu, director general of another local NGO, Agriculture Association for Development, believes that ADRIM has succeeded in putting in place a participatory approach to using these rural areas with the involvement of local farmers.

Josephy Muamba, a veterinarian specialising in small livestock, told IPS, “We launched our piggery with seven pigs in 2008, with two male and five female pigs again provided by FAO. Now we have 26 pigs, as the demand for their meat has increased… a kilo of pork sells for 10,200 FC (11 dollars).”

The aquaculture operation has also been growing steadily, expanding from an initial seven ponds dug in 2009 to 15 ponds today, covering an area of four hectares. Earlier in the year, 70 kilos of mature tilapia fish were harvested and sold for around 2.5 dollars per kilo in the local market.

Beyond these productive activities, ADRIM is popularising the planting of acacia trees. Katumbue explained: “Mbenkana is presently a degraded site due to the deforestation of hillsides where there was once untouched forest.”

“By growing acacias, we want to reconstitute this forest to allow residents to fertilise the soil with the trees’ leaves, as well as produce charcoal and honey,” he told IPS. 

Gilbert Mayimona, one of the Mbenkana farmers, welcomes ADRIM’s initiatives. He said that five hundred dollars of income from the project which has been allocated to the village committee has allowed members of the committee to organise themselves to sustain their development projects.

“We are aware of our responsibilities and by involving ourselves in the development programme of our country thanks to this project, our way of life is really improving,” he told IPS.

Beyond these productive activities, ADRIM is popularising certain methods of planting acacias, because according to Katumbue, “Mbenkana is at the moment a degraded site because of the deforestation that its hillsides have suffered, where once there was primary forest.

“With the cultivation of acacias, we want to restore this forest, to allow residents to fertilise the soil with its leaves, to produce charcoal and also honey,” he told IPS.

Seated under a tree, biologist Zozo Bazomba welcomes a steady stream of visitors to the Action Nature et Médecine centre in Bumbu commune in the DRC. Suffering from a range of ailments, they have come from across Kinshasa, the capital, in search of sachets of powdered moringa leaves.

Action Nature et Médecine (ANAMED) is a non-governmental organisation leading an effort to promote the health benefits of the leaves and seeds of the Moringa olifeira tree in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The NGO has a ten-hectare plantation of the trees at Mingadi, in the western province of Bas-Congo.

Jean-Baulin Mbo, 68, who suffered a stroke, said that regular consumption of moringa leaves is what is keeping him alive. “I’ve made a habit of eating moringa since I discovered this plant. I often have the powder with tea, in porridge, in milk or in a soft drink,” he told IPS. Others who have come looking for moringa are suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure or poor nutrition.

Elsewhere in the neighbourhood, at the Libondi Health Centre’s nutrition unit, Eric Kiambi marveled at the results he’s seeing using moringa with malnourished children. “Before, we struggled with having too many children to care for while waiting for soy milk from our (donor) partners. But now, with moringa, the centre shelters around 20 malnourished kids,” the nutritionist told IPS.

“Moringa’s become a staple in a fair number of households,” said another worker at the centre, Vénantie Wabo. “It’s an alternative in cases of micronutrient deficits. With nothing more than powdered moringa, one can quickly restore the health of a child suffering from even acute malnutrition.”

Anne Biyela brought her eight-year-old grandson Nkanza to the centre for care.

“When we arrived here, my grandson had swollen feet (a warning sign of kwashiorkor, a severe protein deficiency in children).  Many people thought he wouldn’t survive a week. But a daily helping of porridge with moringa powder has really helped him, and now he’s doing well,” she said.

“The centre encouraged us to use the leaves of this plant as a vegetable in all our meals to maintain the health of the whole family.”

Clotilde Kasowa, a Franciscan missionary who runs an orphanage in the Kinshasa commune of Kintambo, told IPS that none of the children presently in her care suffer from anaemia, thanks to moringa supplements. “They get moringa leaves added to their pondu (a popular Congolese dish of cassava leaves) and the powder in their milk and tea,” she said.

“It’s much better than soy, and we also sell moringa powder. A 75 gramme sachet costs 2,500 Congolese francs (around 2.5 dollars).”

Huguette Ifoto, the head of the kitchen at the orphanage, said they had been caring for nearly 70 malnourished orphans, but only 27 remained after the others got better from eating moringa leaves.

Moringa is also playing a role in protecting the health of people living with HIV. Marie Tsimba’s HIV-positive son was acutely malnourished. “My friends advised me to put some moringa in all of his meals. And 45 days later the results have been excellent, and my son is doing well,” she said.

Jean Lukela, coordinator of a national network of community organisations and support groups for people living with HIV/AIDS, says similar stories are common. “Moringa is a good complement for anti-retroviral medicine. When these drugs were not yet available, we advised people to eat moringa seeds to reinforce their immunity,” he said.

“In fact, we still tell people living with the virus the same thing.”

Nadine Mbwol suffers from konzo, an epidemic paralytic disease that affects the lower body. “I lost my marriage because of this disability,” she says sadly.

Many people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) believe that this disease, which affects many young, female victims like 20-year-old Mbwol, is caused by witchcraft.

“But it’s not true,” says Dr Pierre Makadi-Nkeni, who works at the hospital “Le bon berger”. “Konzo is not caused by a curse or witchcraft as many people believe in all the provinces where the disease occurs,” he says. In the DRC, many rural territories like Kahemba, Feshi or the province of Bandundu are severely affected by konzo.

“Konzo is a spastic (sudden and painless) paralysis which causes permanent and incurable paralysis of the lower body,” says Dr Banea Mayambu, the director of the National Nutrition Programme (PRONANUT).

The disease occurs mainly during the dry season when the rural population is primarily eating a bitter form of insufficiently processed cassava. The first outbreak of the epidemic disease was reported in 1936.

According to Dr Emery Kasongo, head of the konzo study project at the NGO “Action contre la faim” (ACF), about 60 percent of total daily energy in the DRC is provided by fufu, a cassava-based pasta.

Konzo is caused by the regular consumption of cassava, which exposes the human body to cyanide, a poison contained in cassava. Up to now, this disease has reportedly affected about 70,000 people.

Dr Makadi-Nkeni explained that konzo is not an infectious disease caused by a virus or a bug of some kind. “There is no medical treatment or any traditional healing. It is currently incurable and the only way to stop the disease is prevention.”

Unfortunately, “the local belief that considers konzo a disease caused by witches is a real barrier to effective action against the disease,” says Damien Nahimana, head of the surveillance and research division at PRONANUT. As a result, konzo remains a major public health problem in the areas where it occurs.

Speaking about the nutritional situation in the DRC, Cesarine Kuwa, konzo nutrition expert at PRONANUT who worked previously with ACF to conduct a study in Bandundu province, underlined that the situation is worrying, particularly for children under five.

“Eleven percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition, 43 percent from chronic malnutrition, while 24 percent are underweight. These deficiencies are the result of insufficient calories, and especially a lack of micronutrients and protein due to poorly diversified meals based on cassava.”

Bernard Masukidi, a shopkeeper, adds: “For economic reasons, the cassava chips we buy in some villages are not very well treated.” Indeed, people usually shorten the duration of steeping (putting cassava in water to remove toxic elements), which should be four days during the rainy season and five days during the dry season.

“By means of an epidemiological survey and interviews about eating habits, I have established a link between the occurrence of konzo and the consumption of cassava.

“Thus, of the 6,764 people surveyed, we identified 110 konzo patients, and 24 deaths could be directly attributed to this disease,” says Dr Kasongo.

“It all started in 1974 with the paving of the road from Kinshasa to Kikwit, about 900 km east of Kinshasa,” local pastor Bernardin Mutombo told IPS. The new asphalt road cut the journey from Kikwit to Kinshasa from one week to just one day.

The road resulted in an immediate increase in demand for cassava. Facing the pressure of the market, traders have forced the villagers to change their working methods.

“Konzo disease often affects children and women of childbearing age since the ethnological and sociological considerations surrounding the distribution of food, through their standards and taboos, maintain too many privileges for men,” says Kuwa.

Habits and taboos in some areas exclude women and children from the consumption of certain foods such as meat which may provide protein.

“To prevent konzo, it is important to consume foods rich in protein and other nutrients,” advises ACF expert Paul Bahati. Unfortunately, farmers in need of cash prefer to sell their products without keeping anything for their own households.

Bahati says the solution to nutritional deficiencies in the villages where konzo remains a major problem depends on development and diversification of agricultural systems and economic growth.

By Anselme Nkinsi
KINSHASA, Sep 21 2011 (IPS)

Frequent power cuts have led to the firing of the board of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s national electricity company. But it is not clear if sub-par generation from the Inga hydroelectric power stations supplying the capital Kinshasa is due to poor management or to unusually low water levels in the Congo River.

Inga I generating station, with the channel leading to Inga II in the foreground. Credit: AlainDG/Wikicommons

However, the generating stations are presently putting out only 300 MW, hugely insufficient to meet demand. This explains the frequent power outages experienced by domestic and commercial consumers alike which led to the suspension of SNEL’s board by President Joseph Kabila in late August.

“We are victims,” protests Mbuyi Tshimpanga, director of the Inga hydroelectric power station. According to him, water levels are low due to poor rains in parts of the river’s four million square kilometre basin.

Tshimpanga says the river’s low water level has led to a reduction in electricity output from the Inga turbines, with serious consequences for supply not only to Kinshasa but to the provinces of Bas-Congo in the west and Katanga in the southwest.

The situation, he stresses, underscores the need to import between 50 and 120 MW from Zambia’s electricity network to reduce the deficit in Katanga province, which shares a border with DRC’s southern neighbour.

Albert Landu, coordinator of the non-governmental organisation “Cause Verte”, based in Matadi, Bas- Congo, confirms that water levels are extraordinarily low, with serious implications for river ecosystems. “We have never experienced such a tragedy,” he says. “We fear heavy damage to fish stocks in our province.”

“The directors of SNEL have tried, day and night, to do everything possible to avoid a total black-out,” said Jean-Thomas Lokala, the utility’s outgoing technical director, adding that “The situation is serious without being chaotic…”

But SNEL’s argument that the power cuts are due to low water levels leaves some observers unconvinced. They say the Inga’s production problems are due to poor management, especially of the canal that guides water from the Congo’s main channel through the turbines, which has not been dredged for nearly three years.

“This canal receives 257.4 tonnes of sediment (sand, mud and gravel) per hour,” explains Henri Kimbanzi, director of Inga I, “that works out to 6,177.6 tonnes per day. Only 50 percent (of this sediment) is sucked up by machines or trapped by diversion dykes, while the rest is deposited in the channel.”

A dredge was purchased in 2007 for nearly four million dollars by SNEL from a Belgium-based company, Marine Trading Engineering. But it has not yet been installed following a misunderstanding between the company and SNEL; an editorial in the Congolese daily “L’Avenir” noted that the ten percent commission on the purchase was long ago paid out to members of the previous board.

The outgoing technical director for SNEL has rejected the criticism of the site’s management as unfounded. But during a media tour of the dam site in August, IPS noted that the company was busy clearing material from the channel using cutter-suction dredges, which loosen sediment before sucking it up through a pipeline for disposal.

“The consequences of a general failure of the electricity supply to Kinshasa while waiting for the return of the rains should be carefully managed,” says Eugène Bitongwa, owner of a bar in the city’s Bandalungwa neighbourhood. If they are not, he says, the economy will suffer a major blow and the tensions that arise could be difficult to control.

Reacting to the suspension of SNEL’s board, Atundu Liongo, the leader of the government-aligned Convention des Democrates pour la République party said, “The decision taken by the head of state is a wise one. Yengo (the outgoing director general of SNEL) lacked imagination and determination.”

In a televised debate on Aug. 22, Triphon Kin Kiey, a member of parliament belonging to the ruling party, said that SNEL has been operating without proper future projections. “There exist in this country people who spend money for fun, yet never pay a single water bill or electricity. This is bad governance.”

But Steve Mbikayi, head of the opposition Workers’ Party, said: “The government is responsible for everything that it has condemned at SNEL. The failure of SNEL is a failure of the government, which has named water and electricity as one of the key development priorities of the Republic.”

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By Anselme Nkinsi
KINSHASA, Jun 27 2011 (IPS)

In recent months, no one in the Congolese capital has been spared the effects of water shortages. Where spending entire days criss-crossing Kinshasa in search of water with battered containers in hand was previously the unhappy task of women and children, now men in suits have joined the fray.

Just 22 percent of Congolese have access to safe drinking water. Credit: Julien Harneis/Wikicommons

Fidèle Mwaku, an associate professor at the National Pedagogy University, agrees. “I had a friend from the Plateau des Professeurs neighbourhood [popular for university lecturers] come to draw water at my house in Lemba.”

Mwaku says households across the city are doing the same to deal with the situation. Kinshasa’s poorer residents have long been resigned to this state of affairs.

“We’ve been waiting a week for water, and the last time we had it, it came at three in the morning only to stop again a few hours later,” complains Judith Kapenda, mother of four, in the Kinshasa commune of Kintambo.

“I spent a day in Selembao [another area of the city] and what I saw there was terrible,” says Michel Kalumvueziko, the provincial executive secretary of the Action Committee for Water and Sanitation. “Men, women and children in the street searching for water. The situation made me feel sick, to see so many people in the street, all searching for water.”

The impact of water scarcity is manifested in waterborne diseases which affect many poor families.

Water, water everywhere, but…

The water supply problems in Kinshasa are a painful irony, since the city and the Democratic Republic of Congo as a whole have ready access to immense water resources: the Congo River, the world’s second largest river system, discharges itself into the Atlantic at Kinshasa.

Many residents also find it hard to understand the severe shortages in light of the numerous water treatment plants operated in and around the city by the public water utility, REGIDESO – Kinshasa boasts six such facilities.

“I live in Bumbu, a commune in Kinshasa West,” says Fidèle Ipama, a leader in the Mbandaka district. “This part of the city doesn’t get potable water although there is a water reservoir in [neighbouring] Selembao.”

But the infrastructure is inadequate: Kinshasa’s population needs an estimated 700,000 cubic metres of water per day. The utility produces only 425,000 cubic metres.

REGIDESO says the water utility’s poor performance is partly due to aging infrastructure, such as the Lukunga waterworks. Lukunga, with a capacity of just 48,000 cubic metres a day, must serve a million residents in two districts of Kinshasa, according to David Ekwanza, director of operations at REGIDESO. The plant was built by the Belgian colonisers in 1939 and has not been substantially refurbished since.”

The World Bank-supported Urban Potable Water Supply Project (known by its French acronym, PEMU) was launched several years ago, but does not appear to have had a significant impact. PEMU proposed to increase access to water in urban areas by improving the utility’s technical and financial effectiveness, particularly relating to massive arrears in payments.

The project had a three-pronged focus: “the restoration of financial viability; the creation of conditions for dynamic management which will transform this public enterprise into a social entity designed to increase managerial autonomy; as well as the renewal and upgrading of facilities in the three centres most likely to generate the revenue needed to restore balance and help support secondary centres.”

No tangible progress

But two years later, large parts of the capital remain unconnected to the water infrastructure, and those lucky enough to have a water connection in their homes say they are not much better off.

“The water only comes at night,” says Joseph Lubamba, “if you don’t wake up in time, you miss it. And then my family is obliged to get water from elsewhere, and to pay around 100 francs Congolais – the equivalent of a U.S. dollar – for a jerry-can of 20 litres.”

Yet his bill from the utility company remains high. “I have to pay nearly 80,000 francs over ten months, that is 90 dollars. What is there to encourage me to pay so much money for a water supply that I can rarely use?”

Mwaku says even when the water flows just once a week, REGIDESO’s customers still receive large bills, and households which use very little water are asked to pay the same amount as those which draw a store for several days.

“It has become a serious problem for the city,” Franck Kimbembe, director of water distribution for Kinshasa West, told IPS. But he says the problem is linked to work on the “Cinq chantiers de la République” development initiative launched to coincide with the DRC’s 50th anniversary.

The five “chantiers”, or sites for development, cover infrastructure, health and education, housing, unemployment, and – ironically – electricity and water. According to Kimbembe, the city itself is a permanent construction site, with the work constantly in progress, sometimes forcing REGIDESO to suspend or move even the principal arteries of its distribution network.

“What’s more, the repeated interruptions to the power supply are a challenge to our efforts to maintain a consistent service to satisfy the needs of our customers, because our production relies on electricity,” he says.

Jean-Pierre Ntomobolo, responsible for communications at REGIDESO’s Water Projects Implementation Unit, believes that with time, the situation will settle down and improve as various projects are completed.

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