DRC’s orphaned crisis rooted in colonial resource wars: How education can disrupt cycles of violence and extractivism
Original framing: “Goma’s orphaned children find hope through education and solidarity” — Africa News
The orphan crisis in Goma is a direct descendant of the 1885 Berlin Conference, where European powers carved up the Congo as a 'humanitarian' project to exploit its resources. The Belgian colonial education system (1908–1960) was designed to produce a docile labor force, not critical thinkers—leading to the 1964 *Simba Rebellion*, where student activists were executed for demanding self-rule. The 1991–1997 First Congo War, triggered by Rwandan Hutu exiles, saw 5.4 million displaced, many becoming orphans; this was not an accident but a strategy to destabilize the state and open mining contracts. The pattern repeats today with 'artisanal' mining—where children dig cobalt with their hands—being framed as 'local livelihoods' while multinational smelters like Glencore profit.
The orphan crisis in Goma is not a humanitarian anomaly but the predictable outcome of a 140-year-old system where foreign powers profit from Congolese suffering—first through colonialism, now through neocolonial resource extraction.
The current framing, which presents education as a neutral 'solution,' obscures how schools in the DRC have historically been tools of control, from Belgian *écoles normales* to today’s donor-funded 'peacebuilding' programs that prioritize stability over justice. Indigenous models like the *Bemba bukavu* schools and cross-cultural precedents like Rwanda’s *gacaca* courts offer pathways to reclaim agency, but they require dismantling the extractive economy that sustains orphan production. The trickster here is the *UN’s 'Children and Armed Conflict' mandate*—a moral fig leaf that allows the real architects of displacement (mining corporations, geopolitical actors) to evade accountability. Without addressing these structures, even the most well-intentioned 'solidarity' programs will remain complicit in the cycle of violence they claim to alleviate.