New ideas for DR Congo

Aloys Tegera is co-founder and director of research at the Pole Institute, a thinktank and training facility based in Goma, DRC. Founded in 1997 and supported by sponsors from the EU, the Institute specializes in researching conflict and ways of conflict management in the region. Tegera spent several years abroad studying and working, but returned to his homecountry in the mid 1990s, during a time of upheaval and conflict.

Deutsche Welle: Where did you grow up?

Aloys Tegera: I was born in Massisi in eastern DRC, west of the town of Goma, and I left the country for university studies. I came back home in late 1995, and my reason to come back to the region was mainly also what happened at that time. The Rwandan genocide had a heavy impact on the eastern DRC, which completely shattered the entire social fabric there. Then I decided to come back home.

What did you hope to achieve then?

Well, actually at that time I was interested, first of all, to find out where was my family. Second, when I arrived there, I was very much struck by the fact that the younger generation, the children, there were so many. So I started organizing schools for them, and I felt that it was good enough if you can give them a structure with a primary and secondary school, then they can fend for themselves.

And at that time, the Congo wars started, and that's when I got interested in this idea of creating a platform where we can have really contradictory debate. And the idea of starting the Pole Institute was based on these kinds of fundamental ideas.

When these ideas were kind of cooking, it was during the first Kabila war, and there was no place where we could meet. So the EED, the German Protestant Development Service, they gave us tickets and a room here in Bonn. So we discussed for a week. The first day was very tough: The diversity of opinions were so opposite. But after the first day, we really started working. And the idea of forming the Pole institute came at the end of that first week in Bonn.

When was it founded?

That was in March '97. Happily, we found out that really people had more in common than what divided them.

And then we said, if we want to go deeper into this conflict resolution and peaceful mediation, we've got to take the conflict from the three dimensions – political dimension, economic dimension and cultural dimension.

And from that intuition, we built our work around, we created a department working on natural resources. Our institute was the first one to talk about the coltan phenomenon in eastern DRC, before it was taken up by the UN experts, et cetera, but we were the first ones to do that kind of work.

And then we have another department working on community identities, and that's the most difficult part for us, because I think we have to see, we might have different interests but at the same time we have to also introduce a culture of negotiation, because you cannot further your own interests if you don't take into account the interests of the other one as well. So this is the type of work we have been doing with the communities.

Then we also have a department that is doing training. We take community organizers for a week, they come with their questions, we analyze the context, and come up with hypotheses. And then they go back on the ground. And they come back to us after six months. So it goes back and forth.

One of the things that you founded the institute on was finding new ways of conflict resolution. How much of a role does that play right now, in the Goma of today?

Well, we are seen as a kind of think tank. But we don't like the "think-tanking" bit, even though we do it. But we insisted that the results of our research should be a result which also should create actions.

And the actions can only be created if also this type of result can be discussed with the common man on the street or the common woman. And how do we do that? We make radio programs. We believe strongly that the change in the Congo will be done by its own sons and daughters, and in order to do that, they have to be capacitated, they have to be conscious of the world they are living in, and also to be conscious of their own strength and how they can impact the change.

And what is the everyday life like for these citizens that you're trying to reach now in Congo?

Everyday life is tough. We have people who eat once a day... We are talking about tough conditions. But the country is not poor. Potentially, the country is very rich. But how come a rich country like that cannot pay its own civil servants, to pay the teachers, to pay the nurses. There's something fundamentally wrong. And the questions have got to come from within. The questions and the answers will come from within as well because I think it is up to us to be much more conscious, to say this cannot go on like that. We've got to do something about it.

What do you think is the biggest achievement of the Pole institute?

The biggest achievement is that our center, we produce a lot of interesting ideas, which are taken up by other people. We were the first ones, for instance, to do basic research on sexual violence. After that it was taken up by other people.

And we started working on trans-border trade. And today, this idea has been taken up by the World Bank, by Comisa and everyone – so this is our contribution. But also on a kind of smaller scale, our radio programs are very much listened to, which means slowly, it is becoming a kind of debate where the local man and woman in the street can also have an idea of the big issues which are taking up in our country.

Interview: Anke Rasper
Editor: Amanda Price