ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out the wider environment in which international re-engagement with the DRC occurred in 2001. It broadly follows the analytical framework outlined in the introduction, in the sense that it provides detailed attention to aid politics in Congo that envelop and pervade the coming chapters. In particular, it makes use of a political economy approach to make sense of the imbrication between the interventions of international actors - from diplomatic engagement through the UN to development assistance and policy orientations supplied by IFIs and donors - whose coordinates are provided in the concept of triple transition, and Congolese domestic dynamics, themselves inseparable from the impetuses of the former. The contradictions in which international engagement has been embroiled have produced a configuration in which Congo’s national authorities, and especially the presidency, have found ample space to adroitly manoeuvre the situation to their advantage. The seeming subjugation of the country’s policy-making to external actors, while locking in the general political and economic orientations of the DRC, has not resulted in a situation where the power rests with creditors and donors, far from it. The space for national agency has been very real, and crucially located in the hesitations, ambivalences, and accommodative characteristics the country’s development partners have displayed. With the 2003-2006 transition, Kabila’s camp manage to retain their hold on power by shrewdly capitalising on the goodwill and benevolence international actors, via the International Committee in Support of the Transition, showed towards them. After the elections, while clearly distancing himself from his foreign partners, his regime continued to benefit from large amounts of development aid even though the track record of reform, macroeconomic management, and involvement in the peace process left much space for concern. This chapter, in short, serves to provide the setting in which the reforms subsequently examined have unfolded.
