ABSTRACT
How is it possible that this gigantic country of more than 2 million square kilometers at the heart of Africa, which Belgian geologist René Jules Cornet described as “un scandale géologique” – a geological wonderland – can be such a failure in raising the standard of living of its own inhabitants? Casual observers of this country marvel at how, born from a crisis – the scramble for Africa of 1884–1885 – the DRC seems to have lived in perpetual crisis, to the extent that some wonder whether it really is a crisis rather than the country’s own peculiar way of being. Furthermore, in spite of its troubled political history, how had the DRC been able to safeguard its unity and territorial integrity within the old borders inherited from the Berlin Conference, while other former colonies around it split or disintegrated at the time of independence? The term “Congo paradox” captures these contradictions perfectly. It is for this reason I chose it as the main title and focus of this chapter.
