Urban Governance Beyond the State: Practices of Informal Urban Regulation in the City of Goma, Eastern D.R. Congo

Abstract

The city of Goma, situated in the Eastern Congolese borderland, evolved and expanded at the heart of a protracted violent conflict that afflicts the Kivu Region since the early 1990s. In a general context of state decline and profound informalisation, Goma developed itself largely outside the direct scope of the central state, along informal ways of regulation, hybrid modes of governance and fragmented paths of urbanisation. This situation promoted the emergence of parallel power- and regulatory networks and new alliances among urban elites. In urban regulatory practices, the Congolese state is increasingly challenged by other alternative sites of power such as armed groups, a powerful business elite and an increasing presence of international non-governmental organisations. Justice, security, land allocation, water provision, etc. are all ‘arranged’ by these hybrid institutions. Goma’s current reality corresponds to what has been described in recent political scientists’ literature as ‘hybrid governance’ or a situation where local power and authority are negotiated between multiple stakeholders. The main argument of this paper is, however, that these alternative modes of urban governance, in which the urban political and socioeconomic space is no longer dominated by a coordinating state structure, are often translated in the form of a strongly contested governance rather than a mere ‘negotiated’ governance. This paper demonstrates that the transformation of urban governance in a context of state failure and violent conflict has turned the city of Goma into a highly fragmented urban space, where power and authority over political, economic and sociospatial resources are being contested between different conflicting forces.