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Cliometrics of the Family pp 305–332Cite as

Mining, Paternalism and the Spread of Education in the Congo Since 1920

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Abstract

This study adds the case of a Belgian colony to a literature that has mainly focussed on differences in school enrolment between French and British African territories. While most studies emphasize the supply side, especially the constraints on missionary activity, we highlight the role of demand from the colonial mining industry. We use various primary sources to assess quantitatively and qualitatively the development of school enrolment in the Congo since 1920. We show that the regional inequality in education that crystallized in colonial times persisted decades after independence. The provincial disparities are used as a point of departure to explain how the mining industry worked as a catalyst for the expansion of primary school enrolment. The paternalistic policy of “stabilization”, i.e. of permanent settlement of workers and their families near the work sites, introduced by the Union Minière du Haut Katanga as well as by most concessionary companies in the Belgian Congo in the mid-1920s, went hand in hand with high investments in primary schooling. The aim of the industry was to save expenses on recruitment and European labour and to make investments in miners’ and their children’s education profitable.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In a similar vein, Gallego and Woodberry (2010) claim that present-day educational attainment in Africa can be traced back to colonial policies encouraging competition between Protestant and Catholic missions or, alternatively, protecting one particular church. The British followed the neutral policy, whereas most Catholic colonial powers favoured Catholic missions.

  2. 2.

    For instance, in the plantation economies of colonial Latin America, education was not regarded as a necessary requirement for an agricultural labour force that consisted of day labourers, serfs, slaves and subsistence farmers (Galor et al. 2009; Frankema 2008).

  3. 3.

    Concessionary (or chartered) companies after 1908 lost the administrative authority that they enjoyed over their territories under Leopold’s rule, but the state made sure that the population worked for the company or sold their crops at monopoly prices.

  4. 4.

    Both state and company started publishing more or less consistent reports since 1920 and did so until the end of colonial times, in 1960.

  5. 5.

    Only in the 1950s, at the same time as the “school wars” took place in Belgium, did the colonial church-state alliance start to fall apart, as the Minister of the Colonies challenged Catholic dominance in the education sector (Boyle 1995).

  6. 6.

    By 1943, 3873 missionaries lived in the Congo of which 3064 were Catholic and 809 were Protestant; more than three quarters of all pupils attended Catholic schools.

  7. 7.

    The agreement signed on May 6, 1906, stated that each Catholic mission post was to be granted at least 100 hectares of arable land, provided the following four conditions were met: (1) Each post agrees to establish “if possible” a school in which indigenous children are to receive elementary and manual instruction. (2) The curriculum will be submitted to the governor general, and the subjects will be fixed by mutual agreement. (3) Apart from elementary instruction, the curriculum comprises instruction in agriculture, in forestry and in the manual crafts. (4) Teaching the Belgian national languages will be an essential part of the curriculum (Fabian 1983). The fourth condition was not implemented.

  8. 8.

    The definitive plan was not published until 1929 however, partly because Catholic missions refused to be inspected by the state (Depaepe 2011).

  9. 9.

    This purpose was reconfirmed in 1948. The Belgian Parliamentary Session documents of 1948 state: “Le premier principe sera d’orienter, plus que par le passé, l’indigène vers l’enseignement technique, plus que vers une formation très vaguement intellectuelle” (Document Parlemantaire du Senat, Z.1947–48, nr. 340, p. 63).

  10. 10.

    Under the Plan décennal pour le développement économique et social du Congo Belge/Tienjarenplan voor de economische en sociale ontwikkeling van Belgisch Kongo 1949, the education system was slightly reformed. Two separate education streams were introduced after the first degree of primary school: one for the elite, one for the masses. The structure was changed to (1) primary first degree for everyone (2 years), (2) primary second degree for the masses (3 years) or primary second degree for the elite that would continue to secondary (4 years), (3) special training/post-primary for the masses (1–3 years) or secondary for the élite (4–6 years)—either specialized or general and (4) superior education for the elite (4 years).

  11. 11.

    In 1930, 122,511 boys were enrolled in subsidized and official schools and only 11,513 girls. In 1946, 333,520 boys and 34,672 girls were enrolled in total (Annual Report of the administration of the Colony of Belgian Congo, 1930 and 1946).

  12. 12.

    The colonial government collected education statistics from 1920, but did so more consistently since 1930 (see also Frankema 2013).

  13. 13.

    We use the province and district names and boundaries of 1947–1963.

  14. 14.

    However, as a robustness check, in Appendix 3 we assume the school-age population to be 20% of the total population, like Cogneau and Moradi (2014).

  15. 15.

    The so-called Copperbelt is a mountainous mineral-rich strip of land at the border between the Congo and Zambia.

  16. 16.

    Société Internationale Forestière et Minière (Forminière) was one of the three companies created by Leopold II in 1906, besides UMHK and Compagnie du Chemin de Fer du Bas-Congo au Katanga (BCK). Extraction increased from a few thousand carats in 1913 to 200,000 carats in 1918, and at the eve of World War II, 60% of world’s diamonds were produced in the Congo. All the production was managed, if not owned, by Forminière. Between 1921 and 1924 the Forminière workforce jumped from 10,000 to 20,000, making it the largest employer of the Congo until World War II (Derksen 1983).

  17. 17.

    Until the late 1910s, most of the workforce was also voluntary, but this changed since voluntary labour did not keep up with the rise in production. In 1921, the Bourse du Travail du Kasai was established, and it operated under similar conditions as its Katangese counterpart (Derksen 1983).

  18. 18.

    For a comprehensive list of companies operating in the Belgian Congo, see Buelens (2007).

  19. 19.

    HCB was a British financed company—founded by Lever Brothers Ltd., a soap producer—that was granted a concession over 750,000 hectares, the equivalent of one quarter of the Congo territory, in 1911. In the contract with the colonial state, the company committed itself to finance at least one doctor, a clinic and a school in each of the five concession areas (Nicolaï 2013, p. 5). By 1960, the HBC funded 75 primary schools, two secondary and several technical training centres (ibid, p. 8). However, the palm oil companies are also famous for their coercive labour and forced recruitment practices, especially during the interwar period. The international export of palm oil produced in Congo reached its apex in the 1950s and started to decline after 1960.

  20. 20.

    These include Chemin de Fer du Katanga (CFK), Chemins de Fer Léopoldville-Katanga-Dilolo (LKD) and Chemins de Fer du Bas-Congo au Katanga (BCK) (Buelens 2007).

  21. 21.

    Unfortunately, no education data on province level are available for the total (male and female) population.

  22. 22.

    Other indigenous people crossed the Northern Rhodesian border on their own initiative, attracted by the lure of cash wages and urban life.

  23. 23.

    The costs of recruitment were high and involved transportation, food, clothes and medical care during the journey to the mines, as well as recruitment fees. Also, several faraway recruited workers were lost to mortality, morbidity or desertion during the journey or upon arrival at the mines due to their failure to adapt to the work or climate. High labour turnover was expensive because new employees had to receive training, health checks and vaccinations.

  24. 24.

    Of course, only monogamous families were attracted, and only one wife was provided with family benefits, although polygamy was not uncommon in the Belgian Congo. The average household size in the camps increased from 2.8 in 1946 to 3.3 in 1951 to 4.7 in 1965 (UMHK M.O.I. Annual Reports).

  25. 25.

    Furthermore, the peasant “squatters” living in the outskirts of the cities of Katanga (called centres extra-coutumiers after 1931)—many of whom were former miners dismissed by the UMHK because of the economic depression—were to produce food and sell it at fixed prices to the company, to feed mining workers and their families. To tie squatters to cash and the market, a special tax was introduced in the province.

  26. 26.

    Industrial companies operating in Katanga were Breweries (Brasseries du Katanga), construction materials (Societé des Ciments du Katanga), textiles (TEXAF, Usines Textiles de Leopoldville), electrical power concerns (Sogefor and Sogelec) and chemical companies (Sogechim).

  27. 27.

    The situation was very different in the compounds south of the border, in the Rhodesian Copperbelt, where missionaries were not welcome (Juif and Frankema 2018).

  28. 28.

    And in 1937, 13 schools for UMHK were run by Benedictines with 1232 recorded pupils (Dunkerley 2009, p. 124).

  29. 29.

    Dr. Mottoulle was associate member of the Institut Royal Colonial Belge. He was a consultant for medical issues and labour of both Forminière and UMHK.

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Acknowledgements

I acknowledge financial support from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research for the project ‘Is Poverty Destiny? Exploring Long Term Changes in African Living Standards in Global Perspective’ (NWO VIDI Grant no. 016.124.307). For their comments on earlier drafts of this chapter, I would also like to thank Ewout Frankema and Frans Buelens.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Sciences, Universidad Carlos III, Madrid, Spain

    Dácil Juif

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  1. Dácil Juif
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Correspondence to Dácil Juif .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. BETA/CNRS, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

    Claude Diebolt

  2. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Auke Rijpma , Sarah Carmichael , Selin Dilli  & Charlotte Störmer , ,  & 

Appendices

Appendix 1: Map of the Belgian Congo Showing Provinces and Districts, 1950s. Source: Cartes géographiques du Congo Belge et du Ruanda-Urundi (1956), p. 1, Accessed 18.06.2018, http://www.histoire-des-belges.be/au-fil-du-temps/epoque-contemporaine/congo-belge/les-etapes-de-la-mise-en-valeur-du-congo

A map highlights some areas named Eqauteur, Provine Orient, Kivu, Kasa, Leopoldville, Katanga, and so on.

Appendix 2: Overview Number of Schools and Pupils Enrolled, Selected Years

 

1/1/1930

1/1/1939

1/1/1945

1/1/1948

1/1/1955

(A) Official schools

Number of schools

Primary

9

7

6

5

 

Secondary

4

4

3

4

 

Professional (vocational)

5

4

3

3

 

Total no. of schools

18

15

12

12

 

Number of pupils

Primary

2968

3624

3934

3464

25,769a

Secondary

72

282

257

313

1614

Professional (vocational)

576

282

278

355

 

University

    

42

Total no. of pupils

3616

4188

4159

4132

27,425

Diplomas from middle school

143

102

96

89

 

(B) Subsidized schools

Number of schools

Primary first degree

2532

4446

5020

6966

 

Primary second degree

163

650

839

983

 

Sixth preparatory

  

44

52

 

Normal schools

16

34

37

39

 

Secondary

2

6

11

12

 

Professional (vocational)

5

3

8

8

 

Household schools

4

17

26

28

 

Total no. of subsidized schools

2722

5156

5985

8088

 

Number of pupils

Primary first degree

119,563

195,401

243,918

320,591

852,701a

Primary second degree

8162

47,980

65,840

84,311

Sixth preparatory

  

1630

1750

Normal schools

891

2038

2154

2471

9903

Secondary

49

331

624

959

Professional (vocational)

133

181

366

504

Household schools

183

473

728

824

Religious seminar

    

358

Total number of pupils

128,981

246,404

315,260

411,410

862,962

Diplomas

From normal, secondary and professional schools

175

503

549

726

 

From secondary, official and subsidized schools

318

605

645

815

 

Total diplomas

493

1108

1194

1541

 

(C) “Free” schools

Number of schools

Primary

n/a

17,910

19,193

19,072

 

Post-primary

n/a

87

66

58

 

Total “free” schools

n/a

17,997

19,259

19,130

 

Number of pupils

Primary

n/a

463,950

483,258

513,049

358,262a

Post-primary

n/a

2192

1805

1925

9279

Total pupils “free schools”

n/a

466,142

485,058

514,974

367,541

Overall total

Number of schools

Primary

 

23,013

25,302

27,078

 

Post-primary schools

 

155

154

152

 

Overall total schools

 

23,168

25,456

27,230

 

Number of pupils

Primary

 

710,955

798,265

923,165

1,236,732a

Post-primary (secondary, professional, household)

 

5779

6212

7351

21,196

Overall total number of pupils

 

716,734

804,477

930,516

1,257,928

Share of pupils enrolled in primary school

 

0.99

0.99

0.99

0.98

Share of pupils enrolled in post-primary schools

 

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.02

  1. Sources: Tienjarenplan voor de economische en sociale ontwikkeling van Belgisch Kongo, 1949, and Annual Report of the administration of the Colony of Belgian Congo, 1955
  2. aIncludes nursery, pre-primary and primary school

Appendix 3: Enrolment Rate (Boys and Girlsa) Per Province Assuming that 20% of the Population Are School-Age Children

Province

Enrolment rate (%)

1930

1935

1946

Katanga

15.4

21.7

27.8

Kasai

9.6

13.0

17.7

Leopoldville

 

8.0

18.2

Orientale

6.7

11.6

14.4

Equateur

 

4.5

10.1

Kivu

 

2.7

7.2

Total Congo

7.5

10.0

15.6

  1. Sources: Author’s own calculation. Data from Annual Reports of the administration of the Colony of Belgian Congo, 1930, 1935, 1946
  2. aOnly the total national enrolment rates include male and female pupils, because we do not know how female students are distributed between provinces. Excluding female students reduces total enrolment rates by ca. 1%

Appendix 4: Exchange Rate Belgian Franc to Great British Pound. Source: Data from ClioInfra Database: https://www.clio-infra.eu/

A line graph of data versus years. The line plotted shows an increasing trend.

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Juif, D. (2019). Mining, Paternalism and the Spread of Education in the Congo Since 1920. In: Diebolt, C., Rijpma, A., Carmichael, S., Dilli, S., Störmer, C. (eds) Cliometrics of the Family. Studies in Economic History. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99480-2_13

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