REGIONALISATION FROM BELOW: INFORMAL CROSSBORDERTRADE BETWEEN BRAZZAVILLE AND KINSHASA

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Abstract

This chapter delves into the intricate relationship between the informal cross-border

trade between Kinshasa and Brazzaville and the process of regionalisation in the Congo Basin. 

Using social network theory, Foucault's concept of power, and various theories on the African state, it is argued that the informal trade between these two cities has always been interconnected with regionalisationin the Congo Basin, both before and during colonisation,

 and continues to be so in the postcolonial era. Despite efforts by colonial and postcolonial states to restrict this trade, it has persistently eluded control.

The networks of actors involved often extend to other parts of Africa and beyond, suggesting that this trade also fosters interregional integration in Africa and contributes to grassroots globalisation.

Through qualitative research with Congolese traders engaged in cross-border trade in Kinshasa, this chapter reveals how trade and regionalisation are interlinked in the Congo Basin. It presents evidence of the trade's resilience against attempts by both colonial and postcolonial states to suppress it. Ironically, these states have, at times, acknowledged the significance of cross-border trade and permitted its continuation under certain circumstances. Ultimately, it demonstrates how this trade supports, sustains, and expands 

regionalisation in the Congo Basin as well as interregional integration across Africa.

Keywords: informal cross-border trade, regionalization, the Congo  Basin, interregional integration, grassroots globalization.

Résumé

Ce chapitre se penche sur la relation complexe entre le commerce transfrontalier informel entre Kinshasa et Brazzaville et le processusde régionalisation dans le bassin du Congo. Àrmel entre ces deux villes a toujours été lié à la postcoloniale. Malgré les efforts déployés par les États coloniaux et postcoloniaux pour restreindre ce commerce, celui delà, ce qui suggère que ce commerce favorise à la mondialisation à la base.

INTRODUCTION

This article examines the interplay between informal cross-border trade (ICBT) between Kinshasa and Brazzaville and the process of regionalisation in the Congo Basin. Drawing from social network theory, Foucault's concept of power, and theories on the African state, the article posits that the relationship between informal cross-border trade and regionalisation has been significant both before and during colonisation and continues to be so in the postcolonial era. Despite state opposition to this trade since the colonial period, it has persistently circumvented both colonial and postcolonial authorities. Cross-border coalitions in the Congo Basin have bolstered the trade, with actor networks extending to other parts of Africa and beyond, contributing to interregional integration and grassroots

globalisation.

Beyond this, this article provides evidence that informal cross-border trade predates colonisation and has withstood attempts by both colonial and postcolonial states to curtail it. It also reveals how political turmoil and wars have created opportunities for some actors to accumulate wealth through illicit trade, with state officials from both Brazzaville and Kinshasa complicit in these activities. Finally, it shows how cross-border trade contributes to globalisation as well as it maintains, supports, and expands regionalisation in the Congo Basin and interregional integration in Africa.

Previous studies have focused on various aspects of Congolese involvement in illicit trafficking of diamonds (De Boeck 2001), cannabis (Hunt 2016), migrants (Tshimpaka and Inaka 2020), and imported goods (Titeca 2009; Ayimpam 2013). Others have explored the historical evolution of the trade (MacGaffey 1983; Ayimpam 2010) or the broader factors shaping the trade and its impact on the DRC (De Herdt and Marysse 1999; De Boeck 2001). Studies have also examined the intersections of history, economics, politics, and sociocultural factors in shaping trade (Kongo 1986; Brülhart and Hoppe 2011; Ayimpam 2014).

Research has also focused on the actors involved in informal trade, including foreign traders, disabled people, small-to-medium-sized retailers,multinational informal traders, and local smugglers known as "les Romains"

(MacGaffey and Bazenguissa-Ganga 1998; 2000; Dzaka-Kikouta 2002; Brülhart and Hoppe 2011; Ayimpam 2013; 2014). The impact of the trade on the country includes contributions to poverty reduction (Ayimpam 2010; 2014), job creation (Brülhart and Hoppe 2011), strengthening business, family, or friendship ties (MacGaffey and Bazenguissa-Ganga 1998; 2000), economic integration of the two cities (Kongo 1986; Brülhart and Hoppe 2011), and grassroots globalisation (Ayimpam 2014).

Despite the richness of this literature, it contains contradictions and gaps regarding causal factors, the actors involved, and the impacts of this trade in the regionalization in the Congo basin region. This article addresses these concerns and provides new evidence for a more nuanced understanding of this trade.

The article is organised as follows: The first section covers the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological tools used in the study. The second section provides a historical analysis of informal cross-border trade in Africa, with a focus on the DRC.

The last section discusses the findings, arguing for the interdependence of informal cross-border trade and regionalisation in the Congo Basin.

1. Conceptual, theoretical, and methodological framework

This section begins by defining key concepts of this study: informal cross- border trade and regionalization. It then provides a concise introduction into network theory, Foucault’s notion of power, and theories on the African state as the theoretical tools employed in this study. It ends with a presentation of the study’s research method.

1.1. Concepts of Informal cross-border trade and Regionalisation

1.1.1. Informal cross-border trade

The concept of informal cross-border trade (ICBT) is grandiloquent; there is thus need to use it wisely (Ayimpam 2010) . The ICBT can be understood as the unrecorded exchange of goods and services across national borders conducted by traders out outside of an official framework ( Ackello-Ogutu and Echessah 1998 .

This trade can involve goods that are legitimately produced but that escape the government regulatory framework (Titeca and de Herdt 2010) . The aim of the trade isto avoid certain tax and regulatory burdens such as the payment of duties and charges. To do so, traders resort to under-invoicing (i.e., declaring a lower quantity, weight, or value of goods in order to pay lower import duties), misclassification (i.e., falsifying the description of goods so that they are misclassified as goods subject to lower duties), or large-scale bribery (Ama et al. 2013) .

A common factor in these definitions is the act of the unrecorded movement of goods and/or services across an international border. Yet it seems more difficult to determine a clear differentiation between informal movements across borders and illegal or criminal movements: the two seem to overlap and the difference between them seems fluid, if not ambiguous. For that reason, an important literature on cross-border trade in African has questioned this dualism or binaries between informal–formal, official–unofficial and legal–illegal (Roitman 2005; Titeca and de Herdt 2010; Titeca and Flynn 2014) . By denying the existence of these conceptual boundaries, this literature suggests that cross-border research focuses more on how informality and formality are related to each other.

Hence, Meagher (2003) defines informal cross-border trade as the importation and exportation of legal goods outside of official channels, and distinguish it from the criminal form which involves the movement of illegal goods.

The former rarely threatens state legitimacy, whereas the latter undermines it because it involves legally prohibited goods (Kuhane 2017) .

This differentiation is useful in the context of cross-border trade between Kinshasa and Brazzaville where illegal cross-border traders are regarded as those who trade with illegal goods without using official border posts – locally called traffiquants (illegal dealers, traffickers). They are also pejoratively referred to as batu ya mongemba for their practice of crossing the powerful Congo River on canoes or pirogues. Informal cross-border traders, by contrast, carry legal goods, use modern ships, ferries, or canoes, and pass-through Kinshasa’s official border post at Beach Ngobila, though they avoid the customs services or pay lower customs duties. This study focuses on the latter, the informal cross-border trade.

1.1.2. Regionalization

According to many scholars, regionalization can be regarded as a growing process of economic, cultural, scientific, diplomatic, political, and military integrations within a given region (Hettne, Van Langenhove and Farrell 2016) . As a political and/or economic process, it can best be perceived as a process of setting up political, economic, cultural and geostrategic regions by a particular group of states for the purpose of their integration (Kacowicz 1999; Hoshiro 2019) . The process of regionalization by the governments of two or more states to establish voluntary associations and to pool together resources to create common functional and

institutional arrangements is called regionalism. According to Hurrell (1995) ,

Kacowicz (1999) and Hettne, Van Langenhove and Farrell (2016) , regionalism can

be understood as a political effort to establish an organisation of states in a

geographically limited space. Since its main actors are governments; therefore, it can

be seen as an artificial, top-down process, or a regionalization from above (Kacowicz

1999; Hoshiro 2019) .

However, regionalization can also be spontaneously established by several non-state actors from different countries through their various interactions in each region. According to Hurrell (1995) and Hoshiro (2019) , such regionalization can be understood as an increase in the cross-border flow of capital, goods, ideas, and people, in the development of complex social networks and in the creation of a transnational integration of people within a specific geographical area. This socially driven regionalization process, which is not strictly controlled by governments, but is led by non-state actors (firms, Ong’s, individuals), is commonly conceptualized as regionalization ‘from below’ (Mbembe and Rendall 2000) , bottom-up regionalization (Kacowicz 1999; Hoshiro 2019) . It is precisely this category of regionalization from below that interests us in this study.

1.2. Theoretical tools

This study employs three theoretical frameworks: social network theory, Foucault’s concept of power, and theories concerning the African state. First, social network theory is particularly valuable for examining informal cross-border trade (ICBT) (Mutopo 2010). A social network consists of individuals who exchange information or commodities on a reciprocal and voluntary basis, a common practice among informal cross-border traders in the DRC. By analysing social networks, we can gain a deeper understanding of how trade between Kinshasa and Brazzaville functions and contributes to the regionalisation of the Congo Basin. However, social network theory has its limitations in identifying the power dynamics among actors within these networks, which is where Foucault’s theory of power becomes relevant.

Foucault (1975) posits that power is not a property or commodity owned or exerted by institutions, individuals, or groups. Instead, it is omnipresent and multidirectional, operating both top-down and bottom-up across various sites and scales. Power relations are mobile, asymmetrical, unbalanced, and context-dependent, involving discourse (systems of ideas) that allow for resistance. Power is inseparable from resistance, as individuals continually seek ways to escape power structures, often through diffuse resistance and micro-revolts. Foucault dismisses the notion of national sovereignty, arguing that states are never free from external interference. His understanding of power as pervasive and multidirectional, along with the concept of resistance, provides a framework for examining the complex roles of ICBT in shaping regionalisation in the Congo Basin and resisting state power.

To comprehend regionalisation and the intricate geographical, historical, and cultural conditions of border countries, this study also draws on theories of the African state. Scholars have identified patrimonialism as a key characteristic, where the right to rule is ascribed to individual leaders rather than the administration (Thomson 2010). In such states, rulers often misappropriate state resources and distribute them to ensure loyalty, with real power exercised through personal relationships rather than political institutions or bureaucracies. The distinction between private and public spheres is blurred, the rule of law undermined, and reforms tailored to suit personal interests (Clapham 1985). Bratton and Van de Walle (1994) describe neo-patrimonial regimes as those ruled by chief executives who maintain authority through personal patronage rather than ideology or law.

Bureaucrats in these regimes seek to increase personal wealth and status rather than perform public service. Neo-patrimonial regimes rely on patron-client exchanges, where patrons provide public sector jobs or socio-economic favors to clients, who in turn mobilize support for the patrons.

Chabal and Daloz (1999) introduced the concept of the ‘instrumentalization of disorder,’ suggesting that African leaders exploit weak institutions to meet their needs. Bayart (2006) describes this as the ‘politics of the belly,’ where leaders resort to corruption instead of fulfillin g their official duties.

Scholars have also differentiated between weak, failing, failed, andcollapsed states in Africa (Rotberg 2004; Giorgetti 2010; Rotberg 2010). Rotberg (2004) uses the state's capacity to provide ‘political goods’—such as human security, rule of law, political freedom, civil and human rights, healthcare, education, and infrastructure—as criteria for this differentiation. Roitman (2005) challenges the notion of weak or failing states, arguing that states reconstitute authority through networks of state and non-state actors and a mix of formal and informal practices.

She introduces the concept of the "pluralization of regulatory authority," where the proliferation of regulatory forms in cross-border trade transforms representations of state power without diminishing it.

These theoretical approaches are insightful for explaining the persistence of ICBT between Kinshasa and Brazzaville despite state efforts to curtail it, the porosity of borders, and the role of informal traders in sustaining regionalisation from below in the Congo Basin.

1.3. Methods

This study was conducted in Kinshasa, the capital and principal city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Situated on the southern bank of the Congo River, it faces Brazzaville, the capital of the neighbouring Republic of Congo, located on the river’s northern bank. These two cities are famously the closest capitals in the world, a key factor that fuels the intense activity between them. As the seat of government, parliament, and various public institutions, Kinshasa hosts the headquarters of all public trade and immigration agencies. It is also the primary base for most informal cross-border traders operating between Kinshasa and Brazzaville, making it a crucial site for this study.

The research employed qualitative methods, including unstructured

interviews, in situ observation, and detailed life histories, across two distinct case

studies. The first case study focused on the informal import of goods across the Lufu

border (located along the DRC’s southwest border with Angola). During fieldwork

periods from 2016 to 2019, I followed Congolese traders who sourced affordable,

authentic goods from Angola, Brazil, Namibia, and South Africa to sell at lower

prices in Kinshasa. A notable observation was the re-exporting of these goods from

Kinshasa to Brazzaville.

The second case study, conducted in Kinshasa in 2021, involved in-depth

interviews and extensive informal conversations to delve into the key actors involved

in this informal trade. The research included interactions with five junior immigration

officers, nine disabled persons, four informal customs brokers, six Romains (local

smugglers), and fourteen self-employed Congolese traders.

This study was conducted in Kinshasa, the capital and principal city in the

DRC. Previously named Leopoldville, Kinshasa has played an influential role in

Congolese politics since colonisation. It is located on the southern bank of the Congo

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River, directly facing Brazzaville the capital of the neighbouring Republic of Congo.

on the river’s northern bank, The two cities are famous for being the closest two

capitals in the world, an important reason for the hive of activity between them. As

seat of government, parliament, and the public institutions, Kinshasa is where all

public trade and immigration institutions are headquartered. It is also where most

informal cross-border traders between Kinshasa and Brazzaville operate, making it an

instructive location for this study.

The study used qualitative research methods, including unstructured

interviews, observation in situ, and in-depth life histories, in two different case

studies. In the first I collected data on the informal import of goods across the border

of Lufu (located along the DRC’s south-west border to Angola). During two

fieldwork stints in 2016–2017 and 2018–2019, I followed Congolese traders who buy

cheap, genuine goods from Angola, Brazil, Namibia, and South Africa to sell at lower

prices in Kinshasa. A key observation here was traders re-exporting goods they had

imported via Lufu to Brazzaville via Kinshasa.

In the second case study, conducted in Kinshasa from February to April

2021, I used in-depth interviews and extensive informal conversations to investigate

more deeply the key actors that are involved in this informal trade. The research

included five junior immigration officers, nine disabled persons, four informal

customs brokers, six Romains, and fourteen self-employed Congolese traders. While

deeper ethnographic work would have provided much richer data, this was not

possible at the time as Congo-Brazzaville had closed its borders with the DRC due to

presidential election. This resulted in the suspension of all trading activities at

Ngobila Beach. Unexpectedly the border closure meant that interviews were held in

respondents’ homes, which allowed for longer and deeper discussions. It also allowed

me to observe the interviewees’ living conditions, a fact that certainly illuminates

what they told me. The closure also meant that the Romains at Ngobila Beach were

not working, and they agreed to a group interview.

The primary data was supported by official documents and newspaper

reports, and scholarly publications on borders, regionalisation, and informal cross-

border trade. Some of this information also allowed me to validate information from

the primary sources.

A diachronic overview of ICBT between Kinshasa and Brazzaville

The history of cross-border trade between Kinshasa and Brazzaville is in

the literature on cross-border trade in Africa. Hence, this section starts by providing

an account of the resistance by informal cross-border traders across Africa to colonial

authorities, African postcolonial states, and international events that have sought to

curtail and eliminate their socio-economic activities. It then focuses on the history of

this trade between Brazzaville and Kinshasa before, during, and after colonisation. It

also highlights in which circumstances state authorities ignored this trade.

2.1. ICBT in Africa

Trade between ethnic communities and polities was a long-established socio-economic activity before colonisation (Gumbo 2012; Titeca and Flynn 2014) . However, cartographical changes to the borders of these communities imposed by colonisation divided communities and the colonial imposition of taxation on trading activities drove many of these into informality. Although this trade thus came to be considered as illegal, state authorities have largely been unable to curtail it (Titeca 2009) . It persists because of four main reasons.

The first reason was African traders not agreeing with abandoning an economic activity that had sustained their livelihoods long before the arrival of colonisation (Titeca 2009; Gumbo 2012; Titeca 2012) . They tried to maintain their pre-colonial sociocultural and economic ties through cross-border contacts (Ndlela 2006) . In many African countries informal cross-border trade even became a popular act of resistance against state control. Over the years it evolved in response to restrictive economic, trade, and migratory policies imposed by states (Lesser and Moisé-Leeman 2009) . Many scholars of informal cross-border trade thus consider it as a source of economic freedom and empowerment for African people from below(MacGaffey 1983; Titeca 2012) .

The second reason is related to African political systems and their poor economic management, and the public governance of postcolonial African states (Ndlela 2006; Kuhane 2017) . From the 1970s, the latter came to be marked by patrimonialism, neopatrimonialism, tyranny, and a plethora of socio-economic problems (Bratton and Van de Walle 1994) whereby civilian or military dictators took over power (Britwum 2012) and nationalised and then mismanaged foreign owned enterprises. This resulted in economic degradation of their countries (Souaré 2014) . As a result, informal cross-border trade was transformed into a dominant survival strategy (Meagher 2003) .

The third reason is a set of international events that had significant repercussions for African countries. These included the oil crisis of 1973 (Balassa 1985) and the strengthening of neoliberalism and concurrent implementation of structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s (Meagher 2003) , with corollaries such as the proliferation of the privatisation of public enterprises and the rise of subcontracting or outsourcing. The end of the Cold War was correlated with an escalation of civil war in several African countries (Kalyvas 2001; Kalyvas and Balcells 2010) . The advent of globalisation has been particularly consequential for informal cross-border trade, encouraging its expansion around the world (Meagher 2003) . These global events had profound socio-economic consequences for African populations: impoverishment of communities, starvation or poor nutrition, proliferation of unemployment, wide-scale unfair dismissals of employees, and

extreme proletarianization. In this situation informal cross-border trade was one of

the few feasible alternative means of survival (Samaila 2011) .

The last reason is the porosity of African countries’ borders which facilitated cross-border, regional integration (Moyo 2020). Though the cross-border trade is not a new phenomenon because it is partly an extension of the previous, pre- colonial trade, the porosity of African countries’ borders started with the creation of those African borders during colonisation. For that reason, colonial and post-colonial states regarded this trade as an illegal practice.

Despite efforts by colonial and postcolonial authorities to restrict informal cross-border trade, its continuity is evidence of the role that porous borders played in facilitating trade (Nshimbi, Moyo and Laine 2020) . Border porosity can also be understood by the fact that, despite signed agreements between African governments to ensure the free movement of people, services, and goods between their countries, most states still require visas for entering their territories ( Nkada 2011) .

Paradoxically, these same borders are highly porous and permeable because of a lack of control and monitoring due to poor or no management. Combating informal cross-border trade thus remains a challenge.

2.2. ICBT between Kinshasa and Brazzaville

Although cross-border trade between Kinshasa and Brazzaville is quite dissimilar from ICBT in Africa in general, there are however, some specific issues that resonate. In order to chronological and critically review the literature on this trade, I will go back in time by analysing this trade from the pre-colonial through the colonial and post-colonial periods.

During the pre-colonial period specifically around the sixteenth century,

people of the Tio kingdom traded between Kinshasa and Brazzaville and other areas

in the central African region. The Tio were the main purveyors of slaves but also

traded in a wide variety of goods that the neighbouring Bakongo people pejoratively

called them Batéké, “traders of all kinds”. In the early nineteenth century, the

Bobangi people, involved in long distance trade between the Congo and Ubangi

rivers, joined the Batéké to trade between Brazzaville and Kinshasa (Vansina 2018) .

With the advent of the colonial labour market (1885-1960), the Belgian

colonial authorities sought to eradicate this cross-border trading by criminalising it.

Here it should be remembered that the colonisation of the Congo was initially the

personal business (from 1885 until 1908) of a single individual, the Belgian King

Leopold II. He set up and regulated a ferocious forced labour regime marked by the

use of extreme violence (Hochschild 1998) . Given the severity of Leopold II’s

policies, many Congolese were not only coerced into forced labour but also lost their

livelihoods (Nzongola-Ntalaja 2002) . In the early twentieth century Leopold II’s

forced labour regime was replaced by a dual labour market regime that was to last

until decolonisation in 1960. It was characterised by unequal and racialised labour

division between privileged white colonials and the underprivileged Congolese.

Colonialists used the Poll Tax, which compelled Congolese people to work for cash

incomes in European-dominated sectors of the economy, in order to ensure the

availability of Congolese cheap workforce for the colonial administration and

capitalist investors (Houben and Seibert 2013) .

However, several riparian people continued trading between the two banks

of the Congo River, to such an extent that their activities were seen as a dilemma by

the colonial authorities (Ayimpam 2010) . On the one hand, there was a concerted

effort to stop this trade as it evaded taxation and led to a loss of national income. On

the other hand, the colonial state was aware of the crucial importance of this trade for

supplying the inhabitants of Leopoldville with goods and incomes. Consequently, it

turned a blind eye to the trade during the Great Depression (the world economic crisis

of 1929–1934) that affected the Belgian Congo to such an extent that unemployment

occurred for the first time in Leopoldville.

After the DRC’s independence in June 1960, the ICBT grew despite efforts

by the state to eradicate, control, or formalise it. The early 1960s saw an

unprecedented rise in cross-border trade in line with a row of political crisis in the

DRC (Ishako 2018) . Kuhane (2017) in fact argues that ICBT in the DRC originated

during this period principally due to economic mismanagement and the dissolution of

the state and its administrative capacities. The trade then escalated during the Mobutu

regime (1965–1997) (Titeca 2009; De Coster 2012) . This tyrannical, kleptocratic, and

patrimonial rule tore through the Congolese economic fabric in particular with its

Zaireanization policy of 1973 that saw the expropriation of foreign-owned

companies, forcing many people to adopt the debrouillez-vous pour vivre (fend for

yourself) strategy (Kuhane 2017) . In this situation, the informal economy became the

means to survive for many economically disenfranchised Congolese (Devlieger

2018) . MacGaffey (1983) has shown that the trade enabled people from the middle

and working classes to avoid proletarianization in the early 1980s, whereas people

from the dominant class still managed to use it to accumulate wealth. In the mid-

1980s Prime Minister Kongo Wa Dongo’s government implemented a Structural

Adjustment Programme, following recommendations from the International

Monetary Fund. This resulted in the regress of the formal economy (De Herdt and

Marysse 1999) and a significant growth of informal cross-border trade between

Kinshasa and Brazzaville (Ayimpam 2013; Devlieger 2018) .

Since the fall of President Mobutu in the then Zaïre and President Pascal

Lissouba in Congo Brazzaville, in May and October 1997 respectively, both countries

have experienced tense diplomatic relations. These have resulted in several cases of

border closures, several brutal expulsions of undocumented Kinois (residents of

Kinshasa) from the Republic of Congo back to the DRC, and bans by the DRC on

imports of certain products from Brazzaville (Devlieger 2018) . These policies have

contributed to increasing illicit trafficking of people and goods across this border

(Ayimpam 2013) .

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In sum, the account of ICBT between Kinshasa and Brazzaville contrasts

and supports arguments proffered in the literature analysed above on ICBT in Africa.

In terms of contrast, the fact that the Belgian Congo colonial state recognised the

importance of informal cross-border trade to the extent that they refrained from

preventing it under certain unprecedented circumstances brings a nuanced view to the

literature on ICBT in Africa. The latter focused only on showing both the colonial

and postcolonial states’ restrictions against ICBT and trader resistance to that. The

literature also did not pay any particular attention to the historical evolution of the

key actors involved in the trade. The theoretical and empirical literature on informal

cross-border trade in Africa thus applies only partially to the context of such trade

between Kinshasa and Brazzaville. The literature does, however, explain the

continuation of ICBT between Kinshasa and Brazzaville despite repeated waves of

repression against it. The literature proposes that its continuity is explained by the

resistance of the people to state control, the effects of international phenomena on the

country, and the porosity of borders – all factors that apply to the DRC.

3. The ICBT and regionalisation in the Congo Basin

This section demonstrates how trans-border economic activities by three

key Congolese actors contribute to interactions between informal cross-border trade

and regionalisation in the Congo Basin. The actors are disabled people, immigration

officials, and unofficial customs brokers.

3.1. Disabled cross-border traders in the Congo Basin

Disabled people (especially those who use tricycles, large three-wheeled

motorcycles, as means of mobility) officially only have to pay 30% of the fees when

crossing the Congo River by ferryboat (De Coster 2012) . According to Jean-Pierre

Kibinda, the president of l’Union des personnes handicapées pour les actions de

développement (UPHAD, the Union of Disabled People for Actions of

Development), 600–700 disabled people cross the Congo River daily (Zengba and

Nzela 2012) . Often, however, they manage not to pay any fees by threatening

customs officials. Consequently, they are sought after by trans-border traders and

clandestine migrants who use them to avoid paying for custom duties or migration

fees, respectively.

This study found that the disabled dominate the informal cross-border trade

between Kinshasa and Brazzaville through three paid trans-border economic

activities: they pretend to own the goods they carry, they broker for Congolese

traders, and they smuggle goods. I examine each in turn.

Pretending to own expatriate traders’ goods

Findings suggest that disabled people informally collaborate with

expatriate traders, particularly West Africans and Lebanese. They help these traders

import goods from Brazzaville to Kinshasa at reduced customs fees. From my

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respondents, I learned that West African traders often import clothes (especially rich

bazins, boubous, sandals), beads, kitchen utensils, skin-lightening cosmetics, and

pharmacopoeia products. According to them, these goods come from Senegal,

Nigeria, Mali, Togo, Guinea Conakry, and Beni.

Likewise, the Lebanese also import many types of goods such as clothes,

furniture, office supplies, and car parts. According to respondents, these Lebanese

import their goods from China, Turkey, Lebanon, Morocco, Dubai, and Europe.

Before arriving in Kinshasa, their goods transit to Brazzaville via the port of Pointe

Noire. In doing so, they ease not only the movement of goods within the Congo Basin

but also strengthen the socio-economic and cultural ties with the people from Niger

or the Senegal Basin, as well as others from the rest of the world.

According to the disabled respondents, they use the privilege of being

liable for only 30% of customs, transportation, and storage fees because of their

disabilities to broker deals with West African or Lebanese traders. In these deals,

these expatriate traders require the Congolese disabled people to transport their goods

from Brazzaville to Kinshasa. These traders pay for the transport costs, even though

these disabled persons hardly ever pay transportation fees. The traders also pay their

disabled business partners a runner fee equivalent to 50% or 60% of the customs fees.

When entering the DRC at the customs services in Kinshasa, the disabled person will

pretend to be the owner of the imported goods from Brazzaville and pay the 30%

customs fees in line with official regulations.

One of the disabled traders, Moto, described some of the background to

such transactions between the disabled and expatriate traders:

As I am a Muslim, I was in the mosque one day when a Senegalese

approached me to offer me my first deal. He was honest in telling me that he

was able to pay all the customs fees. However, he just wanted to help me earn

something more substantial because we pay 30% of the customs fees.

Building up relations of trust between disabled people and expatriate

traders reinforces their ties. Disabled persons and expatriate traders have developed

informal regulations or “moral codes” to grow these relations of trust in support of a

functional business. The need for these systems of trust and collaboration that involve

substantial amounts of money and significant value in goods it demonstrated in

several cases of breach of trust and swindling that occurred in the early 1980s, as

narrated by Bondeko:

Some of our friends used to vanish with money and goods belonging to West

African traders. It was very nasty, such acts of theft.

Bomoyi added:

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We are nobody, but only poor disabled people. But our brothers [Congolese

disabled people] used to steal from expatriate traders who allowed us to earn

money. Was it necessary to be so ungrateful to our benefactors?

To mitigate such breaches, disabled people and their collaborators have

adopted two effective strategies since the 1980s. First, they have created a

professional group from which from which unknown disabled people 2 and those with

unknown accommodation 3 are excluded from dealing with expatriate traders.

Secondly, it is highly recommended for expatriate traders to always deal with groups

of three or four disabled people and not just with one person.

It is important to recall that official regulations have facilitated the

emergence of a particular cross-border trade in which disabled people work between

Kinshasa and Brazzaville. Not only does this regulation strengthen economic

integration between the two sides of the Congo River, but it has also given rise to an

informal trade which has several regional and interregional implications. Informal

trade maintains, strengthens, and extends regional interactions in the Congo Basin.

The trade facilitates development of mutual trust between nationals from across the

Congo Basin with those of the Niger and Senegal basins.

Acting as brokers for Congolese traders

Previous studies have shown that disabled people assist Congolese trading

between Brazzaville and Kinshasa (Ayimpam 2010; De Coster 2012; Devlieger

2018) . However, while these studies provide vital information on informal business

practices, relationships between disabled people and their clients, and their mutual

expectations, they do not consider two related facts that this study raises as important

to regionalisation. The first concerns the impact of the implementation of neoliberal

restrictive trade policies against disabled people. The second relates to international

solidarity between disabled people of Kinshasa and those in Brazzaville in response

to these restrictive trade policies.

In 1988, the government of Prime Minister Léon Kengo wa Dondo

severely restricted the customs exonerations granted to disabled people since the

1970s.

In line with Foucault's (1975) argument about human resistnce to power

and authority the disabled organised several public demonstrations against the

restrictions placed on their rights. The government then demanded that they form an

association whose members could then function as customs brokers. As a result of

these steps, the disabled had to work with Congolese traders again and could no

longer earn as much as they had before the implementation of the policy. One of the

disabled, Mr Lokumu, explained:

2 These are disabled people who are newcomers in cross-border trade and are still unknown or not familiarised with

those who have been doing this trade before them.

3 This concerns disabled people whose home addresses are not known by their counterparts.

Regard lucide N° 14. Avril ● Mai ● Juin 2024 INAKA Saint José Page 14

Kengo wa Dondo, this man is awfully bad. He uprooted our job. He

did not even have compassion for miserable and poor people like us. … The

customs brokers were a bluff. We only had this pride of wearing badges. But

money, money, there was no money. We could not compete with other brokers

who already had their clients.

Being unable to earn much in Kinshasa, the disabled people turned to

international solidarity with their counterparts from Brazzaville. As in the DRC,

disabled people in the Republic of Congo had to pay only a reduced rate on custom

duties in their country. Finding that they were often conned by customs officials in

Brazzaville when presenting themselves as owners of the goods being imported for

Congolese traders from Kinshasa, they began to involve their counterparts from

Brazzaville in their businesses. These counterparts would pretend to be owners of the

imported goods from Kinshasa at the customs service in Brazzaville and would be

charged the low fees; both sides would then share the dividends from their deals.

Overall, the implementation of neoliberal policies has negatively impacted

cross-border trade. Discouraging disabled people from trading informally with

expatriate traders has limited their contributions to regionalisation. However, they

fought to maintain their trades by resisting power and adapting to these policies.

Smuggling imported goods

The third economic activity engaged in by disabled people is the smuggling

of imported goods. This activity has been examined in previous studies that focused

on describing how the smuggling went ahead (Ayimpam 2010; Devlieger 2018) . This

study provides more insight into the origin of the practice. Initially it had been

collusion between state officials and disabled people, but the latter managed to

exclude the former and to fully monopolise the smuggling.

Respondents acknowledged that they often refuse to pay customs fees even

though the Congolese state has granted them an exemption from a large part of these

fees. Being known as terribly angry people and using their physical disabilities as

excuse or asset, they often engage in verbal arguments with customs officials and

take advantage of their situations so that they manage to leave Beach Ngobila without

paying any duties for their goods.

They learnt to do this from police and migration officials. According to

them, they did not really need to smuggle goods because they were already making

enough money by paying only 30% of the customs fees. But in the late 1980s police

and immigration officials began to ask them for contributions of small bank notes in

return for helping them to dodge the customs service altogether. They would tell

them to pretend to be angry, create a little disturbance, play the victim, and then to

leave. Since then, disabled people continue to use these methods, even without

colluding with state officials.

Regard lucide N° 14. Avril ● Mai ● Juin 2024 INAKA Saint José Page 15

What is worth highlighting here is how the involvement of disabled people

in ICBT enables interregional informal trade networks to operate and strengthen their

interrelationships in the Congo Basin, while interregional informal trade networks

sustain the activities of the disabled people. Drawing on network theory, it could be

noted that they engage in transnational networks that trade not only in the two

Congo’s, but also in much of the Congo Basin and other parts of Africa, as well as

outside the continent. These ICBT produce and reproduce social networks that

facilitate circulation of goods, persons, and economic and socio-cultural practices in

the Congo basin. These circulations involve several relationships between the

disabled Congolese with local and expatriate traders, state officials, and their

counterparts from Brazzaville. Such webs of circulations reveal the extent to which

commercial networks can challenge state regulations or use them for their own

benefits. They also highlight the weakness of African states to control efficiently and

effectively their borders. However, these social networks also actively participate in

the “weakening” of the state through migratory and customs fraud. To paraphrase

Roitman (2005) , it could be noted that the role of the state and its regulation of

borders appear paradoxical as state authorities simultaneously fight these illegal

traders and facilitate them as well.

3.2 International involvement of officials in informal cross-

border trade

The literature on informal cross-border trade has extensively explored the

indirect involvement of state officials in the trade (De Coster 2012; Ayimpam 2014) .

Building on this literature, this study found that Congolese officials from both

Brazzaville and Kinshasa openly participate in the reproduction, sustenance, and

expansion of this trade. Although Congolese immigration officials from Kinshasa are

officially supposed to control informal cross-border trading between Kinshasa and

Brazzaville, they often enhance informal trade in collusion with their counterparts

from Brazzaville. Officials from the DRC’s Direction Générale de la Migration

(DGM, the General Directorate of Migration) explained the reasons for their

involvement in this trade and their interactions with their counterparts from

Brazzaville. Their involvement secretly began in the early 1980s and evolved

throughout the 1990s to become a widespread practice due to three main reasons.

First, the dire socio-economic situation experienced by Congolese state

officials due to non-payment of salaries, widespread corruption in the public

administration, and labour inequalities drove immigration officials to supplement

their salaries with income from informal cross-border trade. One DGM official

stated:

Our situation was horrible. We were very poorly paid. … We use our

professional positions and relations to trade with our friends from Brazzaville.

We had to survive, feed our families. … We had no choice.

Regard lucide N° 14. Avril ● Mai ● Juin 2024 INAKA Saint José Page 16

Second, competition with others at the workplace and in the community

resulted in many immigration officials turning to ICBT. Migration officials explained

how they saw Congolese elites, their relatives, and cronies trading between

Brazzaville and Kinshasa without paying any taxes or fees. They also observed how

custom officials embezzled money by extorting traders or under-declaring the

customs duties in the official documents and live off the gains like petit bourgeois.

Seeing this, they decided also to venture into what seemed to be a lucrative business.

As Butu Moyi explained:

Girlfriends, wives of the bosses of the Mobutu regime have made

money here. They were not paying custom fees, taxes, transport. … The same

thing occurs after the collapse of Mobutu. … Meanwhile, we are supposed to sit

in our offices and get only crumbs. We were forced to look for money like them.

Mrs Loyenge added that

[c]ustom officials, even officers of lower ranks, make money every

day. They bully traders and extract money from them. This is not enough; they

do not declare all money that traders pay in the official documents. Look at how

they live in luxury. They drive expensive cars that they cannot afford with their

salaries. … We also decided to do the same thing in our own way.

Third, political crises, insecurity, and wars in the 1990s increased the

involvement of officials in cross-border trade. Looting in Kinshasa in 1991 and 1993

destroyed the few companies that had remained and led to further job losses. In the

Republic of the Congo, an armed conflict in 1993–1994 opposed militias under

President Pascal Lissouba against those under Brazzaville Mayor Bernard Kolelas

(Bazenguissa-Ganga 1999) . In 1996–1997, Laurent Désiré Kabila, backed by

Rwanda and Uganda, waged a war against Mobutu and pushed him from power in

May 1997 (Turner 2013) . In 1997, militias under politician Denis Sassou Ngouesso,

backed by Angola, ousted President Lissouba from power in Congo-Brazzaville

(Bazenguissa-Ganga 1999) . These crises offered opportunities for immigration

officials on both sides of the Congo River to make quick fortunes. The officials

interviewed in Kinshasa explained that their collaboration with officials from

Brazzaville strengthened during this period. Butu Moyi explained it thus:

When Lissouba and Kolelas were fighting in Brazzaville, our friends

[the Brazzaville officials] had to survive because their activities were paralysed

as all trading activities were suspended. So, they sent us their goods or parcels

through their trusted men or family members. … The two lootings of Kinshasa in

1991 and 1993 affected us. We had nothing left. … We increased deals with our

friends from Brazzaville.

He went on to say:

Regard lucide N° 14. Avril ● Mai ● Juin 2024 INAKA Saint José Page 17

Foreigners, several public authorities asked us to move their goods

across to Brazzaville when Kabila’s troops were approaching Kinshasa. … It

was a godsend for all those who had good contacts in Brazzaville to get money.

… Our friends [the officials in Brazzaville] were sending us several things to

sell for them at the beginning of the war between Sassou and Lissouba.

The situation was thus one where state officials whose task it was to

prevent illegal trade were themselves engaged in it. Here the scholarly debate on the

notion of the dissolution of the Congolese state is of assistance. Opposed to Kuhane

(2017) , who postulated that Congolese state officials trade informally because of the

non-existence of the state in the DRC, I draw on Chabal and Daloz (1999) notion of

instrumentalization of disorder.

I thus argue that the Congolese state continued to exist but that some

officials took advantage of the administrative disorder to engage in ICBT. I also bring

in Olivier de Sardan’s (2010) concept of practical norms, which refers to the real

behaviour of state officials that differs from official norms and laws, to understand

how state officials in Brazzaville and Kinshasa trade on the basis of their extra-

official norms and regulations. Moreover, Bayard’s notion of politics of belly

encapsulates in which ways this informal involvement of state officials in this trade

typifies the inadequacy between state norms and their enforcement by the officials.

Mbembe’s (2000) concept of indirect private government also facilitates us to

understand this trade as a response from unpaid or underpaid state officials to

political elites. Consequently, a plethora of neo-patrimonial networks from the

bottom sustains informal circulations of goods and people in in the Congo Basin.

Overall, the unofficial transnational collaboration between state officials in

ICBT on both sides of the river is highly significant in relation to regional integration

in the Congo Basin. Not only is this collaboration a strong indication of the porosity

of the border between the two cities, but it also, in an unofficial manner, facilitates

regional integration in the Congo Basin that the official governments of the two

countries and international institutions have failed to implement. Here Mbembe’s

concept of indirect private government too is helpful for asserting that state

authorities turn a blind eye to this trade, precisely because of the privatization of the

state. This reality can also be better captured by Rotiman who argues that relationship

between informal cross-border traders and the state is highly ambiguous as the state

depends on these illegal economies for rents and redistribution

Regard lucide N° 14. Avril ● Mai ● Juin 2024 INAKA Saint José Page 18

3.3 Informal customs brokers and Romains

Contrary to previous studies, findings of this study differentiate informal

customs brokers from Romains. According to Ayimpam (2010) and Devlieger

(2018) , Romains are cross-border smugglers who are young people or young adults,

generally living in working-class neighbourhoods near Kinshasa’ city centre. They

have been smuggling in Beach Ngobila since the 1970s, but their activities intensified

when West African traders began to require their services from the 2000s. To

smuggle their goods at Ngobila Beach, these Romains take any risk. If necessary,

they would even throw themselves into the Congolese river loaded with a parcel

weighing several dozen kilograms to escape customs. Literally, Romains (Romans)

means inhabitants of Rome. According to Devliger, Rome is a nickname for Ngobila

Beach because it is considered as a ‘country within a country’ where norms are set

aside but anomie is accepted. Therefore, porters, smugglers of migrants or illegal

goods, or hawkers are commonly referred to as Romains.

However, many informants asserted that the use of this term began in 1980,

after the visit of the Roman Catholic Pope John Paul II to Kinshasa and Brazzaville.

As this pope (called in Lingala "Papa ya Roma", i.e., the pope of Rome) had set foot

on the beach of Brazzaville, the workers of this beach started to call this place

"Rome" by analogy with the pope's place of residence. The term was also adopted at

Ngobila beach.

Moreover, this study found differences between Romains and informal

customs brokers operating at Ngobila Beach. Romains are only dockers or porters

working in Ngobila Beach. Because the Romains hang around Ngobila Beach, people

can confuse them for informal customs brokers. This confusion is made easier

because some informal customs brokers are former Romains. They have, however,

changed their jobs and become intermediaries between traders and customs officials.

The job of informal customs brokers is to negotiate reductions in customs fees with

customs officials in favour of traders. The latter, in turn, pay them for this service.

The brokers claim that their strong relationships with state officials in both

Brazzaville and Kinshasa help them in their work. They have also built up a

relationship founded on trust with expatriate or Congolese traders. Respondents

stressed that West African traders need their brokerage services, and not the

smuggling services of the Romains. The brokers also explained that they do not allow

anyone to enter their professional niche easily because they deal with traders’ monies

and customs officers’ commercial interests.

The empirical data of this study brought nuances to the literature on

informal cross-border trade, border porosity, the meaning of borders, and

regionalisation from below. In terms of meanings attributed to border posts and the

creation of an informal professional niche among customs informal brokers from the

two sides of the Congo River, one respondent explained that

Regard lucide N° 14. Avril ● Mai ● Juin 2024 INAKA Saint José Page 19

‘we consider Ngobila Beach to be a large forest full of game where

anyone can find a place to hunt. But it is forbidden to hunt in our space’.

This parable simply means that everyone has the right to work and make a

fortune at Ngobila Beach. This can be interpreted as a form of resistance, rejection, or

ignorance of the authority of the state by believing that they cannot be prevented

from working in the space of the border post that belongs to everybody. The parable

also displays the existence of a quasi-inaccessible professional niche for these

informal customs brokers who refuse to allow newcomers to enter their profession.

According to some respondents, any newcomer must be sponsored by a practicing

broker and these recruits must be accepted by the informal customs brokers in both

Brazzaville and Kinshasa.

The last fact is the notion of border porosity. For many Romains and

informal customs brokers, the Congo River is a road, creating a connection between

two sides, not a border between them; to them Kinshasa and Brazzaville are the same

city. To support their view, they referred to a song by Papa Wemba that recalls the

strong linkages between these two cities.

Ebale ya Congo ezali lopango te, kasi ezali nde nzela.

The Congo River is not a fence or a barrier, but rather a road.

Inspired by this song, one of them contested the border by arguing that:

‘The river is only a road as Papa Wemba said. ... I work; I do not

steal. So, the border does not concern me. ... We do not care. ... Brazzaville and

Kinshasa are one city for us’

Similarly, another one added:

‘It is not God, the creator of this river, who declared that: "My

Congolese people, this is a border between Kinshasa and Brazzaville"... Our

politicians have just followed Europeans’ ideas who declared the Congo

River as a border. ... Only musicians like Papa Wemba understand that

Brazzaville is equal to Kinshasa.’

Based on these perceptions, some of the traders believe that they have

rights in both cities. Their perceptions are at odds with the official conception of

nations, borders between them, and border posts guarding passage across. One can

understand the traders’ approach as a rebuttal from below of the Berlin conference’s

border creation. The traders’ informal jobs allow them not only to sustain themselves

financially but also to strengthen the region through the cooperation by the

collaborators on both banks of the river.

In sum, one can argue that several structural and individual factors drive Congolese to

informal cross-border trade between Kinshasa and Brazzaville. This informal job allows

Regard lucide N° 14. Avril ● Mai ● Juin 2024 INAKA Saint José Page 20

people from different social backgrounds and geographical areas to interact in the

Congo Basin to the benefit of each other. Their transnational socio-economic and

cultural networks, which consolidate relations of trust between Congolese and

expatriates, are factors reinforcing the regionalisation of informal cross-border trade in

the Congo Basin. This also applies to the establishment of informal regulation and the

creation of an international professional niche which shows how regionalisation can

emerge and be maintained and reinforced by exclusive groups of informal cross-border

traders. Though the state has always sought to curb ICBT, the fact remains that it is

through the interaction of these factors that socio-economic and cultural integration in

the Congo Basin is maintained, strengthened, and invigorated.

Regard lucide N° 14. Avril ● Mai ● Juin 2024 INAKA Saint José Page 21

CONCLUSION

The study demonstrates how regionalisation in the Congo Basin, and

interregional integration more broadly, are facilitated and sustained by informal

cross-border trade. This regionalisation, characterized by the cooperation of

Congolese and foreigners in cross-border businesses, in turn, maintains and

perpetuates informal cross-border trade. The reciprocal relationship between

regionalisation and informal cross-border trade is supported by five key findings

highlighted in this study.

First, the interdependent relationship between informal cross-border trade

and regionalisation in the Congo Basin has existed since before colonisation and

continues to this day. This study disproves theories that suggest informal cross-border

trade is solely a colonial or postcolonial phenomenon.

Secondly, despite attempts by the colonial state to eradicate, control, and

formalise it, informal cross-border trade has resisted all these measures. Colonial

authorities even recognized its importance under certain unprecedented

circumstances, demonstrating the trade’s resilience and significance.

Thirdly, the postcolonial Congolese state also attempted to eliminate,

monitor, or regulate informal cross-border trade. These efforts failed due to weak

state institutions, which in turn allowed informal cross-border trade to flourish. The

study highlights how the strength of informal networks often compensates for formal

institutional weaknesses.

Fourthly, neoliberalism and the end of the Cold War had adverse effects on

informal cross-border trade in the Congo Basin, restricting the regulatory space

within which it operated. However, informal cross-border traders adapted to these

new conditions and even managed to expand in terms of both the number of actors

involved and the regional spaces they occupied.

Finally, throughout all the historical periods examined, the intersection of

actors involved in informal cross-border trade, their commercial and social networks,

their relationships of trust, and parallel trade regulations have cemented the

relationship between informal cross-border trade and regionalisation. This study

underscores the importance of these networks and relationships in sustaining both

informal trade and regional integration.

Overall, the study provides a comprehensive understanding of the enduring

and reciprocal nature of the relationship between regionalisation and informal cross-

border trade in the Congo Basin, challenging previous assumptions and highlighting

the adaptability and resilience of informal trade networks.

Regard lucide N° 14. Avril ● Mai ● Juin 2024 INAKA Saint José Page 22

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