Reimagining educational opportunities for indigenous communities in underserved Congolese provinces

• In Event: How to catch up: Education for marginalized Congolese provinces and overcrowded environments

Proposal

In Congo’s rural areas, it’s necessary to serve indigenous children who have been neglected for centuries but for whom protesting their situation is not a viable option given the country’s social structures. A report states that pygmy illiteracy rates are often over 80 percent and close to 100 percent for women (World Bank, 2009). While some communities can integrate with Bantu neighbors in areas where they are living alongside each other, in many cases they require separate informal education. This is particularly true for forest-dwelling communities, indentured laborers, and seasonal migrants. These groups endure bullying and find it hard to learn alongside Bantu students due to land rights issues that predate their families’ contact. For instance, among many pygmy communities in contact with their neighbors, “Twa children must not approach Bantu children, only the other way around” (Marchais, G. et al., 2021, p. 54).

A donor’s research indicates that teachers view them as difficult to have seated for long periods, however this is likely a characterization of children’s natural tendency to need to engage in movement and pygmies’ having been less exposed to institutionalized settings. In addition, they are frequently engaged in seasonal activities that prevent them from being located near town centers, such as harvesting honey, insects, gathering roots, and hunting. Nevertheless, some pygmies have argued that implying their lifestyle to be an obstacle is simply an excuse for not offering services, in the sense that in many parts of the country these are now merely stereotypes (Marchais, G. et al., p. 49).

Adjunct solutions a donor has supported are a combination of school fees subsidies, clothing, and food-related incentives. The emergence of pygmy classroom assistants, youth reading corps, and radio instruction have also been a boon to pygmy students and serve as role models for communities. Indeed, with enrollment on the rise, the system cannot afford to lose experienced and new teachers in a context of widespread shortages (IBTCI/Niki-Niki, 2021, p. 25).

While donors and their partners also offer accelerated learning, this is only sometimes the preferred option for these communities since they demand flexible options that consider their seasonal schedule and voicelessness. Indeed, although pygmies consistently state their need to learn separately to avoid discrimination, their neighbors and the host government tend to falsely state that they need to be integrated. Donors realize that to explicitly find ways to support indigenous populations’ education, the status quo of these communities needs to be directly challenged. Overall, in working with various pygmy communities — Banzjoba, Bambenga, Batwa, and Bambuti — throughout the country, donors have found that listening intensively to their localized concerns and offering multiple streams has been a suitable approach to address their marginalization.

Our panel presentations will explore the reasons why these patterns have emerged over time, as well as ways to seek a balanced approach. In particular, there is interest in considering how strategic responses vary and converge with education interventions in other parts of Africa, such as those for pastoralists and nomadic populations.

Author

• Ezra Simon, United States Agency for International Development (USAID)