¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ

Join the GLAC Online Seminar Series, bringing together researchers working on governance, labour, development, and social change in Africa.

All seminars start at 12:30h Brussels time and are held online. A link will be sent after registration. For more information, contact glac@uantwerpen.be.​

Speaker: Bienvenu Matungulu

This seminar examines the implementation of Value Added Tax in the Democratic Republic of Congo since its introduction in 2012. Drawing on administrative data, revenue statistics, and stakeholder interviews, the study highlights major gaps between VAT’s expected and actual performance. It shows that VAT revenues remain concentrated among a small number of firms, refund delays affect liquidity, and collusion between taxpayers and tax agents contributes to revenue losses. The paper questions assumptions about VAT’s neutrality and efficiency in contexts marked by weak institutions and corruption.

​​

Speaker: Fergus Simpson

This paper examines how communities living around Garamba and Kahuzi-Biega National Parks perceive militarized conservation. It shows that armed eco-guards are viewed both as providers of security and as sources of coercion. Community attitudes vary according to people’s reliance on park resources and their exposure to armed-group violence. The study argues that militarized conservation generates a legitimacy trade-off: security benefits may strengthen support for conservation, while livelihood restrictions and enforcement-related grievances can undermine it.

​​

Speaker: Philippe Dunia Kabunga

This seminar explores how associational actors shape labour governance and informal social protection in artisanal and small-scale mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Based on comparative fieldwork in South Kivu, North Kivu, and Lualaba, the study examines miners’ associations, informal workers’ committees, friendship groups, and informal unions. It shows how these actors help miners confront social protection challenges, while also facing important organisational and political constraints. The paper contributes to debates on informal labour, decent work, moral economy, and bottom-up governance.

​​

Speaker: Joseph Mukulu

This paper investigates labour control and worker agency in the informal sand supply chain around Lake Kivu. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in Idjwi and Bukavu, it examines how dockworkers navigate hiring, discipline, mobility, and daily insecurity. The study shows that job referrals and dual screening practices shape access to work, while lake-based living conditions increase workers’ vulnerability. At the same time, workers exercise agency through everyday forms of resistance, including sabotage. The paper also highlights gendered barriers, including the exclusionary effects of dormitory-style labour regimes and motherhood penalties.

​​

Speaker: Justin Mutambeshya

This seminar examines the long-run effects of forced cotton cultivation in the Belgian Congo, introduced by the colonial administration in 1917. Combining historical maps, the 1955 Demographic Sample Survey, and contemporary DHS data, the study measures local exposure through ginning-mill density and the duration of cotton-company presence. It shows that areas more exposed to forced cotton cultivation had higher rates of polygamous marriage and adolescent fertility, and lower primary school enrollment by the mid-1950s. These disparities persisted across generations, shaping contemporary patterns of education, wealth, gender norms, and household bargaining power.

​​

Speaker: Peter Van der Windt

This seminar presents an evaluation of scalable digital tools for expanding mental health care among conflict-affected women in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The study first validates a voice biomarker that detects symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD from a short voice recording, comparing it with standardized surveys and clinician assessments. It then evaluates, through a randomized controlled trial, the effectiveness of the World Health Organization’s Problem Management Plus intervention delivered by phone, compared with in-person delivery and a waitlist control group. The paper contributes evidence on cost-effective mental health care in low-resource humanitarian settings.

​​

Speaker: Naomi Nabami

This seminar examines the history of women involved in informal trade across the Uganda–Congo border during the colonial period. Drawing on colonial archives and fieldwork, it explores how women navigated colonial regulations, mobility restrictions, gendered expectations, and social challenges while sustaining commercial activities central to local livelihoods. The paper argues that women’s economic agency challenged colonial attempts to regulate trade and revealed the limits and anxieties of colonial power. It contributes to debates on gender, informal economies, borderland connections, and colonial governance in the African Great Lakes region.

​​

Speaker: Berta Fernández Nuez

This seminar examines how people make and contest worlds through data in contexts shaped by long histories of development intervention. Drawing on multi-year ethnographic fieldwork in Kenya, the presentation follows how citizens, development practitioners, and civil society actors engage with data in everyday life. It shows that data is not only a technical tool, but also becomes entangled with memory, affect, creativity, aspiration, and lived experience. The paper highlights how data can generate multiple and sometimes competing understandings of development, community, and citizenship.

​​