DR Congo and Australia Compared

Continent: Oceania

Language: English is the official language

Capital City: Canberra

Largest City: Sydney

Population: 25 656 100 (2019 estimate, 53rd in the world)

Life Expectancy: 82.4 years

Neighboring Countries: None (Island)

Religions: 30.1% No Religion, 22.6% Roman Catholic, 16.3% Other Christian, 13.3% Anglican, 17.7% other

Literacy Rate: 99% across the population

DEMOGRAPHICS OF THE COUNTRIES

Comparing Environmental Indicators and Political Stability Indicators

Continent: Africa

Language: French is the official language, though Lingala, Kikongo and Swahili are also spoken.

Capital City: Kinshasa

Largest City: Kinshasa

Population: 91 931 000 (2019 estimate, 16th in the world)

Life Expectancy: 58.10 years

Neighboring Countries: Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, Angola, Tanzania, Zambia, Central African Republic, Burundi

Religions: Roman Catholic 50%, Protestant 20%, Kimbanguist 10%, Muslim 10%, all others 10%

Literacy Rate: 77% across the population

Political Summary

Since 1960, when they declared independence from Belgium, Congo (Zaire from 1971-1997) has had 5 heads of state - Joseph Kasu-Vabu (1960-1965), a driving force behind the Congolese independence movement, Dictator Mobutu Sese Soku (1965-1997), a military dictator known as one of the world’s most detested leaders, Laurent-Desire Kabila (1997-2001), a Marxist leader so beloved he was assassinated in office, Joseph Kabila (2001-2019), a leader known for deliberately pushing out elections to keep him in power, and Félix Tshisekedi (2019-), who was accused of rigging the December 2018 elections. Every single president has faced controversy, most notably military dictator Mobutu and recent president Joseph Kabila. Since 1960, using the same timeline as Congo, Australia have had 16 prime ministers; Robert Menzies, Harold Holt, John McEwen, John Gorton, William McMahon, Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison. Though Australia appears to be less stable due to having 3x more prime ministers/presidents, the dictatorship of Congo for 32 years plus supposed rigging of elections shows something that Australia has never been involved with.

There has been no real ruling political party in Congo; though the early leaders (1960-1997) were right-wing and perhaps far-right during the Mobutu era, in recent times the head of state has been centre-left, with democratic socialism implemented throughout DR Congo. In Australia, conservative governments (The Liberal-National Party) have typically been the leading party, though the Labor Party, a progressive party that preaches democratic socialism, is still a major party. For much of DR Congo/Zaire’s history, there was only one ruling party, which led to wide criticism and international threats against Mobutu Sese Soku towards the end of his tenure.

Though Congo, with its resources such as gold, diamond and copper, could be a gold mine for its broader African region, large scale human abuses by government and armed forces, as well as serious impunity throughout the country (especially for the ruling elite) and the struggle for control of these resources, has led to one of the world’s poorest populations, with over 13m Congolese people in need of necessary assistance.

Kabila was a big part of this, delaying elections and suppressing different political opinions, leading to backlash from the populace and opposition supporters jailed and murdered throughout his tenure. Because of this, journalists also face jail time for their reporting, with opposition journalists killed also. Across 18 years, Kabila took part in just two democratic elections.

GRAPH: Number of Presidents/Prime Ministers since 1960 (homemade)

D.R. Congo is the 5th least politically stable nation in the world, and the 3rd least stable in Africa behind only Somalia and South Sudan, according to the Fragile States Index published by political think tank Fund For Peace in 2019. This ranking tanks into account multiple factors that come to a general indicator of how vulnerable a state is to collapse, in the areas of Cohesion Indicators, Economic Indicators, Political Indicators and Social Indicators. Political fighting and hassling over natural resources help bring down Congo’s ranking, as well as the high number of refugees from the country, the group grievance across the country and also the poor human rights numbers. On the contrary, Australia is the 5th MOST politically stable country in the world, doing best in the areas of state legitimacy, external intervention and public services, as well in other sub areas such as the economy and all social indicators. Australia and the Congo are literally on two completely different sides of the Fragile States Index, and the following data explains that

for itself.

Fragile

States

Index

Voter fraud is a widespread issue all across DR Congo, with the most blatant case being in the 2018 general election.

Martin Fayulu, the candidate for the Engagement for Citizenship and Development Party, was reported to have won 59.4% of the vote according to Financial Time vote analysis, with surprise winner Felix Tshisekedi recording just 19% of the vote across the analysis. However, it was Tshisekedi who won the presidency on the back of… nothing at all, if Fayulu, who challenged the ruling in court, was to be believed. Fayulu claimed he had 3x more votes than Tshisekedi, who, it is worth noting, was backed up by the Roman Catholic Church, who ran 40 000 election monitors across the Congo and too, claimed, that Fayulu won the election by a large margin over Tshisekedi. Kinshasa, the capital of DR Congo, also mysteriously had widespread significant drops in internet service over the course of the election, leading to the pro-Fayulu news services dropping out, as well as all information on every candidate, which caused many to think that the internet drops were a deliberate course of action against Martin Fayulu. However in the end, the country’s Constitutional Court, which has had its own impartiality questioned for its anti-Fayulu bias, ruled against Fayulu in January 2019, with Tshisekedi becoming the leader of DR Congo.

Election

Bribery

The mistreatment of elections in DR Congo is one of the country’s rampant issues; for years, anti-government figures have been killed across the nation, with only four elections being held across the country since independence from Belgium in 1960 (and never has a transfer of power occurred on election day; former leader Joseph Kabila stood down before the 2018 elections). Even to this day, many are killed at the rallies of opposing candidates, and many more are believed to be killed that are not noted. In fact, ForeignPolicy.com even went to call the recent election an “empty gesture”, saying, “It is entirely possible that the recent elections were intended as an empty gesture as well—a “good enough” exercise to satisfy the international community, quiet the demands of civil society, and shore up elites’ credibility with investors, all without ever genuinely allowing citizens a say in who should hold the levers of state power.” It goes without saying that the Democratic part of ‘Democratic Republic of the Congo’ is merely ironic. This is virtually the opposite of Australia’s elections; in Australia, election fraud tends to be when 'how to vote' cards show to vote for one party in particular, not when millions of votes are miscounted and a completely different winner is named. Only once has an electoral result ever been challenged for fraud; in 1993, Liberal MP Alasdair Webster challenged the result of the NSW electorate of Macquarie, to no avail. Every other major electoral challenge has involved the validity of a candidate, i.e. that they were a dual-citizen. Australia has one of the world’s most transparent election systems, with barely any questions being raised over the role of prime minister. Thus, Australia is literally worlds away from Congo in terms of the validity of elections. To this day, never has the role of prime minister been challenged in court.

GRAPH: President votes (leaked) in DR Congo, 2018. Source: Financial Times

d) DR Congo’s history has been a challenging one. For centuries from around 1500-1850, many Congolese people were sent to sugar plantations in the United States, Brazil and the Caribbean as slaves, decimating the population, with around 15000 people shipped annually to the US from 1780. In 1869, however, after Welsh discovery of the Congo Basin, Leopold II, King of Belgium, tired of Belgium’s lack of involvement in the international world, made it his mission to acquire Congo as his own state, with the Congo Free State (including the entirety of the country) coming into existence in 1869. Many people were killed across the Congo in order to acquire land and resources (Ivory and Rubber), with forced labour implemented on the native people, with mutilations and death given to those who did not meet their weekly rubber quota. This period is considered one of the darkest chapters in the history of colonisation. In 1908, however, the year before his death, Leopold II relinquished his ownership of the Free State of Congo to the Belgian government, which would lead to 52 years of the land being known as the Belgian Congo. Belgian commercial interests were the law of the land, and for years the Congolese people toiled away, until a political uprising in the 1950’s led to calls of independence, with major figures such as Patrice Lumumba, Cyrille Adoula and Joseph Ilio becoming heroes to the people of Congo who had become nothing more than numbers in the hunt for Belgian profits. However the movement led to many deaths, but in 1960 Belgium finally relinquished control of the Congo to its people. This, however, would lead to the Congo Crisis of 1960-65, with the transfer of power from regional leaders to a central government not going as planned. No skilled bureaucrats of note were still in the country, due to the Belgians departing from the Congo permanently, and with nobody in the nation knowing how to manage a country, Colonel Joseph Mubutu, Chief of the Congolese Army, seized the opportunity to become a dominant force in the state. He called for the execution of Patrice Lumumba in 1961, and led the armed forces until 1965 when he seized control of the country, beginning a period of over 3 decades of widespread violence and human rights violations, and beginning the period of Congolese governments overlooking human rights abuses.

Congo's

Colonial

History

Australia was colonised, of course, as a land for convicts, not necessarily for resources (though people did come to Australia for the Gold Rush). However, everything mentioned about Congo is pretty much foreign to Australia, a country NOT known for its widespread human rights abuses against Indigenous people (not to say Australia has done nothing wrong of course), for being ruled as the private entity of a king, for its independence WARS, or for anything like what happened in Congo. Though there are many Indigenous hardships sadly still faced in society today, the dictatorship of the Congo, the human rights abuses and the executions of civilians up until 1960 (and even to present day) are thankfully, not a feature of Australian life. Not in centuries have figures of change amongst the Indigenous people been executed, and there have never been issues about the skill of bureaucrats in the country.

Urbanisation

Urbanisation is crucial in DR Congo, with 42% of the population living in urban cities, the third biggest total in Sub-Saharan Africa after South Africa and Nigeria. The capital of DR Congo, Kinshasa, located in the country’s Western District with an urban population of over 80%, is predicted to become the largest city in Africa by 2030. It’s urban population has grown by 5.1% a year since 1981, which would lead it to go to an expected 24m people by 2030 (Currently on 12m). This is a blessing and a curse; a blessing in that it allows for better jobs, closer education and shorter distances to travel. A curse in that urbanisation saps up the farming land of the DR Congo, increases demand for the essential services that help people live (in a country where these services, such as education and health services, are already being rushed to the point where they are among the world’s worst), while the overall design of the country, in particular with the Congo Basin, make it difficult to properly urbanise the country.

On top of this, urbanisation happens so poorly in DR Congo because of the poor connectivity between regions; outside of Kinshasa and Lubumbashi (mining capital of the country), cities lack the reliable transportation and basic services to allow job centres to be created. Because of this, other than the two aforementioned cities, most of DR Congo is mired in poverty, with somebody from a small town wanting success needing to go to Kinshasa or overseas to have any chance of succeed in their area, which unfortunately leads to less skilled jobs in the rural areas (though understandably so) and less high-quality workers across the country in general.

Top Right: Lubumbashi City in DR Congo.

Due to the poor facilities in Kinshasa even compared to other major African cities, most Congolese university students go to Europe to study (Brussels is the main city) and choose to stay there for better pay and living standards, leading to less skilled workers in many areas such as business, banking and law, which in turn creates worse off industries, thus continuing the cycle of poor working in the Congo. In summary, the Congolese environment (in particular the Congo Basin) prevents urbanisation from continuing beyond a handful of big cities. The rest of the cities have worse basic systems, worse education systems and much lower pay; many of these people amount to little more than farmers, and those who do succeed and are successful at school almost always leave their rural towns for the big smoke of Kinshasa (which has lead to an urban density of 20 000 people per square km in Kinshasa, one of the world’s largest totals), leading to one gigantic city and a slow spread of urbanisation elsewhere. This means basic services stay worse off in these areas, helping continue the cycle of poverty.

In Australia (focusing on Sydney and Melbourne, the two most populated cities in the country), urbanisation is more straightforward. There is no natural wonder like the Basin (1.3m square miles) to build around, virtually all towns are connected to great basic services compared to DR Congo (hospitals/flying doctors, electricity, internet, etc.) and in mostly flat land (excluding mountains, such as Sydney’s Blue Mountains), building out is easier. In Melbourne, urbanisation has spread rapidly for many years now, allowing people to come into the big smoke; whereas in 1954 suburbs such as Essendon (12km from CBD), Sunshine (12km from CBD), Vermont South (20km from CBD) and Moorabbin (15km from CBD) represented the fringes of suburban Melbourne, as of 2020 the fringes of Melbourne now include suburbs such as Rockbank and Clyde, 29km west and 48km south-east of the CBD, respectively. The point is, because Melbourne is a relatively flat city, urbanisation is easier in Kinshasa, and can be done without damaging the environment (though urbanisation in DR Congo is typically done with the environment in mind) and thus cities can be brought further out to allow for less crowded areas, and thus better transport in and out of the CBD. Despite a population over 2 times bigger, Kinshasa has 40 times more people per square kilometer (Melbourne: 500 people/square km) and is also smaller (Kinshasa urban area: 9965 square kms, Melbourne: 9993 square kms) with less suburbs like in Melbourne. This shows why Melbourne is so much higher in terms of wellbeing, as it is less crowded, spreads further out with better public transport to and from the CBD (Kinshasa has no public transport; being able to drive to work is vital, leading to higher pollution levels), and has more suburbs (around 395). On top of this, however, rural Victoria is connected easier to Melbourne than it is from Kinshasa to rural DR Congo; with public transport, V-Line services all across the state, airports, internet connectivity all across the state, as well as many other towns and outer suburbs that double as economic hubs for jobs (Geelong, Ballarat, Sunshine, Dandenong, Werribee, Bendigo, Frankston, etc.), one in Victoria does not have to be right in Melbourne to be successful; in DR Congo, the best and brightest virtually have to go to Kinshasa to make a name for themselves, and without public transport, they’re cramped all together in flats and houses in places of terrible living standards.

What goes in Melbourne is the same in Sydney; based around the Sydney Harbour on the Eastern side of New South Wales, Sydney is built towards the west. It too, like DR Congo, has an environmental issue of its own, the Blue Mountains, that prevents urbanisation past Penrith, however one can go through there by train (obviously easier through mountains then through a basin). Sydney has built up over the years into the northwestern and southwestern directions, with great public transport in these areas, allowing for easier transportation into the CBD or into economic hubs such as Liverpool, Parramatta, Blacktown or Penrith. Kinshasa has no public transport, which is arguably it’s achilles heel regarding the tremendously large (and unsafe) levels of urban density in the city; without public transport to smaller economic hubs (like the larger suburbs that double as hubs in Melbourne and Sydney), everybody will have to work and live in Kinshasa, polluting the air and making living there too busy. Trains in Kinshasa would stress this problem tremendously and allow for further movement out.

GRAPH: Urban Growth in D.R. Congo (source: World Bank)

GRAPH: Kinshasa Urban Growth 1888-2005

GRAPHS: The growing urban sprawl in both Melbourne and Sydney

Protection

of

Wildlife

In DR Congo, conservation of animals is one of the country’s biggest environmental issues. The country’s biggest issue is that of ‘bushmeat’, an issue that is also widespread in neighboring Congo (and all together across the Congo Basin). Bushmeat hunters, who are emptying Africa’s forests at meteoric rates, do not have the resources and/or money to buy the meat that is eaten in Western civilisation, so they go to forests and shoot whatever they can, to be able to eat it themselves or sell it for money; elephants, monkeys, chimpanzees, antelopes, crocodiles, pythons and river hogs are among the unusual animals killed every minute for their meat. Hunters stay in the forest (which spreads across 6 countries; Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, DR Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon) with their rifles for days and even weeks at a time, getting more than enough meat to bring home. Unfortunately, this pursuit of income leads to “animals from many species disappearing around villages” according to WWF directors, with endangered species such as the pangolins and bonobo apes still killed anyways because of a lack of action of the battle front to stop these precious animals from being killed for their meat. Even though the WWF knows that endangered animals are regularly killed in the Congo Basin for local markets, they can’t do anything because if the people were stopped from getting an income in the forests, then things would still be shot, and it wouldn’t be the animals. Quite frankly, the idea of an uprising and the deaths of WWF volunteers makes it far too risky to stop the mass killing of animals throughout the Congo Basin; sadly, in this manner, it seems the issue of animal endangerment in the Congo Basin will never change until there is major economic reform to allow farm animals to be eaten instead (a whole cultural issue in itself). Until something happens, however, these practices are going to ruin the biodiversity of the African environment.

In Australia, bushmeat in it’s Central African form is non-existent, though in Bush tucker, the Aboriginal people have something equivalent. In both cultures, bush tucker and bushmeat involve taking something from the bush; in Africa, however, it is often endangered animals, while in Australia, the bush tucker sector largely consists of flora and fauna, such as quandong and finger lime, or animals insects such as Witchetty grubs or goanna. Emu, kangaroo and crocodile are also eaten, but the difference is that these animals are not wild animals; these animals can be kept on farms and, thus, are farmed. The animals killed in Africa, on the other hand, are not kept on farms and are not bred in any way to be killed; they’re just killed. Furthermore, bushmeat in Africa involves, sadly, many endangered animals, which has led to some species dying out across the continent due to the lack of animal conservation, as well as the fact that the biggest of these animals, the ones that breed, are always the first to be shot. In Australia, endangered animals are excluded from bush tucker, with heavy fines against the shooting of these animals for non-indigenous people, while those in Indigenous communities often face punishment from their community for these crimes, showing culture differences between the Congolese and Indigenous peoples. It seems that Congolese people have been brought up to know “if it’s there for the taking, grab it” (as reaffirmed by a man from this Reuters article on bushmeat), while in Australian Indigenous communities, animals that need to be protected are left to be safe. Sadly, it seems that this cultural issue is the common difference as to why conserving wildlife is so different between these two cultures, as well as the issue of selling the food for money (though money is not used as regularly in Indigenous communities compared to in DR Congo), which is a whole different story in itself.

Graph describing bushmeat preferences in D.R. Congo in 2015

Deforestation remains one of the biggest issues in the DR Congo today when talking about the environment of the country. According to this link, from 1990 to 2015, DR Congo from the United Nations on the issue, the rate of deforestation in the DRC has stayed steady at 0.2% a year; that is 1200 square miles a year, which for comparison, is the size of the US State of Delaware (keep in mind Delaware is the 2nd smallest state after Rhode Island). These are massive numbers, and the fact that they’ve stayed constant for so long would appear to be a good sign. However, it is believed part of the reason why the numbers have remained constant is due to the fact that roads in the country have actually gotten worse over the years in the DRC, making access to rural areas worse, while more government regulations in the rural areas have led many to believe that investment from big business is moving away from the DRC, which was a free-market, anti-capitalist paradise in the days of dictator Mobutu as soon as 20 years ago. From 2015-2019 the rate of tree-felling in the DRC has doubled as well. Yet the saddest part of the deforestation in the DRC is that it is one of Africa's most flora rich countries, with over 10 000 types of plants, 1000 species of bird, 280 species of reptile, 400 species of mammal, and 600 species of timber. The deforestation and illegal logging in the country, for industries such as mining and agriculture, has led to (and is leading to) the death of much of the country’s biodiversity, including the death of 60% of the DRC's forest elephant population due to the loss of their shelters. This is destroying the biodiversity of the Congo Basin Forest, of which 60% lies in the boundaries of the DRC, and may lead to the eventual death of the forest, one of the main attractions (if not the main attraction) of the DRC.

Deforestation

GRAPH: Forest loss in countries of the Congo Basin

In saying that, while Australia does not get rid of a Delaware worth of land every year, for deforestation, they are not perfect in terms of deforestation. From a 2011 Federal Government report, 13% of the vegetation that was on the land at the time of settlement is gone, with agriculture being the primary reason why vegetation is cleared, though bushfires (and bushfire land clearing) also play a factor. Land clearing also contributes to 12% of Australia’s climate emissions, leading to a completely different story in that of climate change, showing that land clearing does not contribute much good past its use in the agricultural industry. However, all states and territories except for ACT, TAS and NT have regulations on land clearing, as well as federal jurisdiction on land clearing from the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, so Australia does not have an unregulated market like the DRC (worth noting is how the DRC’s market is so unregulated, but still more regulated than most of the other countries that share the Congo Basin, meaning big industries have begun leaving the DRC for other African countries, which is not a good look for the other countries involved.)

GRAPH: Australia’s forest graph (note the disparity between native and commercial forests)

Pollution

Pollution in the DR Congo is one of the nation’s largest problems, one that can’t be fixed with the snap of a finger, but one that could be stopped over time if some drastic steps are taken. An Al Jazeera news report on the issue pictured what steps ARE being taken; banning plastic bags and bottles, and placing regulations on factories. What is not being done is stopping the illegal dumping of Kinshasa’s waste in tributaries of the Congo River. Effective government work to help clear the rivers is minimal, making it visible from all houses in the region; government plans to set up a city dump near certain townships didn’t work, according to the Al Jazeera report, as more rubbish kept flowing through. In January 2018, Catherine Soi noted that there were 45 deaths from flooding of the Congo River in Kinshasa, yet there is still no plan in effect to get rubbish out of the river and into dumps. Citizens have noted displeasure with the government collection of rubbish (compared to Australia, where there are weekly bin pickups), and the lack of cheap alternatives to plastic for business has helped put many businesses bankrupt, and some teetering on the edge of financial disaster, due to how quick the changeover period was in 2017 from allowing plastic to outlawing it (just a matter of months). Sadly, however, no matter how many changes are made, it seems people will still be careless; the tea stall owner in Kinshasa in the Al Jazeera river noted (translated from French) that those he paid to pick up his rubbish would trash it in the Congo River. Sadly, pollution of the waterways seems to be an issue of culture also. Air pollution in Kinshasa is so poor (see: year graph on Plume Labs site here) that even when the air quality is good in Kinshasa, it is still poor amongst the world. In November-Early January, the air pollution was marked as ‘dire’ or ‘extreme’ to the point where the site published recommendations not to go outside. The majority of the country’s pollution comes from the use of the nation’s rich natural goods such as rubber, uranium, cobalt, diamond, gold and coltan (fun fact: the uranium used to bomb Hiroshima in 1945 came from a mine in the south-eastern corner of the country.

Yet pollution in Kinshasa is exceptionally high, and this is due to some of the many issues that have plagued other African megacities, such as Lagos in Nigeria; Mathew Evans, Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry at the university of York notes in a write-up for The Conversation some of the big issues in cities like Kinshasa, including “the burning of rubbish, cooking indoors with inefficient solid fuel stoves, millions of small diesel electricity generators, cars which have had the catalytic converters removed and petrochemical plants, all pushing pollutants into the air over the cities”. While many Western cities, including Melbourne, Sydney, London, New York City, Los Angeles, etc. have their own pollution levels, their average salaries all mean they can (typically) afford more renewable options; energy effective stoves, green cars (see: Teslas), and compost, while helping minimise pollution with education throughout schools also helps the next generation learn about why green energy is so important. In Kinshasa, the average wage is CDF 37,052,320 (36,794.14 AUD); there are private schools with a higher cost than that in Australia. With such low salaries, people can’t buy energy effective stoves, green cars, and put compost systems in their homes; they would rather spend their money on the essentials, and understandably so, but it seems that unless wages were to rise by an insurmountable amount in the future, sadly it may be hard for the way of life that involves pollution to change in the Congo.

Australia has its own pollution issues; however, we have much greener energy and better rubbish tactics than in the DRC, so our issues are not nearly as big as in the Congo. Most of Australia’s pollution comes from coal-fired power stations, with a reported ‘3000 deaths from exposure to air pollution a year’ according to Environmental Justice Australia. This area is regulated, but not regulated enough by the government, given how essential coal is, thus regions of Australia such as the Hunter Valley and the Latrobe Valley, with significant numbers of coal-fired stations, have faced significant pollution issues. Residents of these regions have recorded health problems, such as asthma and heart conditions, from exposure to these stations, painting a dark picture of the stations. PlumeLabs reporting from the last year shows a unique look at Melbourne’s air quality; often average in comparison to the rest of the world, for times in January at the peak of the bushfire crisis the air situation outside was dire, with the advice to simply, not go outside during these days. Though Australia has a lot of cars that also contribute to air pollution, there is a rise in electric cars in the country; 0.2% of all new cars sold is not a great deal, but it is progress, and as more electric cars are pumped onto the market, the prices should get cheaper to allow more ‘average joes’ to buy them, bringing emission levels down; the same could be said for other green technology, while composting is making a rise in Australian households due to its simplicity and interactivity, with children often undertaking the composting role, allowing for them to understand the environmental impact behind it.

Unfortunately in the Congo, environmental education is an afterthought, and outside of basic cleaning that one learns at home, it seems that children are not taught of green energy and the positive impact it can have on society. Australia is a country rich in natural goods too; copper, iron ore, gold, diamond, uranium, silica, and the like, and it too has major issues from digging up these ores from the ground, like the Congo. The reality is that this industry can’t be stopped overnight in Australia, as it supplies so much of our nation’s money, yet steps can be taken to phase the industry out, likewise in the Congo. It is the difference in wages, and thus the difference in ‘green’ items, that is the big difference when it comes to pollution. And it would take a lot of work for the Congo to be ‘average’ in terms of pollution like Australia.

PHOTO: Still shot from an Al Jazeera report on plastic pollution in Kinshasa.

GRAPH: Australia's emissions per quarter

a) Encourage (and supply) more public transport throughout DRC (particularly buses) to allow for easier, quicker travel and less pollution. Subsidise this public transport as much as possible.

Congo is noted as having questionable at best public transport systems. A country in civil unrest, the best way to travel is by air, which says a lot considering that from 2000-2008 over 300 fatalities were recorded from plane crashes in the Congo. Planes are frequently overloaded by cargo and passengers, and that is the best way to travel.

Many of the Congolese roads are unsafe for car travel, meaning one must be able to drive a truck to go across the country or even through some parts of Kinshasa. And public transport? Overcrowded vans that are a health and safety hazard. Taxis are known for being untrustworthy, and the state of roads and road rage is so poor that it is recommended not to step in to help somebody injured on the road. It is likely one would make the situation worse.

So what could be done to help curb this problem? Public transport, namely buses and trains.

Buses are easy to implement in a city; get a few buses, give them routes, get drivers to drive the buses, and implement a schedule. The hard part is to build the buses, keep them safe from vandalism and attacks, and make sure they aren’t overcrowded. What could be done to help this?

In the nearby country of Nigeria, Lagos, another African megacity, is home to one of Africa’s best bus systems; in 2002, they implemented the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA) to strengthen their bus system and allow more people to use their buses. The buses run in priority lanes that allow them to go faster than cars across certain routes. Lagos has one of the world’s most effective public transport systems now with a lack of vandalism across the network; thus, if a body from Lagos was sent in to independently help the Kinshasan local government fix their bus systems and allow them to be a desirable alternative to cars, the demand could potentially be massive, and if the Congolese government was to consider using tax cuts to help subsidise the costs of the bus fares to begin, the system would get great fanfare. Thus, the best way to help get cars off the road in the DR Congo would be to allow for buses; build new buses using DR Congo workforce and resources, allocate a certain number of routes and services (start off small with 2-3 routes to begin with then branch out more), and use Lagos transport experts to help design the finer points (i.e. how many services per hour? Night services? Etc. based off of their model) to help build a burgeoning public transport system for one of Africa’s biggest cities. The implementation of bus lanes on major roads, in particular, would help drivers understand that buses would go noticeably faster than cars on congested roads; if so, for non-essential travel (i.e. to meet friends) or for schooling, buses could become a way of life.

From an environmental point of view, improved bus services in the megacity of Kinshasa would mean less pollution from cars on the streets of Kinshasa, a city known for having some of the world’s worst pollution. It would mean more people using green energy, and could thus lead a potential drive away from cars and towards more buses and public transport.

From a social point of view, improved bus services in the megacity of Kinshasa would mean quicker trips to get social gatherings, school, shopping malls or other aspects of day-to-day life. It would mean not having to wait in congested roads for up to hours on end behind multitudes of other cars, and it would mean being a couple of steps closer to not breathing in heavy pollution on the city’s main roads.

From an economic point of view, more bus services would cost money: more money to build the buses, more money to (if my idea is implemented) get Lagos transport experts across to help Kinshasa’s bus system, and more money for more bus SERVICES. But if it could show Kinshasa as a city at the forefront of modern bus technology in Africa, and as a city with the best intentions of it’s people and its environment in mind, it would be worth it (albeit not if it is crippling the city’s finances, which is unlikely for a bus service).

This strategy of improvement, the Lagos-style bus system improvement, is one that aims to improve the environmental indicator that I have studied throughout this task, but also improves the social, economic (potentially, if the services are subsidised to start) and practical lives of those living in Kinshasa, a city which could become the blueprint to follow amongst African megacities regarding bus systems.

Photo from Financing Sustainable Cities - Example of buses running a bus line concurrent to cars in Lagos, Nigeria.

Photo from The Guardian - Example of a traffic jam helped by “traffic robots” in Kinshasa (note: the robots did not address the issue).

b) Make mini economic hubs throughout Kinshasa 15-20km from the city centre and further; develop new buildings, new facilities for businesses, essentially make new towns, but make new hubs near Kinshasa that allow access to the Kinshasa city centre with green travel, while also allowing less congested living, closer businesses for work, and new industries to take place.

This method of urbanisation, designed to tackle the biggest issue in Kinshasa - so many people so tight together, is based off of the urbanisation methods that have taken place in the suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney in Australia, and would immediately become a first amongst African countries, bringing Kinshasa to the forefront of urbanisation in the continent.

In Melbourne and Sydney, there are a few particular suburbs that were designed as ‘economic hubs’ since the millennium; suburbs where things happen. That sounds a broad term, but these are places with high-quality transport running through them (public transport, particularly trains and buses, as well as cars), high amounts of apartment homes at appropriate sizes, shopping malls and shopping strips, places of business (maybe multitudes of offices? Or in some cases, a particular factory or industry services much of the region’s workers), and entertainment industries (high quality sporting teams and venues, cinemas, and the like). The main quality of these places is that while they are not THE centre of Melbourne, or Sydney, and are always further out than most would like, they do provide new opportunities for living and working for those who want to live in the cheaper, newer houses on the outside of Melbourne or Sydney’s urban sprawl. These places are economic hubs.

In Melbourne, these may include suburbs such as Sunshine (industrial suburb 12km northwest of Melbourne CBD with a large shopping hub north of the railway strip, marked in 2013 as "the key growth centre in Melbourne's west"), Dandenong (the centre of many industrial suburbs, 31km southeast of the Melbourne CBD with manufacturing still based there today, home of one of the city’s busiest train stations, as well as a TAFE, shopping centres and regional court), Werribee (27km southwest of Melbourne, a central town due to being halfway between Melbourne and Geelong; home to various shopping centres, housing estates, a university and the Werribee Estate/Zoo) and Frankston (40km southeast of Melbourne, known as the gateway of sorts to the Mornington Peninsula. Built up due to the cheapness of houses for veterans after WWII, has become a regional centre of education, a regional economic hub, the changeover point for the train line to Stony Point and the home of the Peninsula’s largest shopping centre). While all still in the boundaries of the city of Melbourne, which is of course bigger than Kinshasa, these places serve as hubs to get to regional areas (from Werribee and Sunshine one can go to Ballarat, Ararat and other towns in the Western District with ease by bus, coach, car or plane, Frankston leads to the peninsula while Dandenong leads to the Peninsula, Yarra Valley and the Dandenongs), while all being relatively close to the city of Melbourne.

This is not something that has only been done in Melbourne; in Sydney, economic hubs in the western part of the city have grown and provided hubs for manufacturing and office work in the area. These places include Liverpool (27km southwest of Sydney CBD, home to one of Australia’s biggest housing commission estates built after the war, as well as a burgeoning manufacturing industry and shopping hub), Penrith (50km west of Sydney, just on the doorstep of the Blue Mountains and one of only four acknowledged cities inside the Sydney Metropolitan region) and Parramatta (24km west of Sydney, namesake for the Parramatta River, home to a major transport hub and commercial centre), plus many more, that provide transport hubs between regional NSW and the centre of Sydney, as well as commercial/manufacturing industries that employ thousands and shopping hubs, making it a stop over point and a significant place of growth in the future.

If Kinshasa was to implement these ideas to make a few of their own economic hubs to keep people moving away from the city centre, the biggest obstacles would be finding land and transport. Land because, first of all, you need land to build factories that will employ people and make this a hub of employment, land to make the shops to make it a commercial hub, and other attractions to make it a “place to be” (stadiums are a good example of this; Parramatta and Penrith mentioned above house their own NRL teams in state-of-the-art stadia). You then need transport; is this place able to take me to the city centre of Kinshasa? With this in mind, it is ideal that buses, if built from suggestion A above, provide rapid services to and from Kinshasa City to these new hubs, allowing easy traffic for those who work in the city, but also for those who would be employed in the new hubs while potentially staying in Kinshasa City. Land is the big issue, then transport, but both are needed to create these hubs.

One must also be careful of not interfering too much with the wildlife, environment and ecosystems in place already in the outskirts of the city, so finding land would be tough. Nonetheless, DRC officials are known for being lax on the issues of getting rid of land and animals, so one can be sure that if there was a way to make economic hubs in Kinshasa, they would consider it.

Bringing in representatives from Australia who are experts on urbanisation, like with the Lagos experts in transport, would also certainly help their efforts and help them build effective hubs. These people could help logistically design the cities, pick out land, help design roads and assist with the servicing of transport routes, helping with the logistical design of these little cities.

From there, encouraging big multinational businesses to move into the city to add jobs and boost growth, likely with money, would also prove fruitful, helping give the cities a purpose and give people a reason to work there. Building cheaper, high-level apartments in these hubs would add congestion to their local areas, which could likely be filled with public transport (especially buses). It would then, also, take away congestion from the Kinshasa CBD into the outskirts of the city 30-50km away, while still providing quick travel back to Kinshasa.

This would improve the Congo environmentally by taking pollution out of the city centre and replacing it with green energy (public transport) in the outskirts of the city. Socially, this brings more social hubs to Kinshasa, more ‘destinations’; commercial hubs, shops, and the like, bringing new places for people to go to, and new regional centres, allowing those from outside Kinshasa to come in and shop and eat at these “regional hubs”. Economically, a burgeoning industry in these cities would mean more jobs, which would mean more money generated in the income by people working in these hubs, which would mean higher demand in these areas. Location also helps the economic numbers; as a regional hub, these areas would be expected to support people from further parts of the Congo, which would help drive even more money (potentially) into the local economies. If these little cities/hubs were created well, it would provide a big boost for the economy, as well as the idea of choice, meaning that one does not explicitly have to be IN Kinshasa City to make it, which seems to be what life is like in the DR Congo these days.

This strategy of improvement is aimed at improving the environmental indicator that I have studied throughout this task while also improving the DR Congo (namely Kinshasa) socially, economically and environmentally with an idea that could be implemented in other, smaller cities not just in the Congo but across much of Africa. Though this is the second step after the first suggestion of public transport, creating one helps the other, and cooperating between the two is necessary for success.

PHOTO: Passengers board a train at Parramatta Station in Parramatta, in the western suburbs of Sydney. Source: The Daily Telegraph

Photos on first part of indicator b

Improvements: Top is Dandenong

Market.

Bottom is Westfield

Penrith.