Understanding the Congolese Crisis in the Light of Globalization: An Ethical Challenge to Poverty and Underdevelopment

The enduring poverty and underdevelopment of Africa and, especially, the multifaceted crisis in the Great Lakes region resulting in the conflict that characterizes the Democratic Republic of Congo, originally triggered my interest for the following thesis. For more that four decades, programs worked out and the efforts undertaken to combat poverty have failed to improve the living conditions of the poor or to yield development in Sub-Saharan Africa's nations. Clearly, these conditions of poverty have been such a major factor in fueling conflicts and wars that Pope Paul VI prophetically saw development as the new name for peace. Paradoxically, in a country with such human and natural potentials like Congo, the situation of poverty has even worsened. Of course, the concepts of poverty and underdevelopment need to be seen in their socio-political context and in relation to the historical dynamics that have contributed to their meaning. My endeavor, thus, is to establish the possible root causes of the Congo crisis and to suggest theological insights in addressing the issues of poverty and underdevelopment. Either there is something fundamentally wrong with Africa, so that it should remain the paradigm of marginalization, or its condition is a man-made one in which case, it needs a profound structural transformation. Or perhaps both reasons coexist to produce the social consequences of chronic poverty and underdevelopment that most of Sub-Saharan Africa's countries are facing.