… for a long time, they [the Congolese] have been oppressed by Western governments and multinationals. … The time has come to break with the traditions and to stand firm against the IMF and the World Bank, because our country has not seen the end of the tunnel yet. On the contrary, the social inequality gap in the DRC is only widening. The great pressure put on the Congolese decision makers by Western actors is a mere consequence of selfishness and bad faith … However, the win-win agreement between the DRC and 372

Before the First World War, Belgium participated in a global wave of foreign direct investment. After the war, a shift towards the Belgian colony of the Congo was observed. With regard to these investments, it is commonly argued that higher (expected) profit rates were a strong incentive, although others propose that the colonial powers lost money on their colonial possessions. We measure ex post performance in terms of the time-weighted rate of return by making use of a new database of Congolese stocks and compare the Congolese data with a Belgian sample. Returns on Congolese stocks were much higher, at least until country risk became a reality.

This paper looks at the developmental consequences of aid flows on the Great Lakes region in Africa. Our main hypothesis is that political considerations and donor coordination problems still play an important role in directing aid and is much less dependent on objective criteria such as the need for aid or good governance. The region of the Great Lakes in Africa is a good illustration of the 'darlings' versus 'orphans' policy of official development assistance (ODA). Departing somewhat from the dominant pessimist stance on the effectiveness of aid in sub-Sahara Africa we will try to show that overall, the costs of exclusion of certain countries from aid are detrimental for human development. In order to avoid this inclusion/exclusion pattern of aid, a regional donor approach should overarch the dominant country by country donor policy. Cet article essaie d'analyser les cons�quences des flux d'aide sur le d�veloppement de trois pays dans la r�gion des Grands Lacs d'Afrique. Les consid�rations politiques et les probl�mes de coordination entre bailleurs de fonds m�nent � un traitement diff�renci� de la part de la communaut� internationale. Ce traitement diff�renci� est une illustration parfaite de la th�se sur l'exclusion/inclusion de certains pays de l'aide internationale. Les cons�quences de cette politique, loin d'�tre le produit d'une rationalit� d'aide bas� sur les besoins d'aide ou les m�rites de gouvernance des pays d�pendants, peuvent avoir des effets n�fastes en termes de d�veloppement.

No abstract

Officially announced on 24 April 1990, the political transition in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) would eventually culminate in presidential elections. By comparing the results of two household surveys, conducted in 1986 and 2004 respectively, we are able to trace the economic reflection of this process in the standard of living of the Kinois (the inhabitants of Congo's capital, Kinshasa). Although the exercise is fraught with methodological problems, it nevertheless generates some salient outcomes. First and foremost, the available evidence unanimously points to a slight increase in the general standard of living, thereby contradicting the official macro-data. Further, given an increase in inequality, it is well possible that the period of transition was experienced increasingly unequally by different population groups. Third, one of the most significant changes observed is that Kinshasa has become more closely connected with world (food) markets. Meanwhile, the level of education of the principal income earner remains one of the main predictors of the level of household consumption, even in a thoroughly informalized economy.