Moving to Mbuji-Mayi

Diamonds — industrial and artisanal

MIBA (Société minière de Bakwanga), licensed comptoirs and négociants, the artisanal sector

The reason the city exists. MIBA was once the source of the great majority of the world's industrial diamonds, and although industrial production collapsed after the 1990s the artisanal economy around Bakwanga remains the dominant employer and the dominant subject of provincial politics.

Trade, transport & supply

Air freight operators, provincial wholesalers, the market economy around Bakwanga

Isolation makes moving goods a business rather than a cost line. Anything that arrives here has been flown or driven a very long way, and the traders who manage that are among the most commercially sophisticated people in the province.

Aid, health & humanitarian programmes

UN agencies, MSF, ICRC, faith-based health networks, provincial health zones

The Kasaï region has been a major humanitarian theatre since the 2016–17 crisis and remains a large programme area for water, nutrition and health. For most foreigners here this or the church is the employer.

Church institutions & education

The Catholic archdiocese, Protestant networks, mission schools and hospitals

In much of the DRC the church is a parallel state that runs schools and clinics; in Kasaï that is especially true. The missionary establishment visa is a mainstream long-stay route here, not an exotic one.

University & research

Université de Mbuji-Mayi, provincial teacher-training and medical institutes

The Université de Mbuji-Mayi was established in the 1990s with MIBA and Catholic Church sponsorship — a fair summary of how institutions get built in this city, and the main employer of specialist academic staff.

Water, power & municipal infrastructure

MIBA's hydro plant, Regideso, donor-funded rehabilitation programmes

A city of several million on a single small hydro plant and a chronic water problem is, from an engineering point of view, an enormous unmet need. A 2020 government project budgeted USD 26.2 million for water infrastructure rehabilitation, which gives the scale of both the problem and the response.

Landmark · Central Mbuji-Mayi

The original settlement name and the company town it became. MIBA's works, housing and power plant are the physical armature the rest of the city grew around, and their condition tells the story of the last thirty years more directly than any account of it.

Local tip: Look, do not photograph, and do not go near the concession or the diggings without authorisation. This is active, licensed, guarded mining ground and a foreigner wandering into it is a serious problem for everyone including you.

Culture · Mbuji-Mayi

Founded in the 1990s with MIBA and Catholic Church sponsorship — a private-public-ecclesial hybrid that is very Congolese and very Kasaïen. It is the intellectual centre of the province and the easiest place for a newcomer to meet people outside their own organisation.

Local tip: Ask about public lectures and about the medical and agronomy faculties. If you are here for any length of time, an association with the university is the single most useful thing you can build.

Nature · Through the city

Goat water, in Tshiluba — the river that named the city, cut the gravels the diamonds came out of, and still governs where people can build. It is a working river rather than a scenic one, and understanding it explains the city's shape.

Local tip: Ask a local before going down to the water anywhere. Riverbanks near diamond gravels are not neutral ground, and 'is this all right?' is a question worth asking every single time.

Food · Dibindi and the commercial communes

Cassava, maize, beans, dried fish, palm oil, and the imported goods that came in by air at prices that reflect it. The market is the clearest possible reading of what isolation does to a household budget.

Local tip: Go early with someone who knows the stalls. Prices for a foreigner and prices for a neighbour are different prices, and the gap closes fastest through a regular relationship with two or three sellers.

Neighborhood · Across the city

Mbuji-Mayi is administratively five communes, and the differences between them — commercial, administrative, residential, peripheral — matter more than the map suggests in a city with almost no paved road and very little public infrastructure.

Local tip: Get a colleague to walk you through the communes in your first week and explain what happens where. There is no published guide to this city worth the name; local knowledge is the only guide there is.

Nightlife · Across the communes

Grilled meat, warm crates cooled by whatever generator is running, and Congolese music — with a strong Kasaïen accent, because this province has produced a remarkable amount of the country's music.

Local tip: Go with colleagues rather than alone, arrange your ride home before you settle in, and carry small clean notes. Evenings here are earlier and quieter than Kinshasa's, which most people find is an improvement.