What is the goal here?

Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning.

Why?

Education enables upward socioeconomic mobility and is a key to escaping poverty. Education helps reduce inequalities and reach gender equality and is crucial to fostering tolerance and more peaceful societies. 

Over the past decade, major progress has been made towards increasing access to education and school enrolment rates at all levels, particularly for girls. Nevertheless, about 258 million children and youth were still out of school.

Barriers to achieving Quality Education in the DRC 

The priority given to quality education for children and young people by the government in the DRC can be gleaned from the fact that in the 2013 DRC national budget, education was allocated just 13 per cent of the budget. 

Added to low prioritisation, access to quality education is further affected by a combination of high poverty and inequity, especially for girls. In 2012, only 88 girls were in primary school for every 100 boys. The disparity widens at higher levels of education: only 62 girls for every 100 boys attended upper secondary school in 2015.

Girls and boys face a number of serious economic and socio-cultural barriers to education: 71 percent of the population live below the poverty line, and boys’ schooling takes priority over girls’. Although age six is the official age for school enrolment, only 54 per cent of six-year-old children attend school and the average age of first-grade students is 10.

Further barriers to girls’ education include early marriage, teenage pregnancies, and expectations of girls’ roles in the household, to name a few – underpin these low levels of female participation.

All of these factors are further compounded by a lack of sensitivity to gender issues and a proper system to address sexual abuse and unwanted pregnancies – which in many instances further limit girls’ participation in education 

“Education offers children a ladder out of poverty and a path to a promising future. But, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) nearly 7 million children aged 5 to 17 are out of school.” (UNICEF)

Barriers at a glance

• The majority of direct and indirect expenses related to the schooling of children are borne by the parents, including school operating costs 
• There is an uneven distribution of schools as well as school infrastructure:
•  
• Socio-cultural barriers 
• Child labour 

Early marriage and early pregnancy
Lack of access for children with disabilities 
High repetition rates and dropout
Low rate of qualified teachers
Inequitable distribution of teacher
Poverty
Economic migration.
Challenging geographies

(The more economically developed a country, the better able to adapt to or overcome the challenges of its geographies) 

• Conflict-affected situations:
• Insecurity and Instability
• Refugees
•  

(Some countries with refugee populations (host countries) make provisions for the education of refugee children while others do not).

• 1. Gender.
• 2. Material resources.
•  

Possible Social Intervention Projects to Address Barriers

• A programme of In-Service Training (INSET) for serving teachers; as well as providing mentors for newly qualified teachers 

• Establish teacher training and support for those wishing to teach, in areas where there is a shortage  of teachers 
• Work with grassroots community groups who are intent on building a school but need support, in particular with fundraising and incorporating themselves into a charity.

What’s the goal here? 

To achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

Why?

Disadvantages in education translate into a lack of access to skills and limited opportunities in the labour market. 

Women’s and girls’ empowerment is essential to expand economic growth and promote social development. The full participation of women in the labour forces would add percentage points to most national growth rates— double digits in many cases.

Barriers to achieving empowerment for women in entrepreneurship, including agribusiness in the DRC

Studies and recent investigations show that the position of Congolese women in several domains of national life remains low in comparison with men. In particular, their economic vulnerability as well as their exclusion from decision-making at all levels, whether within the household or community or at a regional and national scale, is also concerning.

Decades of armed conflict have led to the deaths of over 2 million civilians and estimates suggest over 1 million women have been raped. Though articles 5, 14 and 15 of the DRC constitution establish a legal basis for equality and equity policies, women currently occupy only 7.2% of positions at the highest level of decision-making at a national level in the parliament and government.

Up to 52% of women in DRC are survivors of domestic violence and 39% of Congolese women report having been threatened or injured. 27% of women in DRC are victims of harmful traditional practices. Early marriage is expected, with 2007 reports indicating 39% of women in their early twenties were married or in a union before the age of 18, while very few have access to decent jobs, little access to education, and consequently, higher rates of illiteracy.

Most studies looking at women and empowerment in the DRC acknowledge that they play an important role as entrepreneurs in the DRC’s economy, however research studies show that women entrepreneurs are confined to the smallest, least profitable businesses. This finding reflects the burden of unpaid work and other social factors that put women at a competitive disadvantage.

According to Dede Amanor-Wilks,

“Over half of Africa’s farmers are women. They could be our next generation of entrepreneurs, driving the agricultural revolution our continent needs to feed its growing population and boost its economies. But this will not happen without radical changes to our land ownership and financial systems. Women do the most work on our farms but have the fewest rights. The majority of them are not able to own land or access financial services, which means they can’t use their plots to secure loans and invest in improvements such as irrigation and machinery. They are shut out of the markets in which they might flourish”, Amanor-Wilks, D (2017)

The DRC is demonstrably home to two different types of women entrepreneurs — necessity and growth-oriented. Due to the consistently high levels of unemployment and poverty, most women have no other option but to establish their own micro-enterprise to support their families. The Congolese micro and small entrepreneurs are thus driven much more by fighting for survival than by seeking profits.

Barriers at a glance

• Men already occupy the most lucrative business segments.  
• Men dominate sectors like wholesale trade and manufacturing, while women compete among themselves in small trading businesses, where the profits and growth prospects are low.
•  
• Women-Owned Businesses are Less Profitable
• A woman wholesaler earns $31 per day, which is probably pretty good by local standards, but her profits are only a fraction of the $100 that a man earns in similar activities.
• Resistance from family members and safety concerns can restrict women’s movements and the range of activities that they can consider
• These social factors have an observable influence on women’s entrepreneurial behaviour such as a lower appetite for risk, more reasoned decision-making, and a drive for personal achievement over profits.
•  
• Inadequate regulations
• Social prejudices
• Disproportionate family responsibilities
• Lower rates of education 
• Limited access to finance 
• Lack of technical knowledge and resources, along with restricted access to land and other assets, also undermines a woman’s ability to invest time and capital in her enterprise.

Gender issues aside, they also face general challenges common to all small and medium enterprises in the country. With an underdeveloped banking sector, domestic credit is scarce and expensive, particularly for micro, small, and medium enterprises. According to the World Bank’s Enterprise Survey, in 2013 only 7% of Congolese firms used banks to finance investments.

Possible Social Intervention Projects to Address Barriers

• Initiative to provide training and peer mentorship in all aspects of business and finance including, learning the basics of starting/running a business.  
• Establishing a programme which encourages women to form a farming cooperative, train and advise them on doing their own fundraising, including bid writing and identifying funders whose criteria include funding agricultural cooperatives run by women and, or young people in developing economies.
•  
• Community strengthening intervention to address gender inequality This intervention programme will engage with, and provide training to concerned men to ensure they understand the benefits of empowered and productive women and provide support to women entrepreneurs.
• Work with local  church leaders in the communities to be supporters of the project and agents for women’s empowerment
• Women entrepreneurs need targeted support to address the legal, institutional, and financial challenges they face in scaling their companies, and research and, perhaps a pilot study would be invaluable to:

A) better understand the barriers for women

B) discern the kinds of intervention which are more likely to be effective in tackling   identified challenges, in particular those which can be organised and led by the women themselves. Thereby ensuring cultural sensitivity and relevance. The aim is for this model to also take into account the need for intervention programmes to be ‘hybrid’, rather than based on Western common sense notions of what gender norms are. In particular in environments where ‘religious and traditional social orders dominate”

This initiative can take the form of action research, and the findings report,  apart from being useful for the women concerned, can be shared with policymakers, NGOs as well as voluntary and statutory service providers.

What’s the goal here?

To ensure access to safe water sources and sanitation for all.

Why?

Access to water, sanitation and hygiene is a human right. 

The demand for water has outpaced population growth, and half the world’s population is already experiencing severe water scarcity at least one month a year.

2.2 billion people around the world still lack safely managed drinking water, including 785 million without basic drinking  water 

Water is essential to health, poverty reduction, food security, peace and human rights, ecosystems and education. Nevertheless, countries face growing challenges linked to water scarcity, water pollution, degraded water-related ecosystems and cooperation over transboundary water basins. 

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the African continent’s second-largest country and shares borders with nine other countries.

Although the DRC is enormously rich in natural resources such as gold, copper, cobalt and uranium, and approximately 34 per cent of its territory is fertile, arable land, it is in fact extremely impoverished, with 70% of the population living under the poverty line, and the extreme poverty rate in DRC was at 73% in 2018, one of the highest in sub-Saharan Africa. (World Bank Group)

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), has drawn attention to an estimated 37 million rural residents in DRC who risk contracting disease because they have no alternative but to draw untreated water directly from rivers or lakes that are likely to be contaminated.(year)

The DRC is Africa’s most water-rich country, many of its people however have no safe access to this essential resource. Together with a lack of access to sanitation and hygiene, this is putting millions of people at greater risk of contracting the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Safe water sources and usable toilets are vital for public health, and in DRC, their lack leads to high levels of water-borne disease. Diarrheal disease is a major cause of infant and child mortality.

Interestingly, DRC is blessed with large quantities of freshwater. However, water security is low due to poor economic planning and governance. Despite the country’s natural wealth, economic growth is negative in real terms, which translates into poor basic infrastructure, in terms of investments and maintenance.

The population of the DRC contend with a lack of accountability from their elected leaders, including on water and sanitation investments, which by all accounts are meagre; only 52 per cent of the population has access to basic water and 29 per cent has access to sanitation. It is noted that lack of access to water and sanitation as well as poor hygiene behaviours are among the top five risk factors associated with death and disability in the

Barriers at a glance 

• The majority of direct and indirect expenses related to the schooling of children are borne by the parents, including school operating costs 
• There is an uneven distribution of schools as well as school infrastructure
•  

Socio-cultural barriers 
Child labour 
Early marriage and early pregnancy
Lack of access for children with disabilities 
High repetition rates and dropout
Low rate of qualified teachers.
Inequitable distribution of teacher.
Poverty.
Economic migration.
Challenging geographies.