Co-operatives in the Democratic Republic of Congo: A literature review

This paper consists of a review of the literature on co-operatives in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It provides a synthesis of past knowledge on this topic and goes on to suggest, on the basis of this synthesis, that there is a critical knowledge gap in the current literature which consists of the fact that the importance of social movements doesn’t appear to have been considered by scholars involved in the study of co-operatives in the DRC. Given this finding, the paper calls for a re-thinking of the history of co-operatives in the DRC in order to determine whether the current DRC co-operative sector has its origins in social movements or not, and it also briefly discusses the implications of these scenarios. The importance of this paper derives from the need for solutions to the problems of widespread poverty and underdevelopment in the DRC, and from the fact that co-operatives are viewed as important vehicles for community development which can offer a solution to these problems.