Université de Goma

THIS UNIVERSITY is situated close to the northern shores of Lake Kivu and on the border with Rwanda. It is not surprising, then, that its genesis is intimately bound up with some of the worst fighting and social instability ever experienced in the eastern parts of the DRC.

The university in Goma started life in the early 1990s as the ‘university centre’ of North Kivu that was attached to the established University of Kisangani situated over 500 km to the northwest. The troubles had started with the Rwandan genocide and ensuing civil war. By 1998, the military situation in the eastern DRC, with frequent clashes between the anti-Mobutu rebels and government forces, was such that the satellite university centre lost contact with its parent institution in Kisangani. The result of this was that the centre became a de facto independent university run by the rebels who appointed the vice-chancellor but paid scant heed to its financial needs. In fact, between 1998 and 2003, the worst years of the civil war, the university survived on student fees alone, with no help coming from the central DRC government or any other source. Only in 2005, several years after peace had more or less been restored to the DRC, was the University Centre of North Kivu officially transformed into the autonomous but centrally supported University of Goma.

In spite of the extraordinarily difficult circumstances of the first 15 years of its existence, the University of Goma has enjoyed remarkable growth. To begin with, in 1993, a single Faculty of Medicine and Social Science had been established. In 1996, two more faculties were added: one for Economics and one for Law. Then in 2004, further faculties were added for Agriculture, Education, Psychology and the Sciences. Student growth has been just as impressive, from 153 enrolments in 1994 to nearly 4 500 in 2008.