Kinshasa Shuts the Universities It No Longer Controls

DR CONGO · SOCIETY

Eleven Congo universities suspended by ministerial order in Goma and Bukavu will not teach for the 2026-2027 academic year, after Kinshasa responded to rebel-installed management committees by halting every activity that could produce a degree.

What the order on Congo universities suspended in the Kivus covers

The instruction came in a ministerial order dated 20 August from Marie-Thérèse Sombo, Minister of Higher Education, University, Scientific Research and Innovations. It applies to public universities and higher learning institutions operating in areas controlled by the AFC/M23 movement in North and South Kivu.

The suspension is comprehensive. Registrations, re-registrations, teaching, evaluations, deliberations and any other activity that could lead to the awarding of degrees are covered, for the 2026-2027 academic year and until further notice.

Eleven institutions are named, five in Goma and six in Bukavu. In Goma they are the University of Goma and the commercial, medical, applied technology and teacher-training institutes; in Bukavu, the Official University of Bukavu along with the commercial, medical, teacher-training, rural development and management institutes.

One group is spared. Final-year students from the 2025-2026 academic year whose courses could not be completed may sit their remaining evaluations at other institutions that are legally established under Congolese law.

The trigger was administrative rather than military. On 12 August the AFC/M23 administration installed new management committees at several Bukavu institutions, which Kinshasa opposed.

Two governments, one degree certificate

The dispute is really about who signs a diploma. A degree from the University of Goma is worth something because a recognised state stands behind it, and Kinshasa is now refusing to stand behind anything issued under a management committee it did not appoint.

The government says the security situation threatens the regular functioning of the institutions and the integrity of academic programmes. That is a defensible administrative position and it has an obvious cost attached.

The cost falls on students who live in the two largest cities of the eastern Congo and have no part in any of this. A suspended academic year is a year of their lives.

The rebels say they have a replacement ready

AFC/M23 deputy coordinator Bertrand Bisimwa rejected the decision in posts on X on Wednesday 26 August. He argued that education should be kept out of the political and military conflict, and accused Kinshasa of turning the sector into a weapon of war.

He also said the movement had anticipated the decision and prepared a substitute mechanism, to be set out in a circular and activated immediately so that students can continue studying. What that mechanism is, and who would recognise its qualifications, was not explained.

A parallel accreditation system is a claim to statehood as much as an education policy. That is precisely why Kinshasa is contesting it.

Readers should note the sourcing. The fullest account of the AFC/M23 position comes from The New Times, a Kigali newspaper, and Rwanda is widely reported to back the movement.

This is a pattern, not an incident

Banking services in Goma have been shut since the movement took the city in early 2025. Kinshasa has steadily withdrawn the functions of the state from territory it does not hold.

Le Forum des As, a Kinshasa daily, reported in the same week that the higher education ministry had struck 48 staff from the payroll over alleged allegiance to AFC/M23. We have not seen the underlying order.

The logic is consistent and its consequences compound. Each withdrawal makes the parallel administration more necessary to daily life, which is the outcome the withdrawal is meant to prevent.

What it does to the Doha process

Kinshasa and AFC/M23 have been engaged in a Doha-mediated process aimed at ending the conflict in the eastern Congo, and agreed a roadmap to move talks forward. Decisions like this one make common ground harder to find.

They also change what a settlement would have to cover. Any agreement now has to resolve not only territory and security but banking access, academic recognition and civil service pay in the affected provinces.

The eastern Congo has been through more than three decades of overlapping wars, and the current phase has run since M23 took Goma in early 2025. Institutional questions of this kind tend to outlast the fighting that created them.

Why this reaches beyond the Kivus

The eastern Congo produces a large share of the world’s cobalt and a great deal of its copper, and the region’s stability is priced into supply chains far away. Universities are not mines, but the same authority is being contested in both.

For anyone watching the Congo file, the useful signal here is administrative rather than military. Where the state withdraws recognition, it is telling you what it no longer expects to control soon.

The students are the immediate loss. Whether their year is salvaged depends on a circular from a movement with no international recognition, or on a settlement that has not yet been reached.

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