Digging deeper: the quest for conflict-free minerals: A study on external actor capacity building efforts in the extractives industry in the Democratic Republic of Congo

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2018-11-14

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en

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Domestic institutions are deemed crucial for a country to avert the well-known resource curse. When these institutions are weak or even entirely absent, resource-rich countries rely heavily on capacity building efforts by external actors. However, the results of capacity building are often ambiguous, as it remains unclear whether it can mitigate the deeper underlying socio-economic and political issues that are key to the resource curse. This thesis aims to address this question, by gaining insight in how external actors are involved in the mitigation of the resource curse in the DRC through capacity building efforts and how this can eventually compensate for the absence of domestic institutions in the country. Based on qualitative data, this thesis concludes that external actors can only to a limited extent compensate for weak domestic institutions, as, for various reasons, the results of capacity building are likely to remain limited to the short term and on a local level. For capacity building to have sustainable and long-term results, the programs have to be implemented at multiple levels, in different layers of society and in various sectors simultaneously.

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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen