Kujenga Uhuru - Socio-Economic Reintegration of Laid-Off Mine Workers

Grant period: June 2004 - June 2006

Gecamines, the mainstay of the former Zaire's economy has suffered from decades of mismanagement living its employees unpaid for months and without a job. With the assistance of the World Bank, Gecamines began a survival and restructuring program. The World Bank awarded to Pact a two-year fixed price contract to promote enterprise development in Eastern DRC. The ex-employees of the Gecamines are called today to build their future through a personnel engagement to become economically self sufficient. This explains the existence of the project "Kujenga Uhuru". It is Swahili for "build your own freedom". This project implements the activities of auto-promotion and self-determination for ex-employees for their reinsertion in the economy of the country.

During the first year, Kujenga Uhuru's objective is to assist approximately 1,000 laid off mine workers in developing microenterprise, and community projects with counterpart financing that will directly increase the livelihoods of the owners while stimulating local economic development.

The ex-employees will be trained in the technical and business aspects of starting up 17 different appropriate technology-based small businesses. The businesses range from cold-pressing sunflower seed, to pressed bricks rock crushers and peanut butter makers. After a short time in the center, entrepreneurs will purchase kits and start their own operations; some may continue to operate in the incubation centre. An on- site technical assistance to the first 41 microenterprise projects that have finally received counterpart financing from the world bank, now assisting another 100 projects to develop business plans will be initiated . Pact has developed a sub agreement with IFESH, our partners MALI, to develop at least 7 community projects over the next six months.

Pact focuses its efforts on the gathering and on the analysis of information concerning the PV through interactions. Based on this information, completed and enriched by information coming from the MALI project (funded by USAID and with a focus on the PV's needs) and based on the needs of local markets, Pact uses workshops and interaction events as a vehicle to enhance social and economic mobilization of PV. This promotion will touch zones of action identified and this process will be done accordingly with COPIREP's inputs.

Then, interactions with the PV and/or with the communities mobilized will facilitate the assistance and the support for the identification and the development of propositions of small and medium projects that will be submitted for the approval and for financing. Daily reviews of lessons learned from these efforts will be provided in order to sustain the project as well as the information/communication program and the publicity of this project.

Interim results

The first six months of the project has contemplated the following outcomes:

• An administrative and functional structure of the project as well as a personnel unit for Lubumbashi, Likasi and Kolwezi were put in place
• Identification of 26 ex-Gecamines employees (EEG) interested in kits. Their training in incubator has begun during the quarter
• In Katanga, two solicitations of project's proposals from PV took place. About 572 proposals were submitted. Through KU financing, 41 EEG projects were selected during October 2004: 40 of them received feasibility study and business plan training and financing of activities.
• The second solicitation of PV took place from mid- October to mid-November 2004. Pact received 622 proposals. After evaluation, Pact retained 216 proposals, which were then presented to the selection committee for a pre-selection process on January 27, 2005. During March, more EEGs proposals were selected. All this projects represent a total of 792 EEG involved in the operations of these business activities.
• For Kinshasa and Matadi, the initial launch of solicitation of proposals took place from August 11th to August 13th 2004 as well as the registration and the reception of proposals submitted for the analysis and for evaluation. The KU team has received 179 individual proposals and 10 collectives.
• The viability study and technical assistance of the pre-selected projects by the selection committee of COPIREP during the first solicitation took place to allow a final submission to be approved by the selection committee and funded by COPIREP.
• Through the linkage with the KUJENGA UHURU project, the SME team provided support of 40 microenterprises in production, transformation and commerce. During the quarter, these 40 microenterprises were trained in financial management and received their cash grant from COPIREP to begin their activities.