For Congo to be as rich as it is, and as poor as it remains, requires more than misfortune. It requires design. It requires continuity. It requires a world that has learned how to take what it needs, transform it, distribute it, and move forward- without ever having to sit too long with where it came from. poverty to exist in the same place- without ever colliding in a way that forces resolution.
I found myself drawn, at some point, to Fela Kuti. His work does not sit quietly in the background; it insists on being heard. It carries a certain defiance, a refusal to separate art from the environment in which it is created. Listening to him is not passive. It demands engagement.
And then, inevitably, another thought begins to form. What would it have meant for someone like Fela Kuti to share a studio with Franco Luambo?
At a purely musical level, the idea is compelling. Both artists understood composition as something expansive, something that could unfold over time without apology. One can imagine a piece that stretches on, drawing you in gradually.
But the question is not really about the music. Because these were not just musicians; they were products of their contexts. While one consistently challenged authority, the other, at times, aligned himself with it. Franco’ s support for Mobutu Sese Seko forces a more difficult question- whether art can reconcile opposing moral positions, or whether it simply carries them forward, unresolved.
And perhaps this is not entirely unfamiliar. Because long before we had the language to describe these tensions, we had already learned how to navigate them. The instinct to measure, to calibrate, to engage with something volatile without being consumed by it- those lessons came much earlier, in places far removed from studios and stages.
It is tempting to assume that the collaboration would have worked, that music would have found a way to bridge the divide. But perhaps what would have made it powerful is the same thing that would have made it uncomfortable. And in that discomfort, there is something familiar.
What Survival Looks Like
But this is not really an article about music. It is about something far less comfortable- about the ways in which people learn to survive systems that were never designed for them to thrive in.
Because survival is not always noble. It is not always loud, and it is rarely ideal. More often, it is shaped quietly, over time, by repeated exposure to forces that leave very little room for choice. The kind of forces that do not simply affect a moment, but settle into generations, shaping behaviour long before anyone has the language to question it. Perhaps that is one way to understand it.
That for someone like Franco Luambo, aligning with power was not necessarily an endorsement in the way we might interpret it today, but part of a broader negotiation with a system that had already defined the boundaries of survival. Because when you exist within a structure shaped by years – decades- of extraction and instability, the question is not always what is right, but what is possible. After all, dead bodies do not bruise.
And there is a quiet, uncomfortable truth in that. That sometimes, what appears to be compromise is simply a refusal to disappear.
There is a line I once heard- perhaps from a villain, perhaps from someone who understood the world too well- that someday, someone will break you so badly that you will become unbreakable. It sounds dramatic until you begin to recognise it in places like this. And perhaps that is the point.
That what we see in individuals is rarely isolated. It is often the expression of something much larger- something that existed long before them and will continue long after. And nowhere does that become clearer than in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Richest Poverty on Earth
Because if there is one thing that defines the Democratic Republic of Congo, it is not conflict, nor instability, nor even history in isolation. It is something far more difficult to reconcile. It is the ability for immense wealth and enduring
For Congo to be as rich as it is, and as poor as it remains, requires more than misfortune. It requires design. It requires continuity. It requires a world that has learned how to take what it needs, transform it, distribute it, and move forward- without ever having to sit too long with where it came from. poverty to exist in the same place- without ever colliding in a way that forces resolution.
By any rational measure, Congo should be one of the richest countries in the world. Beneath its soil lies a concentration of minerals that does not merely participate in the global economy but enables it. The devices we rely on, the systems we consider essential, the infrastructure that sustains modern life- all draw, in some way, from what sits under Congolese ground.
And yet, for the majority of its people, that wealth has never translated into lived prosperity. Not temporarily. Not accidentally. Consistently.
What appears, at first glance, to be a contradiction begins to look different when viewed over time. Because this is not a system that failed to deliver wealth inward. It is a system that was never designed to.
From the time of King Leopold II, extraction followed a clear logic. Value was to be removed- efficiently, continuously, and with minimal interruption. What came after- colonial administration, post-independence leadership, external involvement, internal conflict did not disrupt that logic. It refined it. It adapted it. It made it more sustainable.
So when modern conversations speak of partnerships, access, and strategic importance, they are not departures from history. They are extensions of it, repackaged in more acceptable language. The urgency with which these discussions take place is rarely matched by an equally urgent concern for how that value is experienced within Congo itself.
And perhaps that is why the world prefers a different entry point. Culture. Music.
It is easier to engage Congo through the elegance of rhumba, through the precision of composition, through the beauty of sound. These are forms of connection that do not demand interrogation. They allow appreciation without discomfort.
But that separation becomes increasingly difficult to maintain once one recognises how deeply Congo is embedded in everyday life. Because this is not a distant relationship. It is immediate.
The devices we carry, the systems we depend on, the very tools through which we engage with the world- all carry within them a traceable connection to a place that remains largely absent from the seriousness of global conversation.
And it is here that the earlier memory of the kerosene stove returns- not as nostalgia, but
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