Learning from Local Experience
Amid demographic shifts, environmental change, and pressing economic need, Mobeka draws on first-hand anthropological fieldwork to develop viable, locally embedded socio-technical responses to the challenges of African river transport today.
MOBEKA hosts
Water and Mobility in Africa Network
Réseau Eau et Mobilité en Afrique
International Scientific Network /
Réseau Scientifique International
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Tasks: Mobeka research school, anthropological fieldwork, interested in: ecological nostalgia, food security, more-than-human relationships
Background: Daniella Kahindo Muke is researcher at the École de recherche MOBEKA and an MA student of anthropology at the University of Kisangani (UNIKIS).
In November 2025, as part of MOBEKA’s activities, she carried out fieldwork along the Kisangani–Banalia route with the objectives of conducting interviews with hunters about changes in hunting practices from the colonial era to the present day, as well as observe street trading at roadside markets along this route.
Her MA thesis will focus on changing more-than-human relationships involving totemism and magic und the impact of the discourse of Born-again churches.
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Tasks: Mechanic of the “Schottel M-Boot klein”, Kisangani
Background: Louis Mayala is a seasoned veteran of vehicle mechanics. Trained as a young man by missionaries in Lubutu, he spent his entire working life as an indispensable pillar of the local Catholic Church’s vehicle fleet in Kisangani. Since retiring in 2025, he has been supporting Mobeka with the repair and maintenance of its small pushboat, the “Schottel M-Boot klein”
Tasks: Mobeka Research School, Anthropological fieldwork, IT and logistics.
Background: Dieu-merci Belengo Botenya is student and class representative of the Master 1 program in Anthropology at the University of Kisangani. He is also a researcher at the MOBEKA research school. His work focuses on river mobilities, local knowledge, and the social dynamics surrounding navigation incidents in Tshopo. During his Bachelor’s degree (2023-2024), he devoted his research to the “Social representations of shipwrecks on the Congo River among the riverside communities of the Isangi territory.” He is now extending this reflection in his Master’s programme through his thesis project: “The moral economy of mutual aid during navigation incidents on the waterways of Tshopo, DRC.”
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Background: Roger holds an MA in Agronomy and teaches at the Institut Facultaire des Sciences Agronomiques (IFA) de Yangambi in Kisangani. For several years, he served as cultural attaché at the Belgian consulate in Kisangani, where he honed his diplomatic and public relations skills. He was also production manager of Thierry Michel’s award-winning documentary Congo River. Originally from Bumba, Roger grew up trading on the Congo River himself and is a true child of the river. He maintains this bond today through his striking riverside compound with a private port in central Kisangani, which hosts the Mobeka Research School and serves as the home port of the MB/HB Mobeka. Roger has contributed directly to the initial number of Mobeka’s Action research papers, available here.
Languages: Lingala, KiSwahili, KiMbudza, English
Tasks: Research coordination @ Mobeka research school, fieldwork, expertise on the popular economy, public relations
Prof. Dr. Victor Yaaya is a sociologist of development at the University of Kisangani (UNIKIS). His work focuses on the socio-economic practices that individuals, families and communities mobilise as local, popular responses to the challenges of precarity. His interest in the local popular economy ranges from small trade, production, crafts, transport and other small services to the relationships these activities generate, their organisational dimensions, the income they produce, their implications for the environment. His recent fieldwork includes research on bus transport in the north-eastern part of the DR Congo. With Peter Lambertz and Emmanuel Makoka (both also Mobeka), Victor has co-authored the first study of Congolese ship owners (armateurs) in Tshopo province, published as “Les Transportants de Kisangani”.
Languages: French, Topoke, Lingala, Swahili, Lokele, English
Tasks: administration and finance (DRC), Mobeka research school, anthropological fieldwork
Background: La Joie holds an MA in Social and Cultural Anthropology and has recently completed a DEA (Diplôme d’Études Approfondies) in Archaeology at the University of Kisangani, focusing on historical pottery and local water-related techniques and technologies. She is a key trainer at the Mobeka Research School and also manages Mobeka’s administration and finances in Kisangani.
Languages: French, Swahili, Lingala
Background: Emmanuel holds an MA in Philosophy (Philosophat Edith Stein / UNIKIS) and was closely involved in building Mobeka’s first river barge, whose economic activities he now manages independently. He also works for the provincial planning service. Originally from Basoko, at the confluence of the Aruwimi and Congo rivers, he grew up in a family of river traders and knows both forest and river life from first-hand experience. Emmanuel contributed substantially to two articles written by Mobeka members, available here and here.
Languages: French, Lingala, Swahili, Kibango.
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Tasks: development, supervision and audit, training, CAD
Background: Ing. John is an electromechanical engineer specializing in naval and metal construction, with over 20 years of experience spanning private industry and international development. He trained at the Institut Supérieur de Techniques Appliquées (ISTA) and began his career leading metal and naval construction projects across the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). He later served as an equipment expert with GIZ (German Technical Cooperation) and as a ferry and naval construction supervisor with Enabel (the Belgian development agency). In 2024, he joined the World Food Programme (WFP) as naval construction engineer, overseeing the rehabilitation of the Pweto ferry in Haut-Katanga. Today he works as an independent consultant on naval construction projects across the DRC.
Languages: French, English, Lingala, KiKongo, KiSwahili
Peter is a Belgian-German historian and anthropologist working on religion, technology, the environment and the political in Africa. Drawing on nearly two decades of fieldwork in the DR Congo, his work traces power in things, techniques and daily practice — asking how authority, legitimacy and belonging are produced under material scarcity and postcolonial rule. After his Kinshasa-based doctoral work on [religious globalisation and difference](https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/LambertzSeekers) (PhD, 2015) and initial research on vernacular transport governance in Dakar (Senegal), he moved his focus 1,700 km upriver to Kisangani, turning to the Congo River, its baleinières and their politics of infrastructure, bureaucracy and regulation, which also unsettle conventional ideas of “development.” Out of this grew the Mobeka initiative, built on his conviction that how knowledge is produced is itself a political matter: an applied, public anthropology of collaborative authorship with Congolese colleagues, understood as a practical decolonisation of knowledge production, working against technological inequality. He is currently Visiting Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kisangani (DR Congo) and of African History at the University of Bayreuth (Germany).
Tasks: Founder, Coordinator, Anthropological fieldwork, Fundraising, Project development, Website, CAD.
Publications: https://ulb.academia.edu/PeterLambertz
Languages: German, English, French, Lingala, Dutch
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