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Wamoia

About us

Wamoia is an international and interdisciplinary network of scholars interested in water and mobility in Africa (WEBSITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION)

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Teaching Resources

Bibliography

Conferences, News

Source and Data Archive

  • MOBEKA gemeinnützige UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
    Elsenstrasse 81a
    D-12059 Berlin
    Com. reg.: HRB 263045B (Amtsgericht Charlottenburg)
    Tax id.: 27/614/05663
  • +49 151 56565598
  • info@mobeka.org
  • MOBEKA a.s.b.l.
    Av. du fleuve n° 15
    Bloc Météo, co. Makiso, Kisangani
    Democratic Republic of Congo
    NIF. A2530772B
  • +243 85 6287928
  • mobeka.asbl@gmail.com

MOBEKA

Applied Anthropology Startup


Copyright: All media and information contained on this website are subject to the Creative Commons copyright license BY-NC-ND: BY-NC-ND

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  • Home
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  • Vision
  • Ship
  • School
  • Output
    • Mobeka Action Research Papers
    • Publications
  • People
  • Coming up
  • Navigation Incidents
  • WAMOIA
    • About WAMOIA
    • Members
    • News / Conferences
    • Bibliography
    • Source and Data Archive
    • Teaching resources
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    • fr_FRFR
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en_GBEN_GB
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Tasks:

Background:

Jean-Marie Ebolelo

Tasks:

Background:

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.

Tasks:

Background:

Louis Mayala

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”

Dieu-Merci Belengo

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.”

Olivier Bolombo

Tasks:

Background:

Roger Angbongi

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

Victor Yaaya

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

La Joie Vutseme

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

Emmanuel Makoka

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.

Lauretta Krumm

Tasks:

Background:

John Mayasi

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 Lambertz (Prof. Dr.)

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.

Just out: https://theconversation.com/dr-congos-riverboat-economy-how-a-floating-transport-system-tells-the-countrys-story-288941

Publications: https://ulb.academia.edu/PeterLambertz

Languages: German, English, French, Lingala, Dutch

Teaching:

  • Winter semester 2026–2027 – Guest professor of African History (subst. Joel Glasman), University of Bayreuth (Germany) (Introduction to Global History, History of Africa’s Rivers, History Transport and Technology in Africa).
  • 2023–present: Visiting professor, Université de Kisangani (UNIKIS), Département of Social and Cultural Anthropology (Anthropology of Development, Anthropology of Religion, Ethnographic Methods).
  • Maître de conférence (subst. Véronique Joiris), Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) (Anthropologie du développement, anthropologie de l’environnement).
  • 2022-2023: Guest professor of Anthropology (subst. Filip De Boeck), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL) (Introduction to Anthropology; Political Anthropology; Anthropology and the Anthropocene; Interpreting Data Anthropologically; Ethnographic Cycle).
  • 2019: Guest professor of Anthropology (subst. Ann Cassiman), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL) (Anthropology of Material Culture)
  • 2015–2016: Visiting professor, Philosophât Edith Stein, Kisangani (DR Congo) (History of Congo, History of Africa, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology).

Research positions:

  • 2026–present: Postdoctoral research associate, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Centre d’anthropologie culturelle
  • 2024–2026: Postdoctoral fellow, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, FORAGENCY / Social History of Capitalism
  • 2023–2024: Postdoctoral fellow, Université Libre de Bruxelles, BANTURIVERS / Centre d’anthropologie culturelle
  • 2021–2022: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, KU Leuven, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
  • 2019–2020: Postdoctoral fellow, Gerda Henkel Foundation / HU Berlin, Institute für Asian and African Studies
  • 2017–2018: Postdoctoral fellow, German Historical Institute Paris & CREPOS Dakar
  • 2016–2016: Visiting fellow, Zentrum Moderner Orient
  • 2015–2016: Visiting professor, African History and Anthropology, Philosophat Edith Stein (priestly seminary), Kisangani (DR Congo).

Education:

  • 2015 Utrecht University and Universität Leipzig (bi-national PhD), PhD African Studies / Religious Studies
  • 2008 Universität Leipzig (- Stellenbosch – Wroclaw), MA Global Studies
  • 2005 Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), License en Histoire (MA)
  • 2003 Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL), Candidature en Histoire (BA)