Why patriotic Congolese have misgivings about decentralization
The Congolese people that want to keep the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as one country have expressed misgivings about the idea of decentralization. While they are not totally against decentralization as such, they reason that decentralization presupposes the existence of a strong central state with viable institutions. In any state a certain amount of centralization is essential for the effective functioning of a large entity, be it a corporation or a state. On the other hand, over-centralization produces undesirable outcomes such as inefficiency and red tape. When this occurs decentralization is recommended in which minor decisions are made on lower levels of administration.
Since its creation as a state in 1885 in the wake of the Berlin Conference on the partition of Africa among European countries without waging war against one another, no efforts were made neither by king Leopold II who owned Congo Free State as a private property until 1907, nor by the Belgian government that assumed colonial responsibility for Congo from 1908 to 1960 when the country became independent as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, nor since independence as Zaire and now again as DRC since 1997.