page_title: Belgian Congo
section_title: Education
hierarchical_section_title: Belgian Congo / "Civilising mission" / Education
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Classe dans le Chimbek par les franciscaines missionnaires de Marie (Congo belge).
context_page_description: The Belgian Congo was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1964.
  Colonial rule in the Congo began in the late 19th century. King Leopold II of Belgium attempted to persuade the Belgian government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexploited Congo Basin. Their ambivalence resulted in Leopold's establishing a colony himself. With support from a number of Western countries, Leopold achieved international recognition for a personal colony, the Congo Free State, in 1885. By the turn of the century, the violence used by Free State officials against indigenous Congolese and a ruthless system of economic exploitation led to intense diplomatic pressure on Belgium to take official control of the country, which it did by creating the Belgian Congo in 1908.
  Belgian rule in the Congo was based on the "colonial trinity" of state, missionary and private-company interests. The privileging of Belgian commercial interests meant that large amounts of capital flowed into the Congo and that individual regions became specialised.
context_section_description: The educational system was dominated by the Roman Catholic Church—as was the case for the rest of Belgium at the time—and, in some rare cases, by Protestant churches.  Curricula reflected Christian and Western values. Even in 1948, 99.6% of educational facilities were run by Christian missions. Indigenous schooling was mainly religious and vocational. Children received basic education such as learning how to read, write and some mathematics. The Belgian Congo was one of the few African colonies in which local languages (Kikongo, Lingala, Tshiluba and Swahili) were taught at primary school. Even so, language policies and colonial domination often went hand in hand, as evidenced by the preference given to Lingala—a semi-artificial language spread through its common use in the Force Publique—over more local (but also more ancient) indigenous languages such as Lomongo and others.
  In 1940 the schooling rates of children between 6 and 14 years old was 12%, reaching 37% in 1954, one of the highest rates in sub-Saharan Africa. Secondary and higher education for the indigenous population were not developed until relatively late in the colonial period. Black children, in small numbers, began to be admitted to European secondary schools from 1950 onward. The first university in the Belgian Congo, the Catholic Jesuit Lovanium University, near Léopoldville, opened its doors to black and white students in 1954. Before the foundation of the Lovanium, the Catholic University of Louvain already operated multiple institutes for higher education in the Belgian Congo. The Fomulac (Fondation médicale de l'université de Louvain au Congo), was founded in 1926, with the goal of forming Congolese medical personnel and researchers specialized in tropical medicine. In 1932 the Catholic University of Louvain founded the Cadulac (Centres agronomiques de l'université de Louvain au Congo) in Kisantu. Cadulac was specialized in agricultural sciences and formed the basis for what was later to become Lovanium University. In 1956 a state university was founded in Elisabethville. Progress was slow though; until the end of the 1950s, no Congolese had been promoted beyond the rank of non-commissioned officer in the Force Publique, nor to a responsible position in the administration (such as head of bureau or territorial administrator).
  In the late 1950s, 42% of the youth of school going age was literate, which placed the Belgian Congo far ahead of any other country in Africa at the time. In 1960, 1,773,340 students were enrolled in schools around the Belgian Congo, of which 1,650,117 in primary school, 22,780 in post-primary school, 37,388 in secondary school and 1,445 in university and higher education. Of these 1,773,340 students, the majority (1,359,118) were enrolled in Catholic mission schools, 322,289 in Protestant mission schools and 68,729 in educational institutions organized by the state.
caption: Education by the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary (circa 1930)
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