Qualla: Kasai-Oriental

Kasai-Oriental: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yourecoveredinbees, CC BY 4.0. One-tenth of the world's industrial diamonds, by weight, come out of the ground here every year. The figure sounds fantastic until you visit Mbuji-Mayi, the provincial capital, and realize that the entire city is built on top of the largest diamond accumulation ever found - more concentrated, geologists say, than the famous deposits at Kimberley in South Africa. Kasai-Oriental is small by Congolese standards, about the size of a medium European country, and it has been shaped by stones that nobody eats.

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Image: Yourecoveredinbees | CC BY 4.0

Kasai-Oriental: A Province Dismantled and Remade

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USAID in Africa, Public domain. In 2015 the Democratic Republic of the Congo completed a long-promised reorganization of its provinces, and the old Kasai-Oriental was broken into three new provinces: Kasai-Oriental itself, Lomami, and Sankuru. The new Kasai-Oriental is a compact version of the old - essentially...

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Image: USAID in Africa | Public domain

Kasai-Oriental: The Secession

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JONATHAN KALUBI MUANACIALU, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960, the country fell almost immediately into crisis. Ethnic violence pushed Luba communities out of the Kasai and neighboring Katanga. Belgian mining interests, eager to keep their concessions, encouraged the Luba leader Albert...

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Image: JONATHAN KALUBI MUANACIALU | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kasai-Oriental: The Diamond City

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Danny KABEYA, CC BY-SA 4.0. Mbuji-Mayi grew from a company town into a city of more than two million. The Societe Miniere de Bakwanga - still the dominant player - manages the industrial extraction, but artisanal mining has been part of the city's informal economy for decades, with tens of thousands of peop...

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Image: Danny KABEYA | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kasai-Oriental: Life on the Diamond Field

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Danny KABEYA, CC BY-SA 4.0. The contradiction of Kasai-Oriental is the contradiction of the Congo. The province sits on fabulous mineral wealth and remains one of the poorest parts of the country. Mbuji-Mayi's infrastructure has lagged far behind its population. Electricity is intermittent. The roads outsid...

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Image: Danny KABEYA | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kasai-Oriental: The Province from Above

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Danny KABEYA, CC BY-SA 4.0. From altitude Kasai-Oriental reads as a patchwork of savanna woodland and cultivated valleys, with rivers - the Sankuru, the Lubilashi, the Lubi - threading through in loops and oxbows. Mbuji-Mayi announces itself as a red-brown scar in the green, streets radiating from the river...

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Image: Danny KABEYA | CC BY-SA 4.0