For one of us in Connecticut, the violence, trauma, and fear in eastern Congo are deeply personal.
Jeannot Basima is from Goma, the city of 2 million whose struggles have only recently come to popular attention in the United States but where childhood experiences and family ties compel constant concern. Enrolling at Yale in 2023, Jeannot came to New Haven to study political science, play varsity basketball, and develop a nonprofit organization to expand opportunities for youth in Goma.
Too often, such opportunities can seem scarce in a country of great beauty, abundance, and talent but also civil war, corruption, and government dysfunction. In Goma and throughout much of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), parents must pay school fees that can be a barrier to any education, let alone the kind of consistent, high-quality instruction children need to fulfill their potential. Even at times and in areas where peace prevails, school facilities are strained. There are not nearly enough science labs or computers, or sometimes reliable electricity or internet.
Those are relatively minor issues compared with the immediate problems in Goma today -- from gunfire that has killed and wounded civilians, to sexual violence, overflowing hospitals, and shortages of food, water, and medicine. The conflict has further threatened education for hundreds of thousands of children.
The United Nations estimates that among the DRC's population of 118 million, nearly one in five -- 21.2 million individuals -- face a crisis demanding humanitarian response. Millions have been displaced in eastern Congo -- including Jeannot's family.
For him, the seizure of Goma by the M23 rebel group evokes a prior episode in 2012, when M23 rebels attacked the city, stoking fear in then 8-year-old Jeannot and other residents. Innocent civilians are again endangered, even more profoundly.
Effective mediation by global powers, to contain this conflict that has entangled Rwanda and the DRC, is urgently needed to save lives. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) -- its own future in doubt -- is part of the solution.
The G7 nations' joint statement is constructive, but M23 control of Goma means uncertainty for its people. The International Red Cross, World Food Program, Doctors Without Borders, and Save the Children are among the global NGOs working in the region.
Save the Children happens to be based in Connecticut, where Jeannot met Josiah Brown and is developing a nonprofit to serve Goma. The aim is to provide on a larger scale the kind of enhanced opportunity that Jeannot had through basketball with a program called PJB while growing up.
In partnership with Dwight Hall at Yale -- a Center for Public Service and Social Justice that is his fiscal sponsor -- Basima is creating a basketball camp and foundation to increase academic and extracurricular offerings for young people in Goma, while they enjoy the sport. Already, he piloted the camp during his last visit home in summer 2023, and his brother extended the pilot in 2024.
Basima's vision is a public-private partnership that will not only allow others to follow his path of earning a college scholarship through basketball (as the late Dikembe Mutombo of Congo, among others, did earlier), but also broaden academic and life chances for a much wider swath of Goma neighbors.
Amid war and destruction in Goma, there is still extraordinary resilience after many years of intermittent violence and displacement. Progress depends on peace, stability, and stronger institutions. There is a need for much greater, sustained support from the West. But already there is hope to build upon.