News > Collaboration avec l’université Kongo de Mbanza-Ngungu

In collaboration with the Free University of Brussels (ULB) and the University of Liège (ULiège), CRAterre (ENSAG) accompanies the Communal University of Mbanza-Ngungu (UK) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to set up a Master training in architecture and urbanism in situated territories. This 5 year-programme (2018-2022) is financed by the Belgian Academy of Research and Higher Education (ARES).


Throughout the accompaniment in setting up this Master training,  the project finances the reinforcement of the competencies of the Congolese teachers through three PhD scholarships and 5 scholarships to consolidate the knowledges of the teachers of the newly created Architecture department. During the project, sessions will take place to transfer competencies through training missions in the DRC gathering teachers of the partner universities from the North and their Congolese colleagues. At the same time, a material subvention is foreseen to acquire and structure several working spaces in the Architecture Department.

Within the framework of this project, three weeks of seminars have taken place in France (Grenoble and Villefontaine) and Belgium (Brussels and Liège) to train the trainers in order to set up together a common teaching culture of architecture and situated planning. Eight Congolese teachers from the UK University (DRC) stayed in Europe for these three weeks during which every host institution (ENSAG/ULB/ULiège) was invited to show its specific teaching of architecture. In the heart of the debates and the challenges: the elaboration of a relevant pedagogical programme. This will enable to teach young performant Congolese architects, capable of valuating their qualification at the same level as those trained in other existing or being created architecture departments in the DRC, with a significant detail : the sensitization to local building cultures and the capacity of proposing concrete solutions to 90% of the Congolese people who do not have access today to the services of an architect in urban and rural areas.