Artists from the East of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are facing a harsh reality following the crisis linked to Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine: access to funding has become very difficult. But fortunately, the Goma youth center decided to take matters into their own hands. It has indeed launched a long-term project called PASART (Project to support the financial autonomy of the artistic and cultural sector), which aims to be a solution to make cultural actors financially autonomous.
The project, lasting 11 months, aims to strengthen the professional capacities of any artist, any discipline combined, from seven towns in eastern DRC, such as Goma, Bukavu, Uvira, Kalemie, Bunia, Kisangani and Isiro. This involves training them in the design of bankable projects, teaching them how to benefit from bank loans and how to proceed to repay these loans.
According to Augustin Mosange, communication officer of the youth center of Goma and PASART, “After the 11 months of the project, there will be 10 projects, among the 35 structures which will be concerned, which will benefit from credits from a bank, through projects that they will have presented. The PASART project will pledge a sum in this bank with which we are going to work and this sum will make it possible to evolve because we have observed that artists and cultural structures have They have nothing to pledge to access these credits and we are going to take part of the financing that we will pledge in a bank and that will allow artists to be able to access credits without much difficulty ” .
PASART is financed by the program created in Central Africa of the ACP-EU CULTURE consortium, which is implemented by Interarts Foundation, Culture and Development, ECCAS and the National Institute of Arts of Kinshasa. Credit access facilities are underway with various partner banks in the project.
The PASART project, which costs 133,000 euros, is a beacon of hope for the cultural sector in eastern DRC, which suffers from a lack of means to create and produce. Cultural structures often resort to subsidies to survive, but the economic crisis linked to Covid-19 has led to a drop in these subsidies. This project will therefore allow artists and cultural structures to become financially independent and promote cultural entrepreneurship in the region.