Alphonse Maindo

Alphonse Maindo Monga Ngonga is a Congolese political scientist. At the University of Kisangani, he has been a professor of political science, the director of the Center for Political and Social Research in Africa, and the honorary dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Administration, and Law. He has also been the coordinator of the Democracy and Development program at the Goree Institute in Dakar, and he directed the Central African Political Observatory at the Catholic University of Central Africa in Yaoundé. In 1990, Maindo graduated from The University of Kisangani with a degree in political and administrative sciences.

In 2004, Maindo was given the Claude Ake Memorial Award of the Africa-America Institute and the African Studies Association, funded by the Ford Foundation, which is awarded annually to outstanding young scholars. In 2007, he published Des conflits locaux à la guerre régionale en Afrique centrale (From local conflicts to regional war in Central Africa), a study of the sources and nature of the conflicts that recurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1996 and 2007.

Maindo published another book in 2015, called L'Etat à l'épreuve de la guerre en Afrique centrale : Violences et recompositions sociales et politiques (The state tested by war in Central Africa: violence and sociopolitical reconstruction). In L'Etat à l'épreuve de la guerre en Afrique centrale, Maindo argues that the end of various postcolonial compromises has shaken the foundations of modern stability in Central Africa, weakening governance and demanding state reconstruction.

In 2018, Maindo became the director of Tropenbos International in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which advocates against unsustainable uses of forests. Maindo is also a noted campaigner against nepotism and favoritism in the granting of grades and degrees to the relatives of powerful people in Congolese universities. He is a frequent media commentator on the politics of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in outlets including The BBC, Radio Okapi, Actualite.cd, il Cambiamento, and MediaCongo and Afrikarabia. His work on Congolese politics has also been cited by governmental agencies like the Belgian Centre national de coopération au développement.

Selected works Voter en temps de guerre (2001) Des conflits locaux à la guerre régionale en Afrique centrale (2007) L'Etat à l'épreuve de la guerre en Afrique centrale : Violences et recompositions sociales et politiques (2015)

Selected awards Claude Ake Memorial Award, Africa-America Institute and African Studies Association (2004)