Réforme douanière néolibérale, fragilité étatique et pluralisme normatif: le cas du guichet unique à Kasumbalesa

As a result of the fact that the Congolese government has agreed to embark on a neoliberal project aiming to reform and modernize the country’s customs services, Kasumbalesa, a booming border town on the international frontier between Congo and Zambia, has recently been equipped with a “guichet unique” or “single window” facility. Although this new facility is considered a major landmark in Congo’s fight against customs fraud, and is believed to be a significant step forward in the process of formalizing the international trade between Congo and Southern Africa, it has not led to the complete disappearance of various unofficial arrangements at the border. In this article, Kasumbalesa’s world of customs is analyzed through the use of Sally Falk Moore’s concept of the “semi-autonomous social field”. It is shown that, despite the introduction of the single windows facility, customs officials in Kasumbalesa and their clients continue to negotiate their own arrangements for the import and export of goods. We argue that the introduction of the single window facility has had four unexpected outcomes: it has given rise to a growing competition between customs services for access to illicit revenues; old corruption techniques have been recycled in order to avoid the restrictions imposed by the new system; there has been a growing trend towards the use of “customs brokers”; and, finally, the provincial authorities appear to have resorted to the creation of a “shadow institution” in order to step up their fiscal revenues