Paper long abstract:

This paper will consider how a continued shortage of European administrative agents led the Belgians to institute policies aimed at transferring some junior administrative roles to Congolese auxiliaries, and will examine the development of education provision for those destined to take up such roles. After briefly looking at the causes of the shortage of Belgian recruits to the colonial service, the paper will go on to discuss the early debate over the employment of Africans alongside Europeans, and will then look at the development of the both ‘official’ and subsidised schools for clerks during the 1920s and 1930s.

The expansion of the ‘official’ schools for clerks (écoles des candidats-commis) and the development of their educational programmes in the early 1920s were motivated by pragmatic government requirements. This paper will consider how the limited scope of the programme taught in such schools was meant to avoid the development of an undesired ‘évolué’ class but will argue that such attempts were in fact unsuccessful.

The paper will also look at why the colonial government’s partners in providing education, the Catholic missions, were initially unwilling to support the drive to train more African clerks and why this changed during the 1930s.

Finally, the paper will argue that the development of the schools for clerks during the interwar period offers an illustration of an education policy being entirely motivated by a specific political issue, but that the consequences of its introduction were far more extensive than the colonial government had anticipated.