The creation of national parks and protected areas in South Kivu, DR Congo

In some postcolonial states, conservation functions as a policy of strategic extraversion, produced to satisfy global norms without being internalized as a national priority. This article analyzes conflicts related to the governance of the Itombwe Nature Reserve (INR) in South Kivu (DRC), starting from a founding controversy: Part of the local communities—particularly Balega groupings—actively supported conservation of the massif before being dispossessed by a state and international framework that marginalized their customary rights. Drawing on mixed methods (46 interviews, 384 household surveys), the article brings into dialogue strategic extraversion, accumulation by dispossession, and the sociology of collective mobilizations. It proposes two linked concepts: strategic extraversion, which captures the externally driven mode of production of conservation policy, and interstitial mobilization, which captures the form of community response, alternating between organized public visibility and silent transgression.