What if the Parliamentary Commission in charge of Belgium’s colonial past contributed to decolonizing the Congolese economy? — Free Africa
Opinion By Baudouin Michel,
Agro-economist. Rector of IFA-YANGAMBI-DRC / Director of ERAIFT-DRC / Lecturer University of Liège – Gembloux Agro-Bio Tec-Belgium
The future impact of the recommendations on the daily life of the Congolese in the cities and in the vast rural areas of the DRC remains to be estimated, but already, few recommendations and analyzes of the Parliamentary Commission seem to relate to the socio-economic domain stricto sensu.
Or the consequences of the past and the colonial economic model on the current Congolese economy remain tangible.
If the Congolese Internet user pays his Internet connection 60 times more than the Belgian Internet user for a connection 20 times slower, it is partly a consequence of the monopolistic vision of the economy, taking its roots in the colonial economic model. disfavoring free competition and free access to the market.
Examples of the economic and social consequences of the oligopolistic situations of Congolese suppliers of goods and services abound:
– At certain times, the plane ticket Kinshasa-Goma (1,573 km) costs more than the plane ticket Kinshasa-Brussels (6,222 km) or Kinshasa-Paris (6,044 km);
-In 2019, a Congolese coffee exporter paid 220 USD/Tonne to export his coffee from Goma to Mombasa (export port in Kenya) while his Rwandan colleague 2 km from the Congolese border paid 90 USD/Tonne to go at the same port of Mombasa.
This difference in export cost is unfortunately entirely passed on to the small Congolese coffee producer.
The Congolese economy remains, despite certain diversification efforts, a rent economy based on 4 rents: mining rent, oil rent, land rent and forestry rent.
This logic of rent leads to a low creation of local added value and low investments outside the rent-producing sectors.
According to a report published by FAO, CIRAD and the EU (https://www.fao.org/3/cb8157en/cb8157en.pdf) in 2022, investments in the agricultural and agro-industrial sector will remain marginal, while sustainable Congolese family farming spread over the 80 million hectares of available arable land (outside forests) could feed 2.1 billion people and produce tens of millions of decent jobs.
The DRC is thus experiencing difficulties in feeding its 90 million inhabitants, while its fertile land, its regular rainfall, its tens of millions of young people in search of decent work (the median age of the Congolese population is 18 years old) could contribute to feeding 25% of humanity through investments and an appropriate agricultural policy.
The rentier economy, the positions of monopolies and oligopolies of suppliers of goods and services and the weaknesses in the effectiveness of the sovereign functions of the State induce a high level of poverty (the incidence of relative poverty has reaches 63.41% in 2021) particularly in rural areas (the incidence of relative poverty reaches 90% in the most remote rural areas).
Thus, if the Ivorian farmer can hope to receive 55% of the added value of his marketed agricultural production, if the Vietnamese farmer sometimes receives 85%, the Congolese farmer rarely receives more than 20% of the added value of his production. sometimes even marketed, only 1% of the added value of its production in the most remote areas of the country.
The Congolese peasant is thus one of the most resilient homo economicus on the planet, surviving the many punctures and deductions from private, public, formal and informal actors (there are up to 149 formal and informal taxes, levies, royalties, etc.). informal in certain sectors and agricultural production areas). The Congolese peasant is also confronted with unfair competition from world and regional agricultural markets, the existing tariff protection of Congolese agriculture being in fact little or not applied at border posts.
Effective agricultural policy is, as too often in many African food-importing countries, designed by urbanites for urbanites to the detriment of small rural producers.
The value chains in agriculture but also in the artisanal mining sector are therefore very inequitable to the detriment of small family producers.
However, “success stories” exist at representative scales in several provinces and in more than several agricultural sectors.
Thus, the farmer on the Batéké plateau in Ntsio (180 km from Kinshasa) sees his income increase sustainably from 50 USD/month to 500 USD/month thanks to agroforestry.
His fellow producers of sustainable palm oil (Sud Ubangui Province), fair trade coffee and cocoa (North Kivu) are also experiencing significant sustainable increases in income.
These initiatives supported by the European Union and Belgium, which have demonstrated their impact and viability, deserved to be extended to the entire Congolese territory, after adaptation to the local context.
The problems are therefore not technical but economic and political.
In this context, could the Parliamentary Commission contribute to producing, in the long term, concrete results for Congolese and urban and rural Congolese confronted with daily socio-economic difficulties?
The Congolese economy badly needs to sustainably create inclusive added value in Congo.
The production and export of raw unprocessed products in agriculture, mining and the oil sector induces long-term poverty in exporting countries dependent on the export of raw unprocessed raw materials.
Economists, including Professor Philippe Lebailly of the University of Liège, intimidate this dependence on exports of unprocessed raw materials in the countries of origin “The curse of raw materials”.
This dependence, under certain conditions, can induce what economists call the “Dutch disease”, namely significant economic growth without commensurate human development. Some symptoms of this “Dutch disease” are perceptible in the DRC, particularly in the mining provinces, which produce too little agricultural food products.
Instead of producing and exporting logs, copper, cobalt, coltan, rubber, cocoa, Congo could export parquet, electric motors and transformers, batteries, smartphones, tires and chocolate . Thanks to an incentive industrial and tax policy, tax-free exports of processed products and taxing the export of raw products, the “Asian tigers and dragons” have succeeded in this massive creation of local added value and jobs.
If existing experiences (for example the chocolate factory recently installed in Mutwanga, in the Province of North Kivu), it must be recognized that most of the current foreign direct investments, mainly of Chinese and Indian origin, do not contribute sufficiently to the creation of value added national value and, on the contrary, tending to perpetuate a “Leopoldian” economy, favoring rapid exports of unprocessed raw products to industrialized countries, historically European and today essentially Asian.
The infrastructures financed and implemented over the past 15 years in the road, river and maritime sectors thus favor the rapid exit of exports of unprocessed raw products to the export seaports in the DRC and East Africa.
These foreign direct investments are also often not respectful of international environmental and social standards.
If we want to achieve the objective of lifting two-thirds of the Congolese population out of poverty by diversifying the economy and providing for national added value, it is imperative to attract national and international private capital from legal entities and natural persons respecting international environmental, land and social standards recognized worldwide (standards to which the DRC and Belgium adhere).
Is it possible to mobilize Belgian and European capital for this objective?
Could the Parliamentary Commission contribute to this?
The all-European Parliamentary Commission brings about the unfortunately still tangible consequences of the colonial economic model, could encourage Belgian capital, respectful of decent work and the environment, to invest in the Congo in job-generating sectors (sustainable family farming, agro-industrial transformation , waste management, production of green electricity, transformation of raw materials produced locally, etc.).
Mobilizing Belgian and European capital historically active in the DRC during colonization and after, through a communication and targeted campaign, could also be a strong recommendation of the Parliamentary Commission, contributing to trying to reconcile the past and the future of Congo and the Belgium.
In 2020, the DRC was ranked 183e out of 190 countries in the World Bank’s “Doing Business” ranking.
The business climate and the difficulties encountered in recruiting qualified personnel are often cited by foreign direct investors who respect international standards in terms of the environment and the fight against corruption and money laundering, as a major constraint to their investment. in the DRC.
The Parliamentary Committee could therefore also encourage an improvement in the business climate in the DRC by suggesting to the Belgian government to strengthen the political dialogue between Belgium and all the Congolese actors in the DRC concerned by this subject, and to make the best use of the cooperation instruments available to Belgium in the Congo to improve the business climate and strengthen the education sector.
Other measures are certainly to be identified and suggested by eminent Congolese and Belgian economists who have examined the colonial economy and the current Congolese economy.
Seen from Yangambi, Tshopo Province, 1,740 km from Kinshasa, in the heart of the Congolese forest and the new “Science Pole” that the DRC is developing with the support of its European and Belgian partners, it seems important that The recommendations of the Parliamentary Commission in charge of Belgium’s colonial past could ultimately benefit those “forgotten from rural development” who are waiting for new prospects.