Sixteen million farmers, 27 million hungry people, and a median eight hours to reach a settlement.

By Kanisa Magazine · July 2021

Congo’s farmers are numerous, its rainfall is generous and its people are hungry. Those facts coexist because the binding constraint sits between the field and the market. A World Bank appraisal document of June 2021 counts about 16 million farmers and finds that in 23 of 26 provinces the median travel time to reach a settlement is eight hours. An IPC analysis reported in March put 27.3 million Congolese, 28 per cent of the population analysed, in acute food insecurity.

The BCC’s statistical digest of 28 July adds a third datum: for coffee, cocoa, palm oil and flour, the 2021 column is empty. The sector that employs most Congolese is the one least measured in real time.

A big farm sector that produces a small share of output

Farming employs 70 to 75 per cent of workers and yields about a fifth of GDP.

The Bank’s June appraisal of a US$500 million National Agriculture Development Programme records that agriculture accounts for about 20 per cent of GDP and employs 70 to 75 per cent of the economically active population. Value added per worker is US$338 a year. The average holding is 1.6 hectares, and cereal productivity is half the sub-Saharan African average.

Low productivity and low incomes feed each other: a farmer who cannot reach a buyer will not buy seed or fertiliser, so yields stay low and so does the reason to plant for sale.

What the export crops show

Cocoa output tripled in five years while coffee and timber slipped.

The BCC’s long-run series separates crops that found a route from those that did not. Cocoa output was 36,991 tonnes in 2020, from 11,081 tonnes in 2015. Rubber rose from 1,346 to 7,372 tonnes over the same period. Palm oil edged up from 13,423 to 14,882 tonnes. Coffee fell from 18,116 to 14,223 tonnes, and log output from 250,515 to 115,446 cubic metres.

Wheat flour, milled for the domestic market, slipped from 202,703 tonnes in 2015 to 188,988 tonnes in 2020. Cocoa, a high-value crop that can be dried, bagged and carried, grew. Bulky, perishable or low-value staples did not. The pattern says the market, not the soil, picks winners.

How the cost builds from field to city

Road time, storage losses and diesel eat the farmer’s margin before the basket reaches Kinshasa.

The appraisal identifies the mechanism. Poor rural roads, insecurity and expensive diesel generators raise the cost of inputs and produce. Warehousing and agro-processing are thin, so post-harvest losses are large. The document also notes a predatory fiscal and para-fiscal environment, meaning taxes and levies stacked along the chain. Each stage subtracts from the farm-gate price and adds to the city price.

July’s fuel revision made that arithmetic worse in some corridors. Zoom Eco reported that diesel in the southern zone rose from CDF 1,920 to CDF 2,260 a litre from 28 July, while the western zone around Kinshasa stayed unchanged. A stable franc, 0.8 per cent weaker than in December on the BCC’s indicative rate, also keeps imported staples cheap in the capital. That is good for consumers and discouraging for growers competing with imports, although the digest does not itself measure that trade.

The food-security cost

A country that cannot move food internally is exposed to shortages in the middle of plenty.

IPC reported 27.3 million people in Phase 3 or 4, of whom 6.7 million were in Phase 4, according to Actualite.cd’s March account, the greatest need for assistance recorded anywhere in the world at that time. That was a slight improvement on 33 per cent in July 2020, and conflict and displacement remained drivers.

Where a business should put capital

Build the first mill or store at the end of a rehabilitated road, not in the capital.

The Bank’s programme includes US$110 million for rehabilitating 4,000 kilometres of unpaved feeder roads, plus a credit line for agricultural micro, small and medium enterprises, routed through the BCC’s SME refinancing window. An agro-processor in Kasai, Kongo Central or the Kivus should site capacity at a node those roads will serve, apply for that line, and sign offtake with farmer groups before the roads are finished. The road is the asset that makes the crop bankable.