The BCC’s 2024 production table shows growth in concrete and cocoa, and a ceiling set by electricity.

By Kanisa Magazine · February 2025

Cement output in the Democratic Republic of the Congo rose 14 per cent in 2024 while electricity generation slipped, and that pairing is the best short summary of the economy beneath the mining headlines. Builders found more cement to buy. Factories and homes found no more power to use.

The Banque Centrale du Congo’s digest of 26 February carries the provisional 2024 production table, and it is more useful than the headline growth rate. Copper and cobalt fill the first rows, and the next forty tell a quieter story of an economy growing where roads, concrete and bottled drinks are made, and stalling where the grid and the ports set the limit.

What the production table shows

Cement and cocoa grew by double digits; power, water and port handling did not move.

The BCC reports cement at 2,625,780 tonnes in 2024, against 2,298,206 in 2023. Cocoa exports rose from 56,720 to 70,044 tonnes. Gold, coffee and rubber went the other way: gold fell from 34,526 kilograms to 27,938, coffee from 12,422 tonnes to 11,563 and rubber from 7,004 to 4,952. Electricity generation was 13,470 gigawatt-hours against 13,527, and potable water fell from 343 million to 328 million cubic metres.

Several rows carry identical figures from one year to the next, including alcoholic beverages at 6,280 thousand hectolitres and telephone traffic at 15,973 million units of consumption, which suggests estimates carried forward and not fresh surveys. The pattern still holds: growth in the table is concentrated in construction inputs and export crops, and the services that need reliable power are flat.

The mechanism: power caps the non-mining economy

A mine builds its own supply, while a bakery or a printer waits for the grid.

Many mining companies fund their own generation or buy bulk power under contract, so copper tonnage grows without the national grid. Non-extractive firms cannot do that. Flour output at 215,457 tonnes in 2024 was slightly below the 218,927 tonnes of 2023, and port handling at 1,876 thousand tonnes was unchanged. A miller’s output depends on electricity and on trucks reaching Matadi.

The IMF’s January staff report makes the same point in macro terms. It projects real growth of 5.4 per cent in 2025, with mining expanding by 4 to 5 per cent a year. Growth in the non-extractive sector is expected to reach 6.2 per cent only by 2029, after reforms and public investment take effect. The BCC itself puts 2024 growth at 7.9 per cent against the IMF’s estimate of 6.0 per cent, so readers should treat both as provisional.

Prices are calmer than output

Inflation near 10.7 per cent and a steady franc gave non-mining firms a rare planning window.

The BCC’s bill table puts year-on-year inflation at 10.66 per cent in the week to 19 February, down from a 23.8 per cent peak at the end of 2023, according to the IMF report. For a brewer or a flour miller, that means input costs rise more slowly than they have for three years, even though volumes are not growing quickly.

The east is subtracting from the national total

Conflict is removing farms, markets and aid from the non-mining figures.

The national table does not capture the east. UN News reported that suspended non-governmental assistance in food and agriculture affects 36,000 people in the area, and that the water supply in Goma was disrupted. A BCC series built on provincial reporting will carry the loss only with a delay, so the national figure for early 2025 will overstate what Kivu producers actually delivered.

What a business should read from it

Follow cement, power and port volumes, not the mine headlines, to see where demand is forming.

Investors who want exposure beyond mining should look first at inputs that already grow, such as cement, cocoa and construction supplies, and treat anything that depends on the grid as capacity-limited until generation rises. The next test is whether the 2025 production rows show electricity above 13,500 gigawatt-hours. If they do, flour, drinks and light industry have room to grow. Other extractives are not filling the gap: oil drifted from 7.41 million barrels to 6.88 million in the same table, and gold fell by a fifth.