Copper volumes are up 14 per cent, yet per-person GDP is projected at US$556, against US$581 two years ago.

By Kanisa Magazine · August 2021

Congo’s economy is on course to be larger in 2021 than in 2019, yet the average Congolese is projected to be poorer in dollar terms. The BCC’s digest of 25 August puts 2021 GDP at US$51.2 billion, above the US$50.4 billion of 2019, but GDP per head at US$556.2, below the US$580.7 of 2019. Copper volumes are climbing 14.2 per cent while the population grows by about 3 per cent a year. The headline belongs to the mines, and the gap between the two numbers is where the rest of the economy lives.

The same digest also records what it does not know. For coffee, cocoa, palm oil, flour and drinks, the 2021 column is blank.

What the mining headline contains

Mining output is strong and concentrated; it does not describe most households.

Provisional output through July was 1.04 million tonnes of copper, 14.2 per cent more than a year before, and 52,246 tonnes of cobalt, up from 47,895. Zinc edged up from 8,685 to 8,932 tonnes. The BCC’s own estimate of 2021 growth is 5.1 per cent, at constant prices, from 1.7 per cent in 2020. In May, an IMF mission projected 4.9 per cent for 2021, so both forecasts agree on the size of the rebound.

What they do not show is where it lands. The digest’s GDP estimate rests on production data to the end of March, which means it carries mines’ output into the aggregate more reliably than informal trade, farming or services.

The people-per-dollar arithmetic

Growth of 5.1 per cent becomes 2.1 per cent a head once the population is counted.

The digest estimates the resident population at 92.1 million in 2021, growing 3.0 per cent a year. Real GDP per head therefore rises only 2.1 per cent in 2021, after a fall of 1.2 per cent in 2020. In current dollars, GDP per head recovers from US$544.8 to US$556.2, yet it remains US$24.5 short of 2019.

That is a pattern hiding in plain sight across commodity economies: output records and household stagnation can coexist when the growing sector is capital-intensive and the population is increasing quickly. A mine adds tonnes without adding many wages.

Where the household economy actually sits

Farming employs three in four workers and produces a fifth of GDP.

A World Bank appraisal document from June describes agriculture as roughly a fifth of output while employing between 70 and 75 per cent of the economically active population. It sets value added per worker at US$338 a year and counts about 16 million farmers on average holdings of 1.6 hectares. Rural households, 55 per cent of the population, draw more than 80 per cent of income from farming.

If most workers produce a fifth of GDP, their rise depends on yield, roads and prices, none of which the copper price changes. Annual inflation in the BCC’s weekly series has eased to 6.05 per cent in the third week of August, having started the year near 15.5, which helps a household budget but does not by itself create demand.

What a consumer-facing business should read

Plan demand from household income, not from the mining index.

A retailer, brewer or telecoms operator in Congo should not extrapolate from copper tonnage. The digest’s blank 2021 columns for beverages, flour and telecommunications mean the household-facing numbers are not yet in. In their absence, use proxies: the pace of food inflation, pump prices and urban wage settlements.

The split is a hypothesis for planners to test against their own sales by region, since no official series measures it. The practical rule is to forecast sales in Kinshasa, Lubumbashi and Kolwezi, where mining wages circulate, at the growth rate of mining output, and sales elsewhere at the 2 per cent per-head figure. The World Bank’s US$500 million agriculture programme, with 4,000 kilometres of feeder roads, is the first scheme large enough to change the second number, and it is worth tracking as a demand indicator rather than a development footnote.