The BCC’s April growth projection looks healthy until it is divided among 92 million people and a broken road network.

By Kanisa Magazine · April 2021

Congo’s mines dominate every discussion of its economy, yet most Congolese earn and spend outside them. The central bank’s April digest shows what that wider economy looks like: a projected 3.5 per cent growth rate for 2021 that, after population growth, leaves about 0.5 per cent for each person.

The BCC weekly digest of 29 April puts real GDP growth at 0.8 per cent in 2020 and 3.5 per cent in 2021 as a projection. Real GDP per head, measured in 2005 dollars, rose from US$301.24 to US$302.70. The 2020 figure was a fall of 2.2 per cent per head.

The story of April is therefore the part of the economy that does not export copper, and how fast it can grow into the gap.

What the arithmetic says

Population growth at 3 per cent absorbs most of a 3.5 per cent expansion.

The same table counts 92.1 million residents in 2021 and a population growth rate of 3.0 per cent. Nominal GDP is projected at US$58.3 billion, or US$633.50 a head at current prices, up from US$554.70 in 2020. In constant prices the picture is flatter, at about US$303 a head.

That is the difference between a headline and a household. An economy that adds roughly 2.7 million people a year needs several per cent of growth just to stand still, and it needs growth that reaches the places those people live: Kinshasa, Lubumbashi, Goma and the provincial markets, rather than only the mine gate.

Where the weight sits

Staple food and telecoms are the largest non-mining sectors a household touches every week.

The digest tracks outputs beside mining: palm oil, flour, beer and soft drinks, cement, electricity, telephone traffic. Households, though, feel two chains most directly. One is the staple food chain. The other is the mobile phone, which now carries airtime, data and a growing share of payments.

Airtel Africa’s results to 31 December 2020, published on 29 January 2021, gave a view of the second chain. Its Francophone Africa segment, which includes the DRC, grew revenue 8.0 per cent in constant currency over nine months and 15.0 per cent in the third quarter, with the mobile-money customer base up 32.3 per cent to 3.6 million across the segment. The company named the DRC among the countries where revenue grew.

How a road becomes a price

Transport cost, not farm output, is often what sets what a family pays for cassava.

The food chain shows a different mechanism. Radio Okapi reported on 29 January that a full sack of dried cassava in Matadi had doubled from CDF 50,000 to CDF 100,000 in two months. Sellers blamed the state of the roads between villages such as Luozi and the port city, not a poor harvest.

That is a logistics price. It sits in the cost of moving a bag from field to town, and it shows up in the consumer price index regardless of what copper does. The digest’s Kinshasa data shows the same weakness: the potato, cassava, tuber and banana sub-index rose 1.58 per cent in a single week at the end of April.

Why the new government’s arithmetic matters

A US$36 billion action plan set against a budget under US$6 billion forces choices about which roads and networks come first.

The Sama Lukonde government won its confidence vote on 26 April by 410 votes to none, with two abstentions. Infocongo noted that the action programme was costed at US$36 billion against a budget below US$6 billion.

That gap defines what a business can expect. State money will not rebuild every route at once. Whichever corridors are funded first will decide where non-mining growth concentrates in 2021 and 2022.

What this means for a trader or investor

Position near the corridor that moves goods and data, and measure growth per head, not in total.

A retailer, a distributor or a telecom-services supplier should plan on growth per head near 0.5 per cent, not 3.5 per cent. That points to price-sensitive volume, to purchasing power that depends on food prices, and to channels that cut transport costs: consolidated freight, local sourcing near Matadi and Kinshasa, and mobile payments that remove cash handling.

The practical test for the second half of 2021 is simple. Where the government names its priority corridors, growth outside mining should be easiest to reach, and the BCC’s own growth-per-head line is the number to hold the headline to.