Record hunger and a rising coffee price coexist because roads, banks and security decide who can sell.

By Kanisa Magazine · March 2025

On 27 March 2025 the World Food Programme and its partners reported that 27.7 million Congolese faced acute food insecurity, the highest figure on record for the country, up 2.5 million on the projection published five months earlier. In the same week arabica coffee in New York stood 24 per cent above its price at the end of 2024. Congo has both a hunger crisis and a farming sector that world prices are rewarding. The distance between the two is market access.

The March data make the contrast concrete. Production is not the binding limit. Roads, payment systems and security are.

A record hunger count in a farming country

Ten million of the hungry live in four eastern provinces where trade routes have been disrupted.

The WFP release of 27 March, based on the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, counted 3.9 million people in emergency conditions and 10.3 million acutely food insecure in Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu and Tanganyika. It said maize flour, palm oil and cassava flour had risen by up to 37 per cent since December, and that the conflict had disrupted production and trade routes. The agency had reached 464,000 people with help so far in the year and was seeking US$399 million for six months.

The humanitarian figures are WFP’s. They are the framework any buyer or lender has to work inside.

What farmers are exporting

Cocoa exports rose 23.5 per cent in 2024 while coffee and rubber shipments fell.

The Banque Centrale du Congo’s output table, in its weekly digest, records 2024 cocoa exports of 70,044 tonnes, up from 56,720 tonnes. Coffee exports fell 6.9 per cent to 11,563 tonnes and rubber 29 per cent to 4,952 tonnes. Log exports slipped 3.6 per cent to 185,080 cubic metres. Even the best performer is small: cocoa at 70,000 tonnes is a niche against global supply.

World prices have since moved in different ways. The digest shows arabica at 397.80 cents a pound on 21 March against 319.75 at the end of December, and robusta at US$5,534 a tonne against US$4,871. Cocoa fell from US$11,545 to US$8,070 a tonne, a drop of 30 per cent. A cocoa exporter who did well in 2024 faces a much lower price in 2025. A coffee grower has the opposite problem if the crop cannot reach a buyer.

Why prices rise where food is plentiful

Goma imports over 90 per cent of its food, and the roads and banks that carry it were shut.

The mechanism is logistical. Aid agency ActionAid, cited by Business Day Ghana, found that over 90 per cent of Goma’s food comes from surrounding areas, and that road closures during the fighting produced staple price increases of 18 to 160 per cent in three markets. When banks close, farmers cannot be paid by transfer, traders cannot buy stock on credit and transport owners cannot fund fuel. A bag of cassava flour in a producing territory and the same bag in a city of two million can be separated by little distance and a great deal of risk.

Public money is meant to help. The 2025 finance law allots CDF 3,824 billion to agriculture, fishing and livestock, a 16.4 per cent rise, about 8 per cent of total spending. The Treasury’s capital line, though, had paid out only CDF 377 billion across all sectors by late February.

What buyers and lenders should do

Contract for access, not only for harvest, and keep a second payment route.

For a food processor or trader, the March evidence suggests three changes. First, treat transport and payment security as part of the supply contract: specify the route, the payment channel and who carries the cost if the road closes. Second, split sourcing between the east and the centre and south so that one closure does not empty a warehouse. Third, price exports against the current world market: robusta and arabica buyers are paying more, while cocoa buyers are paying nearly a third less than at the start of the year. Lenders to agribusiness should ask not only what a farm can produce but how the crop reaches the buyer, and by which bank, in a country where both can be closed in a week.