Air Congo launched with Goma on its map; four months on, access has narrowed and hospitality bills have climbed.

By Kanisa Magazine · April 2025

Air Congo took off in December 2024 with Goma on its opening route map. By the end of January that airport was closed, and by the end of April the cost of eating out or taking a hotel room across the country was rising faster than the price of food. Congo’s leisure economy is being repriced from two directions at once: access is closing in the east while costs climb in the cities that remain connected.

The evidence sits in two places. The Banque Centrale du Congo’s weekly digest dated 30 April 2025 carries the national consumer-price index by function, and the aviation press carries the record of the airline and its airport. Read together they give an operator’s view of travel, hospitality and leisure demand in a dollarised economy where the franc has barely moved.

An airline built around a map that changed

Air Congo’s network was designed for a connected country, and one node was removed within six weeks of launch.

Air Congo was inaugurated at N’djili by President Félix Tshisekedi on 18 December 2024. The state holds 51 per cent and Ethiopian Airlines 49 per cent, and Ethiopian leases the aircraft: two Boeing 737-800s at the start. The launch routes joined Kinshasa to Lubumbashi, Goma, Kisangani, Kolwezi, Kalemie and Mbujimayi.

On 26 January the M23 movement declared the airspace above Goma closed. Ethiopian Airlines and Jambojet suspended their international flights, ch-aviation reported on 29 January, and flight-tracking data showed no movements since the closure. Goma stayed shut through April, and a route meant for lake-side visitors, aid workers and traders became an empty line on a timetable.

What hotel and restaurant prices did in four months

Hospitality costs rose 5.1 per cent between December and late April, almost twice the headline rate.

Restaurants and hotels stood at 821.93 in the fourth week of April, against 782.08 at the end of December: a rise of 5.1 per cent. The general index went from 464.362 to 477.996, or 2.9 per cent. Transport rose 6.7 per cent, from 473.4 to 505.2. Food rose 2.8 per cent. Communications moved 0.5 per cent, and education barely at all.

The pattern is specific. Moving around and eating away from home became dearer while mobile services and school fees stayed put. For a hotelier or caterer, the guest’s journey and the guest’s lunch both rose faster than the economy around them.

Why dollar prices meet franc costs

A hotel sells in dollars and pays in francs, so a still exchange rate hides the squeeze.

Rooms, conference packages and airfares in the main cities are quoted in dollars. Wages, generator fuel, laundry, local food and municipal charges are paid largely in francs, and a share of the drinks and the kitchen stock is imported. The BCC’s interbank rate was CDF 2,855.09 to the dollar on 25 April, against CDF 2,847.66 on 31 January: a move of 0.3 per cent in nearly three months.

With the currency flat, the 5.1 per cent cannot be exchange-rate pass-through. The digest does not explain the move, but its shape is consistent with higher inter-city transport costs and thinner flight capacity feeding straight into what a visit costs. The 25 per cent policy rate makes franc working capital expensive for a business that earns in dollars.

Where the money goes next

Leisure spending follows corporate travel from the Copperbelt, because that is where dollars and flights concentrate.

The demand that survives is tied to mining and to the capital. London copper ended the BCC’s series at US$9,351 a tonne on 25 April, 6.4 per cent above the end-December level, and international reserves stood at roughly US$6.7 billion. Kolwezi sits on Air Congo’s launch map beside Lubumbashi, and the visitors who fill those rooms are engineers, buyers and auditors rather than tourists.

That favours suppliers who can serve a mine-linked guest: breweries and soft-drink bottlers, caterers, laundries, car-hire and security firms in Kinshasa, Lubumbashi and Kolwezi. Their spending stays local, in a currency that held its value. Eastern operators lose the visitor but not the bill for staff and food.

The decision for operators

Underwrite hospitality on Kinshasa, Lubumbashi and Kolwezi demand, price in dollars and contract locally.

Hotel and venue investors should size projects on corporate and aviation demand in the three stable hubs and treat eastern tourism as an option, not a base case. Price in dollars, hold costs in francs where the supplier will accept them, and track three numbers each month: the BCC’s restaurants-and-hotels index, Air Congo’s frequencies on the Copperbelt routes, and the status of the Goma gateway. When the index and the timetable rise together, rates can follow. When only the index rises, margins are being spent.