Strategy Producing what Congo consumes

How can Congo make the transition from an outward-looking economy paying for its imports with oil to one that makes most of what the country needs? That is the main challenge it has faced in recent years as import prices soar and oil starts running out. But most industrial facilities, confined to the economic capital, Pointe-Noire, revolve around oil. What’s more, the energy shortage, which the country is trying to overcome, has discouraged manufacturers from locating their plants there. Consequently, the strategy aims to diversify the economy by locally producing goods that can be substituted for imports. The industrial development ministry’s busy industrialisation roadmap includes mechanising agriculture, turning square kilometres of arable land over to farming with modern methods, creating agro-food industries, setting up industries to process the main natural resources (oil, wood, etc.), producing manufactured goods within the country (utensils, textiles, generic drugs, toiletries and other common consumer items) and developing export-oriented industrial economic zones. “The shift to industrialisation will take place by developing ‘structuring industries’ able to trigger the emergence of other industries upstream and downstream in the form of outsourcing, supplies or shipping goods, for example,” says the minister for industrial development and the promotion of the private sector, Rodolphe Adada “Palm oil, maize and manioc industries will play a key role in this strategy. We’ve held department forums to ‘map’ each region’s assets in order to define local development strategies and keep a certain amount of overall consistency.” The National Industrial Redeployment Programme (PNRI) is in charge of carrying out the operation, which has three basic goals: improving the business environment, strengthening the legal and institutional framework and developing industrial infrastructure.

Initiatives are already thriving in milling, cement-making, mining, logging, etc. The projects portend a likely new facilities boom in Congo, whose market has a good reputation on account of its good oil revenues, but the business environment must still be geared to that goal. The country’s emergence and industrialisation require it to cut red tape, set up special economic zones, develop newindustrialareas,establishstandardstomake companies put only quality products on the market and tighten up protection of intellectual property.

Congo’s traditional economic partners are involved in that effort, but South-South cooperation with emerging countries is also growing. Brazil has already signed an agreement with Congolese officials to locate industrial complexes specialised in making building materials 45km north of the capital.

By François BAMBOU