Yes, the DRC has a lot of potential. If Joseph Kabila had considered what he needed to do to make the Congo's economic growth hit above 15% he would (plan stolen from the internet):
- Consider looking at monetary policies to avoid currency fluctuations that other commodity exporters have. There's a few policy options that exist but each one of them has a draw back such as pegging the Congolese currency to the Euro.
- Certify artisanal miners in the Northeast. Use Gecamines to do so.
- Build transport links (road or air) to Kisangani where mined materials can be floated down the Congo river, AFTER initial processing.
- Have further processing occur again in Kinshasa. Thus, you have created a value chain.
- From Kinshasa, have the processed materials taken by train to the port of Matadi. Export globally from there.
This would involve substantial capital. It would require:
- major overhauls of port facilities in Kisangani, Kinshasa and Matadi, the refurbishment of the Matadi-Kinshasa railway
- purchasing large numbers of barges for transporting minerals from Kisangani to Kinshasa
- purchasing hundreds of artisanal mines in the northeast
- buying planes to transport minerals from the mines to Kisangani
- perhaps most importantly, completely restructuring Gecamines so that it can offer results and accountability.
But the benefits would be massive:
- large-scale regulated employment for thousands of workers in the northeast, which would result in a huge boon to the local economy
- Gecamines, as a state-owned company, would be able to heavily contribute to the state budget with mining profits
- security would improve as regulated extraction and employment undercuts rebel groups, while an improved state budget could (hopefully) improve the quality of the FARDC.
- increased regulated extraction would undercut the price for non-certified minerals, crippling illegal trade
- shipping out of the Atlantic rather than through other countries to the Indian Ocean would keep the trade in Congolese hands, and infrastructure investments would have a knock-on effect for other FDI.
