DRC joins the East African Community: what does it mean?

The Democratic Republic of Congo has officially joined the East African Community (EAC), becoming its seventh member. We look at what the implications are.

DRC shares a border with every country in the EAC apart from Kenya. Its admission also means that the EAC has a theoretical trade corridor that spans from the Indian Ocean to Atlantic Ocean.

The current members of the EAC are?Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda as well as DRC. The trading bloc has increased in overall GDP by 23% from $258bn to $317bn. Its population has increased by 46% to 285m people.

Kinshasa applied for membership of the EAC in 2019. It wants to use regional integration to give it?access to improve trade and political ties and enable the free movement of people within the region. The Congolese government still needs to ratify EAC laws and regulations before they come into effect. Congolese citizens will not be able to travel without a visa in the region for some months, and possibly longer than a year.

Access to power

It is estimated that DRC’s hydroelectric resources make up about one-eighth of global capacity and perhaps half of Africa’s potential capacity, thanks to the length and descent of the Congo river.

In particular, the prospect of connecting the?Inga Dams into the East African Power Pool is an attractive prospect. The Inga site is being considered for a much larger hydroelectric power station known as Grand Inga. If completed, would be the?largest hydroelectric power generating facility?in the world.

Access to the ports at Mombasa and Dar es Salaam

The admission to the EAC means that access to DRC through the ports of?Mombasa and Dar es Salaam is now possible. Kenyan and Tanzania logistics companies will relish the opportunity. Kenyan manufacturers especially will be interested in the chance to target 100m new consumers.

It potentially changes the entire investment profile of export businesses in East Africa with the prospect of mineral-rich DRC trading for finished goods and commodities. DRC is notably difficult to start and maintain a business in. For example: Nestlé built a small factory in DRC in 2009 to make stock cubes but exited in 2018. No major FMCG manufacturer has a factory in the country despite the prospect of a high growth 100m+ consumer market.

DRC is the world’s leading producer of cobalt, used in the manufacturing of batteries. It is the world’s fourth-largest producer of copper. It has around 150m tonnes of lithium deposits. DRC also has reserves of uranium.

In the broader context of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) which has been cited as a major driver of Volkswagen’s investment in an assembly plant in Rwanda, for example, the connection between a large demand market and manufacturing economies in East Africa is therefore important. In the short term it should suit both parties: DRC consumers get access to more and cheaper goods, while East African manufacturers get access to a large economy whose engine is the minerals needed for electric vehicles and portable electronics.

The?Mombasa and Dar es Salaam routes also bring DRC much closer to India and Dubai, both important hubs for manufacturing/distribution into East African markets. It also shortens the route to China.

The opening of an East-West trade corridor?

In theory, the inclusion of DRC in the EAC trading bloc opens up a new east-west trade corridor that multinational companies with factories in Kenya such as Unilever, Mars-Wrigley,?Kimberly-Clark and Diageo could exploit.

In practice, there is no road or rail network linking Kinshasa with the eastern parts of the country and therefore no viable trade corridor for now. The national road network is exceptionally poor and fraught with insecurity because of internal conflict in the east of the country.?Almost all the provincial capitals can only be reached by air.

Internally, the three main trade corridors are:?Lubumbashi-Goma (used by the mining industry),?Matadi-Kinshasa (linking the port of Matadi to Kinshasa) and Kinshasa-Kisangani (by?river).

Logistics experts are at pains to point out the significant gap between where the national road network is supposed to exist and where it actually exists. Only 1-2% of the national road network is paved. Of the 30,786 km of priority roads (around one fifth of the total road network in the country), 25% are in good condition, 16% in fair condition and 59% in poor condition to the point of not being identifiable as roads in some cases. Bridges are typically poorly maintained:?more than 90% of the bridges are in a poor or average condition.

As such, DRC is best understood as a set of discrete markets: Matadi, Kinshasa, Lubumbashi/Likasi/Kolwezi,?Mbandaka, Mbuji-Mayi/Kananga, Kisangani, Goma/Bukavu. Goma is contiguous with the Rwandan city of Gisenyi. A frictionless border will generate significant economic activity in Rwanda too.

Plans to build an east-west trade corridor

There are no plans to build an east-west trade corridor within DRC.?The?AfDB’s comprehensive program to improve the major trade corridors in Africa?does not include any work on an east-west trade corridor in DRC.

However, the route of the 6,259km?Trans Africa Highway from Mombasa to Lagos?does pass through northeast DRC. 4,500km of the road has been built.?The route connects the Mpondwe border crossing in Uganda with Kisangani before heading northwest to Bangui (Central African Republic). The 1,561km section of the route in DRC is unpaved tracks only, and considered impassable after heavy rain.

Perhaps the only window for a road or rail network spanning the country would be via China: in January 2021, China and DRC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for cooperation on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the 45th country in Africa to do so. The incentive is that if the Chinese government wants access to DRC’s minerals and natural resources, it needs a port through which to send them. The rail corridors in both Kenya and Tanzania are already being built under the?Belt and Road Initiative.

But in order to ship minerals from DRC an east-west corridor from Kinshasa to Goma or Bukavu is?not?needed. Even if it were a priority, the cost and complexity might be prohibitive. As the crow flies, it is?1,574km from Kinshasa to Goma across tropical rainforest?that is subject to a heavy rainy season.

The three key international trade corridors are the Northern Corridor (Kenya to DRC) and the Central Corridor (Tanzania to DRC). There is also the?Southern Corridor, which links the province of Katanga with Zambia (and through to southern Africa).

The?Northern Corridor?is?the?busiest and most important transport route in East and Central Africa. It totals about?7,000km, of which 60% is paved. It links the port at Mombasa to?Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and?the Congolese cities of Bukavu and Goma.

The?Central Corridor Transit Transport Facilitation Agency (CCTTFA)?launched in 2015. Its focus is improving the transit of goods from the port at Dar es Salaam to Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and the Congolese cities of Bukavu and Goma.

The Southern Corridor can?link up with the Central Corridor and the port of Dar es Salaam. Or it can enable routes to Nacala, Beira, Maputo (Mozambique) or the port of Durban (South Africa). Note, however, the lead time from Lubumbashi to Beira is estimated at 39 days. Even the 900km from Lubumbashi to Harare is estimated at 5 days of travel.

The creation of a major Swahili language market

One of the underrated impacts of DRC joining the East Africa Community is the role that Swahili could play in the region as a primary language. In February 2022 the African Union — adopted Swahili as one of its official working languages.?In June 2020, South Africa had introduced Kiswahili as an optional subject.

Proponents of a single language for Africa hope that the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCTFA) could mean Swahili becomes Africa’s common business language. There is also a dimension of shedding a colonial past: English, French and Portuguese are all official languages in various African countries by virtue of the colonial past.

Swahili is spoken by around 200m people in Africa and can be found in communities in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DRC, South Sudan, Somalia, Mozambique, Madagascar, Malawi, Zambia and Comoros.

In the EAC, the inclusion of DRC means that there are two major working languages, French and English as well as Swahili. Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have no history speaking French. DRC has no history of English language usage. Swahili offers an attractive third way.