The USD 620 bn Africa sends abroad

The Democratic Republic of the Congo's endowment is, first and above all, a mineral one, and it is documented at Tier-1 confidence. On cobalt it is an outright global monopoly: 220,000 tonnes mined in 2024 on USGS figures, roughly 76% of world mine supply, sitting on reserves of 6,000,000 tonnes — about 55% of the global total. Yet almost the entire flow, some 99% by value, leaves the country as cobalt oxides and hydroxides (HS 2822) or unwrought intermediates (HS 8105), with no operational refining in-country and a sulphate refinery only planned for around 2030; the February 2025 export ban and the 2026–27 quota of 87,000 tonnes a year are a deliberate attempt to force domestic value addition. On copper the DRC is the world's second-largest producer behind Chile and Africa's largest, at 3.3 million tonnes in 2024 (about 11% of global output) on reserves of 80 million tonnes. The Kamoa-Kakula complex alone produced 437,061 tonnes in 2024 and has commissioned a 500,000 tonne-a-year direct-to-blister smelter that cast its first 99.7%-pure copper anodes on 29 December 2025, alongside the Lualaba Copper Smelter and legacy Gécamines facilities. Beyond the copper-cobalt core the country is the world's leading tantalum (coltan) source — 980 tonnes in 2023, about 41% of world supply, but heavily artisanal across North and South Kivu and Maniema and shadowed by conflict, including M23 occupation of the Rubaya deposit. Kibali (Barrick/AngloGold/SOKIMO) is Africa's largest gold mine, sustaining roughly 750,000 ounces a year; the portfolio is completed by world-class lithium at Manono, 11.7 million carats of diamond (2022), and tin, tungsten and zinc, with Kipushi producing 50,307 tonnes of zinc in 2024.

Energy is at once the country's latent super-strength and its binding constraint. The Inga site offers around 42,000 MW of potential and the national technically-feasible total is close to 100,000 MW, yet only Inga I (351 MW, 1972) and Inga II (1,424 MW, 1982) are built — about 1,775 MW installed, and running well below nameplate. Grand Inga / Inga 3 (2,000–11,000 MW) is in development, with the World Bank approving a US$250 million first phase of a US$1 billion programme in June 2025. Electricity access is among the lowest in the world: about 21% of the population in 2021 on World Bank figures, with the IEA placing it nearer 9% in 2022 on a different methodology, against a National Energy Compact / Mission 300 target of 62% by 2030. Hydropower supplies roughly 86% of electricity; crude oil output is modest at about 7.5 million barrels in 2022 with negligible domestic refining, and renewables are mostly mining-linked, such as the Manono Phase I solar farm.

The agricultural and forestry base is vast but almost entirely unprocessed. The DRC is the world's second-largest cassava producer at about 45.2 million tonnes in 2023, behind Nigeria's 60.8 million tonnes, but the crop is overwhelmingly subsistence, with minimal industrial starch processing. Palm oil tells the sharpest cautionary tale: a country that was the world's #2 producer in the 1960s is now a net importer, producing about 300,000 tonnes a year against demand above 500,000 tonnes, with PHC (roughly 30,000 hectares planted and about 90,000 tonnes of crude) the main industrial producer and a refinery only planned for 2028. Forestry is continental in scale — 155 million hectares, 60% of the Congo Basin and about 18% of the world's tropical forest, holding prized hardwoods such as Afrormosia, Wenge, Sapele and Iroko — yet a national FSC standard was adopted only in 2025, very little area is certified, and most timber still leaves as logs or sawnwood. Around 80 million hectares of arable land is largely uncultivated, alongside coffee, cocoa, rubber and maize.

The industrial, human-capital and logistics base is thin and, in manufacturing, shrinking. Manufacturing value added is about 8.2% of GDP in 2024 and has been falling for five years, with MVA per capita far below the world median at roughly US$548 (UNIDO 2025). Industrial activity is concentrated in special economic zones — the Maluku pilot SEZ near Kinshasa (operators including Varun Beverages, Saphir Ceramics, Sopaco, K Timber and Refriango), the Kin-Malebo SEZ (ARISE IIP), the PPC/DRC Manufacturing S.A. cement plant near Kimpese at 400,000–500,000 tonnes a year, and newer zones at Kinsevere, Lubero and Musienene — with a US$12 billion China-Congo Industrial City planned at Maluku. Human capital rests on a labour force of about 38.5 million in 2024 with roughly 65% participation but around 73% underemployment; skills cluster in large-scale and artisanal mining (some 2 million artisanal miners in 2022), agriculture and river/rail logistics, with emerging technical training such as the Kamoa Center of Excellence. Logistics remain the structural handicap: the country is effectively landlocked, with only about 37 km of coastline and a mineral belt more than 2,000 km from any port. Matadi (river, 8.2 m draft, about 170,000 TEU a year) handles some 90% of containers but cannot take large vessels; the Banana deep-sea port is under construction (DP World / Mota-Engil / BII) with a 600 m quay, 17.5 m draft and 450,000 TEU capacity, expected to cut trade costs by about 12% and create some 85,000 jobs; and the Lobito Atlantic Railway, about 1,739 km to Angola's Atlantic coast, has been operational since 2024, carrying the first DRC copper to the United States in August 2024 and the first refined anodes to Belgium, with the competing TAZARA route to Dar es Salaam being modernised.