Oakland/Kinshasa - On May 20, former DRC Prime Minister Matata Ponyo, former Central Bank Governor Deogratias Mutombo, and South African businessman Christophe Grobler, were found guilty of embezzlement related to the Bukanga Lonzo Agro-Industrial Park project. Matata Ponyo was sentenced to 10 years of forced labor, and the other two received five years. The court also ordered the confiscation of the assets of the first two, as well as the deprivation of their civil and political rights for five years.

The judgment is based on the investigation conducted in 2021 by the Inspection Générale des Finances (IGF), which estimated that US$285 million were embezzled during the establishment of the agro-industrial park, which started in 2014. At the time, CONAPAC and other Congolese farmers' organizations strongly denounced the project, implemented by the South African company AFRICOM, which had seized 80,000 hectares of land and excluded local farmers. In a 2018 report that was consulted by the IGF for its investigation, the Oakland Institute exposed the reasons for the project’s failure and called for lessons to be learned from its bitter and costly crash. 

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Felix Tshisekedi's government nevertheless resumed the project to establish 22 agro-industrial parks initiated under President Kabila and Prime Minister Ponyo. Part of this plan, the Ngandajika Agro-Industrial Development Support Program (PRODAN) was launched by the government in 2021 and financed by a US$50 million loan from the African Development Bank (AfDB).

While on paper, the new project is more focused on supporting farmers than its predecessor, its poor design inevitably dooms it to a similar fate. With more than 85 percent of the budget devoted to infrastructure construction and equipment purchases, it opens new opportunities for misappropriation, waste, and only marginally finances the necessary support for local producers and rural entrepreneurship, particularly for production and harvesting. Furthermore, an AfDB report from December 2024 warns of numerous implementation delays and that "two major bridges were not budgeted for in the project document on the Lubilandji and Kalelu rivers." Without these bridges, it is unclear how the park can ever operate given the large size of the river to be crossed by goods and equipment.

“There is a very high risk that this new park will turn out to be another white elephant, with expensive machinery and equipment that will end up rusting on site, as we saw in Bukanga Lonzo,” warned Frédéric Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute, who conducted a research mission in the area.

“Like Bukanga Lonzo, this project was designed without consulting the main stakeholders, the farmers and their organizations," said Maman Espérance Nzuzi Muaka, President of the farmer organization CONAPAC. "Congolese farmers are a powerful force capable of addressing the challenges of the country's food supply and the climate crisis. To play this role, they need help producing and selling their produce in ways that allow them to live with dignity and to be able to invest,” continued Nzuzi Muaka.

PRODAN plans to establish local processing facilities as well as transportation and storage infrastructure to facilitate the sale of agricultural produce. This infrastructure, however, will be useless if small-scale farmers are not involved and supported. In the context of DRC, where transportation infrastructure is lacking, support for agricultural production must prioritize agroecological practices and reduce the need for synthetic inputs, which are costly, polluting, and difficult to transport to farmers. Such practices would also open up opportunities for youth and women's entrepreneurship and support the rural economy, for example through the production of organic fertilizers, the multiplication of local seed varieties, etc.

“Since the project is financed by public debt, it is in fact, as with Bukanga Lonzo, Congolese taxpayers' money that will be spent. It is imperative to initiate an inclusive and participatory consultation in order to proceed with a radical reorientation of this project. Failure to do so will lead to another fiasco and more lawsuits, undermining the reputation of governance in the country,” concluded Frédéric Mousseau.

Top photo: Nyongolo Village where the agro-industrial park is to be established © The Oakland Institute