LE CAPITAL

Financing possibilities of the DRC economy are scarce.    Similarly to the entire Sub-Saharan Africa, DRC is a market mainly attractive to bankers for transactional purposes likely to be sustained by the large amount of prospective clients. In view of local bank’s timid funding strategies, looking at the country for the potential it holds to host attractive venture opportunities is seldom the rule. This is especially true for start up companies which most scholars believe remain a significant component of the solution to the region’s development issues; despite their high-risk nature. I therefore borrowed key note speaker star Josh Linkner’s model for   disciplined dreaming   and asked myself his three key questions concerning the subject matter: Why? What if? Why not? Why? The reason why start ups firm fail to develop in the Congolese context is often attributed to a vicious circle citing lack of financing as the main reason. But do we have what it...

Copper suddenly fell out of bed yesterday morning! The red metal dropped to its lowest in 5 or 6 years. As  Bloomberg  reports current 3 months copper at about USD 5500 a ton, i took a look at the impact of a stumbling copper in DRC financial ecosystem. What happened? While every analyst goes about its interpretation, the general view collected here and there points out two culprits: Energy prices and…you’ve guessed it: China. Firstly, copper prices have been stumbling for the past couple of months but some analysts believe the drastic lows of this past week or so followed energy prices (mainly oil) as industrials fear a more global commodities crisis. Secondly the World Bank recently reduced its world economic growth outlook led by worse-than-expected economic data from China thus creating fear of demand weaknesses for the red metal. And DRC in all of that? The Oil price impact      At first sight, the fall in energy ...

Discussions concerning impact of Foreign Direct investments (FDI’s) in economic growth have been subject to lots of debate. Scholars, academics and policy makers have been voicing their opinion some arguing it does not matter while others arguing in favor of its role in creating economic growth although in selected sectors of the economy. Others  again establish a chicken an egg like debate on whether FDI leads to economic growth or the contrary. Looking at it through the lenses of DR Congo, the inevitable view is that it mattered.  Perhaps this appears so obviously because the flows of FDI’s from the late 90’s followed a relatedly lengthy period without any sizable investment. Whichever way we look at it, what i would like to call the « first round » of FDI’s was made of a mixed of investments between the primary sector, unveiling some mineral resources untouched for years (mainly mining), and the service industry, creating needs with...