The giant's right arm.
The economy produces, builds and turns resources into real power. A giant without a right arm can defend itself, but builds nothing.
A State solvent on conditions.
Congo does not lack wealth. It lacks the capacity to capture it.
It exports its minerals without processing them and imports almost everything it consumes: food, medicines, industrial goods. A large share of economic activity escapes taxation, and wealth passes through the territory without feeding the State budget.
A State that depends on outside funding to pay its civil servants and its infrastructure is not sovereign. It is solvent on conditions, and the conditions are set by those who pay.
The future belongs to nations that produce and process, not to those that sell their land and buy back the fruit of their own labour at a high price.
Produce and process at home.
Refine in Congo
The DRC produces about three quarters of the world's cobalt (USGS, 2025). Refine copper and cobalt at home, all the way to cathodes and batteries, instead of exporting raw ore. Goal: raise local processing from 10% to 50%.
Feed the country
Some 80 million hectares of arable land (FAO). Mechanised farming that feeds the country and supplies a food-processing industry: coffee, cocoa and palm oil processed in Congo.
Produce what we import
Cement, medicines, textiles, metalworking: produce in Congo what the country imports today, with Congolese companies and a transfer of skills written into every partnership.
A business climate that attracts capital.
Seven measures to start, finance and grow businesses in Congo.
A business online
A single digital window to register a business online, with no middlemen.
Three years tax-free
A full tax exemption for three years for start-ups and small businesses.
A bank for small businesses
A National Development Bank to lend to small and medium-sized businesses.
Special economic zones
Lubumbashi for mineral processing, Kinshasa for industry and technology, Matadi for logistics and agribusiness.
Export at lower cost
Modernised Katanga-Lobito and Goma-Dar es Salaam corridors linking production areas to ports.
Disputes settled quickly
Specialised commercial courts and arbitration to resolve disputes quickly.
500,000 workers trained
500,000 skilled workers trained in ten years for mining, energy, agriculture and technology.
Five locks.
Each written into the Constitution and overseen by an independent institution.
Traceable revenue
All public revenue (tax, customs, mining) goes through a digital platform traceable in real time. Mining titles and concessions are public.
The DRC 2050 Sovereign Fund
The DRC 2050 Sovereign Fund is protected by the Constitution. Its capital can cover neither a deficit nor current spending. Only its returns finance the infrastructure of the Master Plan.
Two separate budgets
A share of revenue from strategic resources goes automatically to the Fund as soon as it is collected. A fall in commodity prices no longer becomes a budget crisis.
An independent central bank
An independent central bank, whose governor takes no instructions from the government, and a constitutional floor for foreign-exchange reserves.
Sovereign data
The State's tax and financial data are hosted in Congo, under the oversight of an independent audit committee.
A State that does not finance its own institutions does not control them.Joshua Nkombe, The Pillars of the Giant
Rules that apply to everyone.
A contract that is only worth the connections of the person who signs it is not a contract. It is a conditional promise.
Investors and entrepreneurs only invest for the long term where the rules are predictable and applied the same way to everyone. Legal certainty is the condition for long-term investment, and so for lasting wealth.
Every strategic agreement with a foreign power is subject to ratification by Parliament and published in full.
Source: The Master Plan (volume 1, chapters 6, 7 and 16) and The Pillars of the Giant (volume 4, chapters 11 and 13). Header photo: the Inga dam, Radio Okapi, CC BY 2.0 licence.
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