PEAC: A forum on green entrepreneurship in Kinshasa

Kinshasa, April 27^th, 2021 (CPA) .- The Platform of Agricultural Entrepreneurs of Congo (PEAC) organized a forum on green entrepreneurship on Saturday as part of the launch of its activities for fiscal year 2021. This forum on entrepreneurship focused on « green entrepreneurship: a factor of sustainable development and job creation in the agricultural sector in the DRC ». This meeting made it possible to bring together the various actors of the Congolese agricultural sector, with a view to an exchange around the difficulties of agricultural entrepreneurship in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and to propose relevant strategies to remedy them. During their interventions, participants identified several obstacles to entrepreneurship, including climate change, inaccessibility to credit, macroeconomic instability, and the lack of support and accompaniment services. As a result, possible solutions have also been proposed in the face of these obstacles but also opportunities to invest in this sector. The professor at the Faculty of Agronomic Sciences of the University of Kinshasa, Mr. Paul Mafuka, who has studied agricultural entrepreneurship in the face of climate change, has, to this end, proposed to abandon the agricultural calendar, the river farming and carry out soil analyzes before production. He also demonstrated the DRC’s opportunities in terms of temperature and water resources, which unfortunately remain unused for agricultural purposes. The project manager at Mabele-Coop, Mr. Stéphane Kalenga, for his part referred to the contrast between the potential of the DRC in terms of climatic diversity, extent of arable land, surface area and observed food insecurity. To this end, he proposed an early initiation of education in the cultivation of the land, to complete the land and financial ecosystem, to adapt the infrastructures to allow the transformation and distribution of agricultural products so as not to break the value chain. Some agricultural entrepreneurs, such as « Jambo SARL and Mabele-coop » have during the discussions, shared their experiences on the stages of their success and the creation of jobs in the agricultural sector. The first company specializes mainly in the production of juices and the second is involved in the distribution of agricultural products in 50 supermarkets in Kinshasa. These entrepreneurs proposed to draw up a map of the actors in the agricultural sector who intervene throughout the value chain in order to list their category and their capacity in said value chain. The coordinator of the PEAC, Tshimungu, has, moreover, indicated that this platform was created to allow the various entrepreneurs to have a space of experience sharing and support in the agricultural project. On this value chain, a mapping of the production zones and the marketing system around these zones is being developed in order to create in the long term a semi-industrial processing zone in Kinshasa.