Economic Integration in the Lower Congo Region: Opening the Kinshasa- Brazzaville Bottleneck

Kinshasa-Brazzaville, currently the third largest urban agglomeration in Africa, is predicted to become Africa’s largest, and the world’s 11th largest, city by 2025. With an international border running right through it, this regional hub of economic activity is the obvious focal point for cross-border exchanges between the two Congos. Using satellite images of night lights, Figure 1 illustrates how, in spatial terms, the two capitals form a seamless urban unit, which has grown considerably over the last two decades. According to UN statistics, Kinshasa currently counts 8.8 million and Brazzaville 1.3 million inhabitants; up from 3.6 million and 0.7 million, respectively, in 1990. The United Nations (2010) expects the Kinshasa population to grow faster over the next 15 years than that of any other world metropolis, predicting a 2025 city size of 15.0 million. The population of Brazzaville is forecast to swell to 1.9 million. Despite their size, proximity and status as regional trade hubs, formal bilateral trade between the two cities as well as between their two countries is derisorily small. The province of Kinshasa accounts for over 21 percent of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) GDP but for a mere 0.8 percent of its exports. Officially recorded imports from the Republic of Congo (RC) represent but a fraction of a percent of Western DRC imports. Recorded volumes of transit trade are somewhat larger, but also account for well under one percent of Western DRC imports. Recorded RC imports from the DRC are only slightly more important, amounting to some 1.12 percent of total RC imports in value terms. There can be no doubt that these statistics largely understate the true volume of (formal and informal) trade, but they point toward considerable potential for an expansion of formal trade. Africa Trade Policy Notes