Belgian Congo - Colonial Economic Policy

Colonial Economic Policy

The economic development of the Congo was the colonizer’s top priority. Under Belgian rule, two distinct periods of massive investment in the Congo’s economic infrastructure stand out: the 1920s and the 1950s.

After WWI, priority was given to mining (copper and cobalt in Katanga, diamond in Kasai, gold in Ituri) as well as to the transport infrastructure (rail lines Matadi-Léopoldville and Elisabethville-Port Francqui). To obtain the necessary capital, the colonial state gave the private companies, to a large extent, a free hand. This allowed, in particular, the Belgian Société Générale to build up an economic empire in the colony. Huge profits were generated and for a large part siphoned off to Europe in the form of dividends. The necessary work force was recruited in the interior of the vast colony with the active support of the territorial administration. In many cases, this amounted to forced labour, as in many villages minimum quotas of “able-bodied workers” to be recruited were enforced. In this way, tens of thousands of workers were transferred from the interior to the sparsely populated copper belt in the south (Katanga) to work in the mines. In agriculture, too, the colonial state forced a drastic rationalisation of production. The so-called “vacant lands”—i.e., the land that was not directly used by the local tribes—fell to the state, which redistributed it to European companies, individual white landowners (colons) or the missions. This way an extensive plantation economy developed. Palm oil production in the Congo increased from 2,500 tons in 1914 to 9,000 tons in 1921 and 230,000 tons in 1957. Cotton production increased from 23,000 tons in 1932 to 127,000 in 1939. After WWI the system of mandatory cultivation was introduced: Congolese peasants were forced to grow certain cash crops (cotton, coffee, groundnuts) destined for the European market. Territorial administrators and state agronomists had the task to supervise and if necessary sanction those peasants who evaded the hated mandatory cultivation.

The mobilization of the African work force in the capitalist colonial economy played a crucial role in spreading the use of money in the Belgian Congo. The basic idea was that the development of the Congo had to be borne not by the Belgian taxpayers but by the Congolese themselves. The colonial state needed to be able to levy taxes in money on the Congolese, so it was important that they could meke money by selling their produce or their labour within the framework of the colonial economy.

The economic boom of the 1920s turned the Belgian Congo into one of the leading copper ore producers worldwide. In 1926 alone, the Union Miniére du Haut Katanga exported more than 80,000 tons of copper ore, a large part of which was processed in Hoboken in Belgium. In 1928, King Albert I visited the Congo to inaugurate the so-called 'voie national' that linked the Katanga mining region via rail (up to Port Francqui) and river transport (from Port Francqui to Léopoldville) to the Atlantic port of Matadi.

During the great depression of the 1930s, the export-based Belgian Congo economy was severely hit by the world crisis, because of the drop of international demand of raw materials and agricultural products (for example, the price of peanuts fell from 1.25 francs to 25 cents). In some areas, as in the Katanga mining region, employment declined by 70% and in the whole country the exploitation of forced labour was diminished while many forced labourers returned to their villages.

After the occupation of Belgium by the Germans in May 1940, the Congo declared itself loyal to the Belgian government in exile in London to continue the war on the Allied side in the Battle of Britain with 28 pilots in the RAF (squadron 349) and in the Royal South African Air Force (350 Squadron) and in Africa. In the East African Campaign, in 1941-42, the Belgian-Congolese army was victorious in Asosa, Bortaï and Saïo. In July 3, the Italian forces ( under General Pietro Gazzera) surrendered when they where cut off by the Force Public under Lieutenant-général Auguste-Eduard Gilliaert. A Congolese unit also served in the Far Eastern Theatre with the British army in the Burma Campaign.

During WWII, industrial production increased drastically. After Malaysia fell to the Japanese, the Belgian Congo became a strategic supplier of rubber to the Allies. The Belgian Congo was one of the major exporters of uranium to the US during WWII (and the Cold War), particularly from the Shinkolobwe mine. The colony provided the uranium by the Manhattan Project, including in atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

After WWII, the colonial state took on a much more active role in the economic and social development of the Belgian Congo. An ambitious ten-year plan was launched in 1949. It put emphasis on house building, energy supply and health care infrastructure. The ten-year plan ushered in a decade of strong economic growth, from which, for the first time, the Congolese began to benefit on a substantial scale. In 1953, the Congolese were granted the right to buy and sell private property in their own name. In the 1950s, a Congolese middle class, modest at first, but steadily growing, emerged in the main cities (Léopoldville, Elisabethville, Stanleyville and Luluabourg).