Photo: Jonas KirikoInfoNile | 3 March 2025A journey to Boteka: Where only oil palms enjoy the right to land in DRC’s Northwest
By Jonas Kiriko
On a rainy morning, all is set for my journey from Mbandaka, the capital of the province of Équateur to Boteka in the Northwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It’s an eight-hour drive and my motorcycle driver is ready for the journey to the area well known for its palm oil plantations.
“Tokende” (let’s go), the driver tells me after arriving at my place. I quickly put on my raincoat and leggings, picked up the bag containing my work tools.
On Bosomi Avenue, our first stop on the way out of Mbandaka, we stock up on kwanga (a cassava meal) to accompany the dozen cans of sardines we bought the day before. Little did we know that these items would be our meal for the three days spent in Boteka, where there are no restaurants – not even a makeshift one.
With a full tank of fuel and a few liters in reserve, the long journey to the south of Mbandaka begins. This voyage takes you through territories like Bikoro and Ingende – the only two territories of the province of Equateur accessible by road.
Our intended destination of Boteka is in Ingende territory, more than 300 kilometers from Mbandaka.
The Transport Nightmare
Road transport remains a challenge in this area. It is endowed with numerous navigable waterways, including the Congo River – making access to different territories possible by barge. On the day of our journey, it rained all day –flooding the roadway. In many sections, however, this mud road is passable.
After several hours on the motorbike, we arrive at the junction leading to the town of Ingende, the capital of the territory of the same name. To shorten the journey and preserve our fuel stocks, we decided to explore a shortcut route.
So, the driver seeks guidance from a resident we met who does not know the exact distance but can estimate the fuel needed. “One litre kaka (only one litre),” he tells us. “Soki boleki na Ingende ekosenga trois litres” (if you go through Ingende, you will consume three litres), he adds.
To us, the choice is clear – take the shorter route. However, this proves to be more costly and time-consuming. It is a path dotted with rivers without bridges, flowing through small villages in the heart of a vast forest.
A motorbike approaches a dilapidated bridge on the way to Boteka 1A motorbike approaches a dilapidated bridge on the way to Boteka
We believe that the path taken would lead us to our destination, but we get lost for almost an hour and a half in the forest.
“Botunaki te?” (you didn’t ask?), a man returning from his field asks us, before pointing us in the right direction. Despite the exhaustion due to the many falls on this poor path, we have to turn back, not to mention a breakdown of the motorbike shortly afterwards.
The driver can not do anything about it, because he does not have the right tools and the expertise. To compound matters further, the area resident who has a toolbox was not a mechanic but only has the tools to help those who can use them, for a financial reward.
Glimmer of Hope
After nearly an hour of tinkering without finding a solution, our guardian angel, a well-known motorcycle mechanic from Boteka, arrives. He is using the same route as a shortcut, he says.
My driver and I have never been to this area, although during the negotiations he tells me he knows the destination. The mechanic, who only identifies himself as Patrick, fixes the motorcycle in a blink of an eye and agrees to drive us to Boteka without asking for anything in compensation for his services.
After more than an hour of travel, we are finally in Boteka, where the oil palms along the road in the plantation owned by Plantation et Huilerie du Congo (PHC) ‘scratch you’ so that you admire them. It is a town with many attractions. In addition to the oil palms, the old buildings dating to the colonial era captivate the eye as much by their dilapidation, their architecture and by the fact that they are almost the only permanent houses in this area of more than 3,500 people, according to 2019 statistics, available at the local chief’s office. Since this year, no official count has been made.
Because of the palm oil plantations, Boteka is a center of attraction for the elite and youth. However, it lacks several basic infrastructures and food insecurity is palpable. You only have to visit the market to realize this.
Although it is in the heart of a palm oil plantation, it is difficult to find two or three stalls selling palm oil. Here, a litre of palm oil costs 3,000 Congolese francs (about USD 1.05), the same price as in Mbandaka.
Due to limited land for cultivation, it is difficult to get a variety of food alternatives to the meal prepared out of cassava and its leaves (kwanga).
In Ingende, malnutrition among children, pregnant and breastfeeding women is acute. This situation is the result of several factors, according to the Integrated Food Security Classification (IPC) . These factors include the prevalence of diseases that can degrade nutritional status (diarrhea, measles, malaria), the lack of dietary diversity, the low frequency of meals, as well as low agricultural production.
A Hotbed of Land Conflicts
For several decades, a land conflict has pitted the agro-industrial company PHC against local communities. In some places, there are plantation limits accepted by the community, while in others, communities contest these limits, denouncing fraudulently placed markers.
This is the case in the villages of Loonga, Bofala Mboka, Bempunga, Bolondo, Bongale, Ilongo, Boteka and Likole. In Likole village, for example, the area occupied by more than 100 palm trees is contested by residents.
Peter Ifenge, a resident of Loonga village, condemns the expansionist ambitions of PHC. “There is land that was granted to the company by our ancestors. However, for some time now, it has been acquiring new pieces of land through unsavory means. In our village, the company took a large part of the land without our consent as members of the community. This is the case in nine other neighboring villages. Combining the area previously taken, we are talking of more than 180 hectares,” he explains.
We understand these claims date back to 1989 and 2013.
Without land, the community finds itself deprived of an important means of subsistence, with the situation further exacerbated by rivers that no longer yield enough fish.
According to Bosolo Jean-Louis, Loonga village chief, the company settled in this area during the colonial era, when his ancestors did not know sustainable land management.
“Today, in addition to the land taken during the colonial era, the company has expanded to other areas – occupying land that we ought to be utilizing for agriculture. We no longer have space to grow vegetables, cassava, corn and rice because all the fertile land is occupied,” the sixty-year-old narrates.
Even the land for PHC’s palm oil processing plant project is contested.
“They have taken everything. We are living in a difficult situation. They have forbidden us to consume palm nuts. Everything is controlled by a unit of the armed forces of the Republic (FARDC) and the rapid intervention police,” Jean-Louis explains, adding that it is also difficult to get palm oil due to purchase quotas. He notes that each village is only allowed to buy 25 liters of palm oil per week.
This statement is corroborated by palm oil dealers met at the Boteka market who indicate that they are not able to obtain supplies from the agro-industrial company due to a restructuring. They obtain supplies from individuals who are in the Boteka surroundings. However, we were not able to verify this with the company itself for protocol reasons.
The Cost of the Quest for New Land
Modeste Pierre Ishomba, an agronomist and head of the Comité de Réveil et d’Accompagnement des Forces Paysannes, a non-government organization, has been involved in training farmers in Boteka on alternative livelihoods and community development. This is aimed at easing tensions between PHC and the local population.
“The company has plantations and it intends to expand. This means reducing the available arable land. So, we trained people on fish farming, growing of peanut, cowpeas and other food crops,” he says.
Ishomba, however, points out that the available land is insufficient to meet the needs of the population.
Another observation from Ishomba is that Boteka is located in the central basin, which is marshy and with many river basins – therefore with limited farmland.
According to information obtained from local communities, between 2023 and 2024, PHC acquired nearly 2,500 hectares from an unnamed prominent person living in DRC’s capital, Kinshasa. This land covers over three villages whose inhabitants now find themselves without a cultivable area. The affected villages are Ifoma, Bolondo and Bempumba – but residents now say they are going nowhere.
“Everything was decided without our knowledge. We learned that a person living in Kinshasa sold our land to the PHC company. We are now landless because even the little we had left has just been sold without our consent,” Moïse Nkoy, a resident of Ifoma village says.
He adds that they have no intention of leaving “our land for an oil palm plantation.” “This is our land, our ancestors lived there, we will leave it to our grandsons,” he emphasizes.
Apart from people’s land, expansion of palm oil plantations is threatening the biodiversity-rich virgin forests.
Groupe d’Action pour Sauver l’Homme et son Environnement, a local non-governmental organization, warns that planting more oil palms will necessitate encroaching on forests, leading to a loss of biodiversity and non-timber products vital for the survival of Indigenous communities.
When contacted, PHC refuted the allegations. According to Mpoko Bokanga, the Executive Director of the PHC Foundation, the company only uses land where it has been for 100 years.
“We are in the fourth rotation of the plantation. We are not looking to expand the cultivated area. We are looking at increasing the productivity of our plantation, because it is much lower than that of countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, the leading palm oil producing nations.
Involvement of Security Forces
Events that unfolded in December 2023 are a living memory for Boteka residents like Herman Boliko. It’s when he witnessed the involvement of FARDC and police in the PHC-community conflict.
Exasperated by the alleged repeated theft of its palm nuts, PHC sought support from the armed forces to protect its interests.
Boliko acknowledges that some community members were stealing from the PHC plantations but adds that the intervention of the armed forces only heightened tensions between local communities and the company.
Many residents were arbitrarily arrested, Boliko recalls, with some of the charges questionable. “It was enough to find you with palm nuts and be arrested for theft or malicious destruction, yet we have palm trees on our small cultivable land. How can we then distinguish the nuts from our farms and those from the company plantation?”
Between 2021 and 2022, the US-based Oakland Institute documented different incidents involving armed forces in the operations of PHC. These are detailed in its November 2022 report titled Colonial Legacy of Today’s Thriving Exploitation in PHC’s Oil Palm Plantations.
“On September 14, 2021, Congolese soldiers and industrial guards from Plantations et Huileries du Congo (PHC) reportedly destroyed dozens of homes, committed systematic looting in several villages, including acts of torture and kidnappings of civilians from communities surrounding the plantations,” the report reads in part.
It also adds: “A few months later, in January 2022, after a group of PHC workers from the Boteka plantation went on strike to protest low wages, PHC called in the police and military who opened fire on the protesters, seriously injuring two workers.”
In his reaction to the report of the Oakland Institute on January 26, 2022, PHC stated: “we have seen an increase in palm fruit thefts at our sites by community members, which has produced a corresponding increase in law enforcement activity by local police,” and that “unfortunately some of these encounters between police and community members have escalated to violence.” PHC distances itself from this violence, claiming that “illegal activities are referred to local authorities whose actions are beyond PHC’s control,” and that “while PHC does not control the police force, we disprove any use of violence.
Optimism at Last
A cross section of workers at the PHC plantation acknowledge improvement in the working conditions today compared to periods before 2023.
“I worked for more than 2 years as a day laborer without any contract. But for some time now, workers have been signing 6-month contracts with the possibility of renewal,” a plantation worker who only identifies herself as Agate says.
She also notes that the company is also paying attention to safety at work and all its employees now work with protective gear.
However, the minimum wage remains at 7,000 Congolese francs (USD 2.41) per day, or about USD 75 monthly, some workers told our correspondent.
To prevent leaks caused by waste produced in its factory, the company installed a decanter to filter chemical waste and allow only water to flow. Other waste is used to make fertilizer that is used in the plantation. Due to access restrictions, we were unable to verify this from the factory.
In 2018, PHC signed a memorandum of understanding with representatives of the members of the local community, in the presence of the representative of the administrator of the territory of Ingende and civil society organizations, to streamline the implementation of the commitments stipulated in its agricultural concession. These commitments include the creation of socio-economic infrastructure and extension of social services for the benefit of local communities.
By the end of 2024, seven schools, two health centres, and a community warehouse had been constructed and handed over to communities.
However, some observers say this is not enough. According to Ishomba, agro-industrial companies have always limited solving the needs of communities to the construction of schools and health structures.
“They forget the economic and food needs of the community members. This is a misinterpretation of community needs. Since people can no longer cultivate, we must find alternative projects for them and give up expanding plantations,” he opines.
International Mitigation Standards Come into Play
Owing to increased incidents of human rights violations and abuse involving agro-industrial and forestry concessionaires, and the local community in countries like Ecuador, an international civil society – the Action Group to Save Man and His Environment (GASHE) established a standard Framework for dialogue.
This framework covers issues like respect for the rights of the local community and indigenous people, workers’ rights and environmental protection.
As an operationalization mechanism, several dozen observers have been trained and deployed in DRC. Julien Mathe, coordinator of the NGO GASHE, explains that the observers’ task is to document all cases of human rights violations.
“We monitor some agricultural concessions, including Boteka, and industrial timber operations in the province of Équateur. We have a database that regularly receives alerts of illegal exploitation and violations of the rights of workers and communities living near these concessions,” she notes, adding that after verifying the alerts, multi-stakeholder dialogue meetings are organized to formulate recommendations to improve practices of various stakeholders.
In 2024, more than 300 incidents involving PHC and all forestry and agro-industrial companies operating in the Equateur province were documented, triggering joint review missions.
My work trip to Boteka was an insightful one, but as I settle back home, in my familiar environment, one question remains; Why is the right to land for local communities often violated when it comes to multimillion projects and developments?
