Mpoko Bokanga, executive director of the PHC FoundationOne Earth | 22 April 2025DRC’s plans to dramatically increase palm oil production
by Francesco De Augustinis and Jonas Kiriko
“The DRC should become the next frontier for palm oil,” Mpoko Bokanga tells us, while sitting behind his desk at the headquarters of Plantations et Huileries du Congo (PHC), the largest industrial palm oil producer in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
We are in Kinshasa, the capital of the country. The company’s offices overlook the busy Boulevard 30 Juin, the main avenue that cuts the center of the metropolis in two. The name of this street celebrates the independence of the Congo from Belgian colonialism, obtained on June 30, 1960, but it is precisely in the shadows of the colonial period that PHC has its roots, and those same shadows threaten to reappear today as the company is implementing new ambitious expansion plans.
“Since 2021 the PHC company has been increasing production by 20% every year,” Bokanga, executive director of the PHC Foundation – a branch of the company that deals with land tenure and relationships with communities – and former director of PHC, tells us.
In 2023, PHC’s crude palm oil production reached 90,000 tonnes per year on 107,000 hectares (264,000 acres) of concessions. The company plans to increase production capacity to two million tonnes by 2032, to saturate domestic demand and export. According to Bokanga, the increase in production in recent years is due to improved agronomic and management practices, and not to an expansion of cultivated areas. “There is no displacement because the concessions have been there for 100 years,” he tells us. “So it’s not a problem of land dispute.”
These claims are in contrast with the recent history of PHC, punctuated by conflicts, often violent, between the company and the communities living in each of the three provinces where it produces, Équateur, Mongala and Tshopo. For this reason, after meeting the company, we decide to visit one of these areas, to see with our own eyes if history is repeating itself again.
Colonial palm oil
PHC was born as Huileries du Congo Belge (HCB), founded in 1911 by the Englishman William Lever on a concession of 750,000 hectares (1.8 million acres, about a quarter of the surface area of Belgium). The oil from Congolese palms – wild, not yet in the form of plantations – at the time was a staple food that local communities used unrefined in preparation of sauces. However, in 1911 it soon became the main ingredient of the soaps produced in the United Kingdom by Lever Brothers Limited, the early name of Unilever, the corporation founded in 1929, which continued to own PHC until 2009.
Cheap labor, “vacant” land, authoritarian rule: history books describe the early days of palm oil in the Congo as an example of the worst face of colonization. Lever “was allowed to draw, at his discretion, five circles with a radius of 60 kilometers, in regions where wild palm trees abounded,” the historian David Van Reybrouck writes in his best-selling book “Congo.” “Workers earned a paltry twenty-five cents a day and lived in primitive conditions. Forced recruitment and bribery of village chiefs were common. Dozens of villages had to be evacuated in the name of industry.” The company had exploitation rights to all the palm trees within those circles.
It was in this context that the lands that became the DRC became a major exporter of palm oil: “In 1910, Congo exported 2160 tons of palm oil and 6140 tons of palm kernels. By 1957, the volume of export of palm oil had grown to 150,000 tons,” recalls Bokanga in an article published in 2024. In the document, Bokanga also describes the decline of industrial production and exports in the 1960s, mainly due to the expansion of plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia, which still today produce 85% of the global output of palm oil (together around 68 million tonnes in 2021, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation).
But now, Bokanga argues, while Malaysia and Indonesia are slowing down their growth dealing with increasing environmental concerns and boundaries, the conditions are still there for Congo to return to being protagonist: cheap labour and available land, plus a global vegetable oil market which is expected to grow in value at over 7% per year from USD 318 billion in 2022 to USD 791 billion by 2031.
The new vacant lands
PHC actually produces 90,000 tonnes of crude palm oil on a planted area of around 25,000 hectares (61,700 acres). In the DRC the average yield estimated by the FAO (in 2017) is 1.1 tonnes per hectare, much lower than the average yields of Indonesia (3.8) and Malaysia (4.2). Doing a quick calculation, even considering the average productivity of Malaysia, to reach the “2 million tonnes by 2032” target PHC would need another 120,000 hectares (206,500 acres) to expand its plantations – a figure which would exponentially increase in the likely case of lower yields.
Although he denies that the company is expanding into new lands, Bokanga says that there are “167 million hectares suitable for palm oil cultivation” in the DRC. The figure comes from a study published in 2019 by the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), which, however, reaches different conclusions, recommending to increase production “from existing smallholder plantations already under cultivation by increasing on-farm crop yields.”
“You have a huge problem with land tenure,” Paolo Cerutti, Country Coordinator of CIFOR-ICRAF in the DRC, tells us. “Because there is a recurrent overlap of customary rights on the land, and then the law, a State that says: I am the guardian of all the land, private property does not exist, I give it to whoever I want, when I want.”
A few days after visiting the PHC headquarters, we reach Boteka, a town of 3,500 people about 120 km, or eight hours by motorbike, south of Mbandaka, the capital of the province of Équateur. The road is often interrupted by rivers without bridges, and runs along small villages in the heart of a vast forest. The PHC factory overlooking Boteka is surrounded by colonial-era buildings, now used as accommodation for the plantation managers. All around the village, rows of palm trees stretch as far as the eye can see, over a concession area of 13,500 hectares (33,300 acres).
“The company has plantations and plans to expand them. This means reducing the arable land,” Modeste Pierre Ishomba, agronomist and head of the local organization Comité de Réveil et d’Accompagnement des Forces Paysannes, tells us. Ishomba conducts training activities with small local producers in Boteka, trying to help them increase production, also with the aim of easing tensions with the company.
According to Ishomba, there is a lack of land in this area, surrounded by the Thuapa River (a tributary of the Congo), some marshy areas, and a large forest concession, in addition to the PHC plantation: “We have trained people in aquaculture, growing peanuts, beans and other food crops. But it is a waste of time because the available land is not enough for the needs of the population,” he says. “This is a problem because, in the meantime, the company wants to expand its activities for commercial reasons.”
In the district of Ingende, where Boteka is located, according to the UN Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) the population suffers severe malnutrition, due to diseases, insufficient agricultural production, and the low frequency and variety of meals.
Members of the communities in Boteka and in the surrounding villages dispute PHC’s rights to most of the lands on which it operates, including those obtained in the colonial era. Even the area where the company’s processing factory is located is disputed.
“They started planting palm trees in 1945 but I always say: until proven differently, I have never seen documents done properly, so there is a problem of legitimacy and a problem of legality,” Jean-François Mombia Atuku, head of the RIAO-RDC, a national network bringing together organizations defending the rights of communities affected by these concessions, tells us.
According to the information we collect from several inhabitants, in 2023 PHC made a deal with a private owner to expand its planted area on 2,500 new hectares (6,100 acres) over three villages near Boteka, namely Ifoma, Bolondo and Bempumba. The local NGO Groupe d’Action pour Sauver l’Homme et son Environnement, based in Mbandaka, has been in the area for an onfileld investigation in 2024 and told us they witnessed some cleared areas and a nursery for the installation of oil palms. The company didn’t answer our requests to comment on this acquisition.
“Everything was decided without our knowledge,” Moïse Nkoy, a resident of the village of Ifoma, tells us. “We learned that a person who lives in Kinshasa sold our land to the PHC company. We lack land, and the little we still have is sold without asking our opinion. We have no intention of leaving our land for a palm oil plantation, let those who sold and those who bought come to an agreement because we are not leaving. These are our lands, our ancestors lived here and we will leave them to our children,” he says.
Access to food
Bokanga denies that PHC has taken any land without consent: “For new land acquisition, before the State will give you certificates for a concession, you must have [an] agreement with the local community,” he says. Talking about the company’s expansion projects, however, he says that “we are actually going through a similar kind of negotiation, but it’s really the desire of the company to establish a good relationship with the community, because in our case, we have had a concession for over 100 years. There’s no need to negotiate ownership of the land.”
For local communities in Boteka, however, the government has chosen repression over regulation. “Our life is difficult because they have taken everything. They have forbidden us to consume our palm nuts, everything is controlled by units of the Armed Forces of the Republic and the police,” Jean-Louis Bosolo, head of the village of Loonga-Moke, tells us.
Although in recent years communities have been allowed to grow some palms on their land, poor access to palm oil – which along with cassava and maize is a staple food in the DRC – has led to frequent palm fruits thefts in the company’s plantations, and consequently to a climate of tight control.
The last episode involving the public force dates back to December 2023, when, – according to RIAO-RDC – police and military fire live ammunition at striking PHC workers at Boteka plantation.
“All they had to do was find you with palm nuts for you to be arrested and charged with theft or malicious destruction,” Herman Boliko, a resident of Boteka, tells us. “We have palm trees in our small arable areas. How can we distinguish the nuts that come from there from those from the company’s plantations? There have been arbitrary arrests,” he says.
PHC representatives in Boteka did not respond to our requests for a meeting, but the company has previously denied having any control over police actions. Local police officers also refused to meet to comment on the arrests and the clashes.
According to Bokanga, almost all the crude oil production from Boteka is sold to three refineries in Kinshasa, but PHC contributes to local food security by selling part of the crude palm oil production to the community.
Bosolo says the inhabitants deal with a limit of 25 liters per week imposed by the company: “In my village there are about 1,000 inhabitants, but we can only buy one can,” he tells us.
Public fundings
According to Bokanga, PHC is working to improve relations with communities and their economy and food security, involving small producers in the company’s supply chain. We didn’t find any producer in Boteka involved in this program, while we found confirmation that a certain improvement in workers’ conditions occurred in recent years.
“I worked for more than two years as a laborer without any contract,” Agate, a PHC employee in Botkea, tells us. “But for some time now, workers have been signing a 6-month contract with the possibility of renewal. No day laborer can exceed two months without signing the contract,” she tells us. According to several workers, the minimum wage has remained at 7,000 francs (US$2.41) per day, but progress has been made on the use of protective equipment for workers.
It remains to be seen whether this progress is sufficient to justify the support that the company receives from Congolese and international public authorities. The government of Kinshasa is the company’s second largest shareholder, owning 23.6% of the company. The influx of capital, however, is guaranteed by the major shareholder, the New York-based Kuramo Capital Management (76% of the shares), which, according to the company itself, has invested over $50 million in PHC since 2017, “while catalyzing nearly $200 million investments from other partners, including development finance institutions.”
In 2022 the California based NGO Oakland Institute published a report, revealing Kuramo Capital Management’s top investors. According to the report, the University of Michigan endowment “is the largest known investor” (US$125 million). The university doesn’t have a Ethical Investment Policy, or ethical guidelines within its Long Term Portfolio Investment Policy.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is “the second largest known investor in Kuramo” (US$36 million) cited in the report. The foundation has been lobbying for a Green Revolution in Africa for decades, with the aim “to create impactful solutions so that people can take charge of their futures and achieve their full potential.” However, according to the Oakland Institute, it “does not ensure that its investments do not contribute to environmental degradation, land theft, and human rights abuses.”
Other major funders cited in the report are the South African “Government Employees Pension Fund” (US$15.7 million), the “Royal County of Berkshire Pension Fund invested” (US$13.6 million), the Hawaii-based “Trustees of the Estate of Bernice Pauahi Bishop” (US$13.3 million), the Washington University in St. Louis (US$8.5 million), the Northwestern University (US$7.8 million), the “General Electric (GE) Pension Trust” (unknown) and the “J. Paul Getty Foundation” (US$ 3.3 million).
The PHC expansion plans are also supported by international development banks: “My company is at the moment discussing with those institutions, especially the African Development Bank, [the African Export-Import Bank] Afreximbank, to see how they can support the company in its green growth strategy,” Bokanga tells us. “The discussions are going very well, and I expect that in the years to come they may be able to come and invest, provide access to finance that we need to expand our operations.”
