page_title: Belgian Congo
section_title: Interbellum
hierarchical_section_title: Belgian Congo / Economic policy / Interbellum
caption_attribution_description: English: Ruandese workers at the Kisanga copper-mine, Katanga, Belgian Congo, late 1920s.
context_page_description: The Belgian Congo was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1964.
  Colonial rule in the Congo began in the late 19th century. King Leopold II of Belgium attempted to persuade the Belgian government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexploited Congo Basin. Their ambivalence resulted in Leopold's establishing a colony himself. With support from a number of Western countries, Leopold achieved international recognition for a personal colony, the Congo Free State, in 1885. By the turn of the century, the violence used by Free State officials against indigenous Congolese and a ruthless system of economic exploitation led to intense diplomatic pressure on Belgium to take official control of the country, which it did by creating the Belgian Congo in 1908.
  Belgian rule in the Congo was based on the "colonial trinity" of state, missionary and private-company interests. The privileging of Belgian commercial interests meant that large amounts of capital flowed into the Congo and that individual regions became specialised.
context_section_description: Two distinct periods of investment in the Congo's economic infrastructure stand out during the period of Belgian rule: the 1920s and the 1950s.
  In 1921 the Belgian government provided 300 million francs of loans to the Belgian Congo, to fund public infrastructure projects in support of the boom of the private companies in the colony. The Belgian government also privatised many of the government-owned companies that were active in the colony (the Kilo-Moto mines, La Société Nationale des transport fluviaux,..). After the First World War, priority was given to investments in transport infrastructure (such as the rail lines between Matadi and Léopoldville and Elisabethville and Port Francqui). From 1920 to 1932, 2.450 km of railroads were constructed. The government also invested heavily in harbour infrastructure in the cities of Boma, Matadi, Leopoldville and Coquilhatville. Electricity and waterworks in the main cities were also funded. Airports were built and a telephone line was funded that connected Brussels with Leopoldville. The government accounted for about 50% of the investments in the Belgian Congo; commercial companies accounted for the other 50%. The mining industry—with the Union Minière du Haut Katanga (U.M.H.K.) as a major player—, attracted the majority of private investments (copper and cobalt in Katanga, diamonds in Kasai, gold in Ituri). This allowed, in particular, the Belgian Société Générale to build up an economic empire in the Belgian Congo. Huge profits were generated by the private companies and for a large part siphoned off to European and other international shareholders in the form of dividends.
  During the economic boom of the 1920s, many young Congolese men left their often impoverished rural villages and were employed by companies located near the cities, the population of Kinshasa nearly doubled from 1920 to 1940, the population of Elizabethville grew from approximately 16,000 in 1923, to 33,000 in 1929. The necessary work-force was recruited by specialised recruiting firms (Robert Williams & Co, Bourse du Travail Kasaï,..) and was in some cases supported by governmental recruiting offices (Office de Travail-Offitra,..). In Katanga the main labour force were seasonal migrant workers from Tanganyika, Angola, North-Rhodesia and after 1926 also from Ruanda-Urundi.
  In many cases, this huge labour migration effected the rural communities (many farmers left their villages, which resulted in labour shortages in these communities). To counter these problems, the colonial government used maximum quotas of "able-bodied workers" that could be recruited from every area in the Belgian Congo. In this way, tens of thousands of workers were employed from densely populated areas to the sparsely populated copper belt in the south (Katanga) to work in the mining industry. In agriculture, too, the colonial state forced a drastic rationalisation of production. The state took over so-called "vacant lands" (land not directly used by the local population) and redistributed the territory to European companies, to individual white landowners (colons), or to the missions. In 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 to 230,000 tons in 1957. Cotton production increased from 23,000 tons in 1932 to 127,000 in 1939.
  The mobilization of the African workforce 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 make 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 Minière exported more than 80,000 tons of copper ore, a large part of it for processi
caption: Ruandan migrant workers at the Kisanga mine in Katanga, ca. 1920
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