The Sleeping Giant Wakes: DRC Investment Forum’s Agriculture Half-Day Takes On The 80 Million Hectare Question

Eighty million hectares of arable land. Less than ten percent currently cultivated. The Democratic Republic of Congo imports food it should be exporting. On the morning of 27 August, the DRC Investment Forum will dedicate a half-day to answering one question: how do you turn the world’s last great agricultural frontier into a working breadbasket?

The Agriculture Half-Day is built around a recognition that the DRC’s farming gap is not geological. The soil is good. The water is abundant. The problem is logistical, financial, and structural. No cold chain. No processing facilities. No reliable power for irrigation or storage. Limited access to credit for smallholders and cooperatives. And a persistent habit of exporting raw agricultural commodities only to import processed foods at a premium.

“The DRC should be feeding itself and half the region,” said Ben Leyka, CEO of DRC Invest, the forum organiser. “Instead, it is importing rice, maize, and palm oil that could be grown here at a lower cost. That is not a farming problem. That is a capital and logistics problem. This half-day is where we start solving it.“

The core tension running through the half-day is between scale and inclusion. On one hand, the country needs large-scale commercial farming and agro-industrial parks to achieve export volumes and attract institutional capital. On the other, millions of smallholders and cooperatives cannot be left behind. The discussions are structured to hold both realities together: aggregation models, contract farming, and digital platforms that connect small producers to large buyers.

For large-scale commercial farming and agro-processing, the conversation will focus on what it takes to move from subsistence to export powerhouse. The African Continental Free Trade Area opens new corridors for Congolese agricultural exports, but only if the country can supply consistent volumes at competitive prices. That means irrigation, mechanisation, storage, and processing facilities; none of which come cheap. The question is how to structure those investments for institutional capital.

For financing, the discussion moves to blended finance, guarantees, and de-risking. Commercial banks have historically been reluctant to lend to agriculture in the DRC, viewing it as too risky. The half-day will explore how development finance institutions, concessional instruments, and first-loss guarantees can change that arithmetic. Agro-industrial parks and processing facilities are particular priorities, as they create the off-take certainty that makes farm-level lending possible.

For SMEs, cooperatives, and inclusive value chains, the focus shifts to the missing middle. Smallholders produce the majority of the DRC’s food, but they operate without formal credit, without storage, and without reliable access to markets. Digital platforms, aggregation centres, and contract farming models will feature prominently in the discussions, alongside targeted financing for women and youth entrepreneurs. Job creation and rural transformation are not side effects of agricultural investment. They are the point.

The Investment Discovery Sessions for agribusiness will present pre-screened projects across large-scale commercial farming and agro-industrial parks.   What makes the Agriculture Half-Day different from the usual agribusiness conference is the refusal to romanticise smallholder farming while ignoring the need for scale. Too many agricultural gatherings in Africa produce worthy declarations about supporting family farmers and zero serious conversations about cold chains, processing capacity, or export logistics. The DRC Investment Forum’s model is the opposite. The projects are pre-vetted. The investors are in the room. The question is not whether the DRC has agricultural potential. The question is which projects leave Kinshasa with a term sheet.

The Agriculture Half-Day is the first of three sector verticals at the Forum. The afternoon of 27 August covers Energy, and 28 August is dedicated to Critical Minerals. The full three-day programme also includes the Congo2050 NextGen day for youth-led ventures, an expo floor, and a matchmaking platform that facilitated 510 confirmed meetings in 2025.