Across much of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s post-independence period, the provinces of the east have been unevenly developed, shaped by both opportunity and chronic insecurity. Even with mineral wealth and a location for trade, the area has frequently struggled with logistical constraints and poorly developed infrastructure, hindering economic coordination between provinces. Here, the creation of regional commercial networks—most importantly those that helped integrate rural production areas into urban areas—has been a significant component of local development. Such networks, usually maintained through private mechanisms, helped tie disparate segments of the economy together. Among the people who played a role in forging such integration was Jerome Kahindo Kamungele, whose decades of activity in retail, coffee exports, real estate, and imports contributed to the creation of vibrant commercial corridors throughout North Kivu and beyond.
Kamungele’s commercial professional engagement started in 1967 when he worked at Ets. TSONGO KASEREKA, a then small convenience shop based in Katwa. With time, his position in the company changed, finally putting him at the helm of a developing regional business with diversified interests. During the late 1960s to the 1980s, the company’s growth in retail activities in Butembo and the surrounding areas was an indication of a broader shift in the region’s commercial orientation. As population centers in North Kivu expanded, so did the market for products and services that could link urban markets and rural supply chains.
By the early 1970s, new outlets of Ets. TSONGO KASEREKA were already being opened in Butembo. With Kamungele at the helm, this expansion was not just a business initiative but also an early alignment with local market connectivity. The flow of merchandise between rural producers and urban consumption centers allowed crops to access a broader consumer market while retail products, many of them imports, could reach inland markets. In this system, local economic agents began filling jobs that used to be the purview of state-sponsored infrastructure in the center.
A notable breakthrough occurred in 1978 when the company was formally licensed by the Democratic Republic of Congo Coffee Regulatory Authority to export coffee. With this approval, the company began engaging directly in the international market, connecting coffee farmers in North Kivu with foreign buyers. Coffee has been and continues to be one of the nation’s major agricultural exports, with Arabica cultivated in the highland regions of North Kivu for its quality. Kamungele’s work in managing regulatory procedures and increasing the company’s involvement in this business contributed to integrating local production into cross-border trade networks.
This growth was followed by the opening of a coffee processing factory in Butembo in 1986. This facility provided an essential layer to the local value chain, enabling the company to process coffee for export without sending raw beans elsewhere for processing. It enabled the area to reap more value from exports and generate jobs and financing to support activities such as transport and logistics. On a larger scale, this development represented a step toward vertical integration of the domestic agricultural economy, and its implementation coincided with an increased focus on regional economic resilience in eastern Congo.
In addition to agricultural commerce, Kamungele also guided TSONGO KASEREKA Establishments into property, building properties in Goma, Bunia, Kisangani, and Kinshasa. These cities, especially Goma and Kisangani, are administrative capitals and hubs for the logistics of commodities traveling between eastern Congo and the interior provinces. By investing in real estate in these locations, the company positioned itself within nodes of commerce that supported a steady flow of goods, services, and people. The urban real estate footprint functioned as more than property acquisition—it created a physical infrastructure that facilitated market activity and reinforced trade flows between towns.
This expansion mirrored the broader commercial realignment happening in the country during the late 20th century. As most official state-sponsored trade programs faltered in the face of economic crises, private businesses stepped in to fill the gap. In the 1980s and up to the early 2000s, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s informal economy accounted for a significant portion of all economic activity, according to World Bank estimates. Within that context, players such as Kamungele worked within hybrid systems—treading between formal approvals and licensing and market practices that were usually dominant in provincial trade.
One of the striking features of Kamungele’s strategy was the conjunction of importing foreign produce and marketing it locally, alongside enabling the export of Congolese agricultural products. The two-way flow helped bridge international supply chains with the local market. The end product was not only a profit for one firm but also a viable commercial system in which transporters, wholesalers, retailers, and farmers saw opportunities to become economically involved. For places such as North Kivu, where economic isolation is a long-standing problem, these developments gave local integration processes a meaningful push.
As a business leader, Kamungele’s efforts aligned with the interests of organizations such as the Federation of Enterprises of the Congo (Fédération des Entreprises du Congo, or FEC), which promotes private-sector growth and regional investment. Although his work was essentially focused on commercial interests, the outcomes often benefited the overall economic stability of towns, as stable distribution and trade infrastructure became available. These inputs were not explicitly codified into government programs, but their influence on regional market activity documented their importance.
The cities where TSONGO KASEREKA Establishments had a presence—Goma, Butembo, Bunia, Kisangani, and Kinshasa—are on a loosely linked commercial corridor running from eastern Congo to the capital. Each of them plays a unique role in national logistics. Goma, along the border with Rwanda, enables cross-border commerce; Kisangani links river-based transport with the country’s interior; and Kinshasa, as the capital, is the national financial and administrative hub. Kamungele’s placement of business activities along this arc enabled his firm to operate on multiple levels of the economy, ranging from neighborhood retail to export logistics.
While private sector contributions to local development in the DRC are not always accounted for in national statistics, they are at the core of the nation’s commercial life. Kamungele’s activities did not change the structural conditions that define trade in Congo, but they infused functional capacity in the areas he worked in. His activities brought together producers and processors, rural entrepreneurs and urban buyers, and products and markets across provincial borders.
Jerome Kahindo Kamungele died in August 2020. His long career, spanning over five decades, has a discernible footprint on North Kivu’s commercial landscape and the eastern part of Congo. His operations in TSONGO KASEREKA Establishments demonstrated how a locally based firm could shape regional integration, even without much public infrastructure at scale.
