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DRC: Kinshasa is home to the business forum from November 24 to 26The Ministry of Industry, in collaboration with the United Nations Economic Commission (ECA), organizes a business forum in Kinshasa from 24 to 26 November.image authorBy Alexis EmbaDRC: Kinshasa is home to the business forum from November 24 to 26Published on November 3, 2021 at 7:16 p.mPlaced under the high patronage of Félix Tshisekedi, president of Congo-Kinshasa and president in office of the African Union, the two-day works will have as their theme: "Developing a regional value chain around the electric battery industry, electric vehicle market and clean energy ".Before the press on Wednesday in Kinshasa, the Minister of Industry, Julien Paluku indicated that several actors will take part in this work in order to stimulate the development of a value chain and a dynamic market for electric vehicle batteries and renewable energies in Africa. For the former governor of North Kivu, the DRC is a country solution for the future of the continent and the world because its dance forest and its minerals are the assets necessary to face ecological problems. "With our minerals, we can reduce pollution with the manufacture of electric vehicles. Cobalt, Manganese, copper, lithium ", recalls Paluku. Between 2025 and 2030, he said, there will be 145 million and 250 million electric cars worldwide. It is therefore in Africa and mainly in the DRC where there is the solution, he adds.In addition, between 2025 and 2030, cobalt production will drop from 130 thousand to 250 thousand tonnes. "Let's continue to export our cobalt, our lithium in raw form. We hold 70% of the world's cobalt reserves. The mining code provides for this. A three-year moratorium had been granted. The deadline ends in 2021. So the DRC must start transforming its minerals locally. The simple market for electric batteries is 8 trillion. A market that can change the future of this country. We have to network that allows us to win. African countries will come together here around President Félix Tshisekedi to reflect on the value chain that will start from extraction to manufacturing and processing. The chain concerns all African countries. We are not going to lift the country out of poverty if we are unable to transform our minerals locally, "insisted Julien Paluku.Among the first spinoffs from this forum, there will be the signing of a contract with the multinational AVZ, which will mobilize 1.2 billion for the lithium of Manono. The DRC has the largest deposit in the world, recalls the Minister of Industry who ensures that the joint venture on the lithium of Manono will open the chapter on large investments.The Kinshasa Business Forum is a pan-African event. The event was the result of questioning by the African authorities in general and Congolese in particular on the transformation of African natural resources into economic value. One of the main objectives of the Forum, said Julien Paluku, is to improve the participation of African countries in the value chain of batteries, electric cars and clean energies in order to significantly impact the lifestyle of Congolese and nationals of other African countries by creating decent and stable jobs.However, the contribution of African countries in this value chain has remained insignificant simply because the main components from ores such as cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese and graphite are not produced locally and these ores are exported without any added value. "Paradoxically, the DRC supplies around 80% of the cobalt used in the manufacture of batteries which are essential components of electric vehicles and necessary for the storage of energy in solar and wind systems, but is nowhere listed as a value creator. So it only takes a tiny fraction, or about 0.001% of the battery market for electric vehicles and clean energy. "Among the diversification options available to the DRC in order to capture more of added value and thus industrialize its economy is the local production of lithium batteries instead of continuing to export raw ores, which represented almost 85% of the exports recorded by our country in 2018 ", said President Tshisekedi, when the Forum was announced to the Heads of State, private sector leaders and other figures, having attended the World Round Table on Extractive Industries on May 25, 2021, convened by the Secretary General of the United Nations. ""Conscious of this possibility, we have embarked on a series of reforms aimed in particular at improving the business climate and the legal and regulatory framework with a view to making our country a destination of choice for different categories of investors," he said. And to add that: "Our final objective remains the creation of added value by companies wishing to contribute to the expectation of the objectives of sustainable development (ODD) but also integrate the local economy into global value chains in order to strengthen the competitiveness of local small and medium-sized enterprises on the one hand and create decent jobs for young people on the other. ".The DRC-AFRICA business Forum 2021 aims to be a practical and content-rich meeting including plenary sessions, inter-company round tables, presentations by major African companies and investors, as well as networking sessions, to define a clear roadmap for a jump from Africa into the global value chain of batteries and electric vehicles. The meetings, it is noted, will be held in hybrid format, in Kinshasa and online. They will also be organized with the assistance of several organizations and institutions, namely: Afreximbank, the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Africa finance corporation (AFC) and the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA).