It’s 2024 and still, many people are bashing Congo, Kinshasa. To some people, it is a war zone, a place where most people experience the most hatred and were it not for the minerals then maybe it would have been the poorest country of Africa.
It’s true, that it is a country that experienced one of the deadliest wars, but then why are we still defining it by that?
The image of the Democratic Republic of Congo has forever been distorted by people who even don’t live in Congo.
However, some Congo natives look at their country and see extra potential. They can see opportunities and create and discover more gems out of them. After all, there are always two sides to a coin, whatever you choose, that’s what you see.
When you check on DRC on Google, there will be facts about it being so rich in minerals and the country with some of the most amazing landscapes.
Aside from Kinshasa being the 2nd largest French-speaking city in the world, it is also a potential of opportunities. When well explored, Kinshasa can create some of the best opportunities in the world.
To Al Kitenge, although Congo is known for its rich minerals, it’s more than just the minerals that make up this rich country. Congo is good in Agriculture, tourism, art, food, and the people with their culture.
After starting the Stop Bashing Congo movement, he knew he needed to do more than just create the movement. The way humans are, actions speak louder than words. Al Kitenge believed that it was his responsibility to promote youth and entrepreneurship across his country.
In an interview with Wode Maya, he claimed that for most of us Africans, we get to be born in poverty but in a wealthy continent, if only we could share our wealth, then the narrative of living in poverty could change.
As a business enthusiast, he wanted to create more and more opportunities for his country’s people. He wanted to come up with a way that push the country to put extra effort into all that they do.
Al Kitenge therefore came up with the idea of setting up a supermarket chain that sold only Congolese products. This was to encourage more manufacturing industries in the country.
There is no point in a country producing raw materials, only to export and then import them back as finished products, at many times the original cost. That feels like economic slavery.
How about we use these resources and export them in the finished products such that we benefit as a country and a continent? The best way is to consume what we produce and produce what we consume, that way, we benefit.
Therefore, in 2014, he summoned three hundred business people around Congo and he gave them the plan that he was looking forward to creating an initiative.
See, Congo is one very unique country. Citizens generally believe that foreign means quality. Basic food and household products sold in supermarkets are imported from Europe, Asia, and America.
The purpose of Al Kitenge’s initiative was to support small business owners and encourage them to process their goods so that they could be sold in the whole country and even be exported.
These made-in-DRC products are supplied to Mabele Cooperatives, a supermarket chain owned by the same small businesses that supply the products and other ordinary congolese, another initiative of Al Kitenge to provide a distribution channel for Congo’s local manufacturers.
From foodstuff to fabrics, clothes, cosmetics, and baby dolls made in Congo. Mabele Cooperatives bring together over 2,000 Congolese businessmen and women.
Imagine visiting a supermarket in your country and finding out that almost 90% of the goods are produced and processed by your people.
Buying a packet of milk and realizing that the company is located right in your village? How amazing!
To Al Kitenge, this initiative would be able to financially support the factories and also the supermarkets that sold the products.
One of the contributions to the growth and expansion of Mabele Cooperatives in Kinshasa is that he used to mobilize more youths to believe in himself and in the work that he was doing.
Promoting youth in entrepreneurship was eye-opening to Al Kitenge when he was still a youth. Al Kitenge felt like this opportunity should be handed more to the youths because they are the people who would hold the future of Congo.
As a former karate champion, he would visit different universities and colleges and encourage the youths who are starting their small business and also give them some entrepreneurial skills.
Creating this cooperative was his motive to educate the young people on how to invest together. Investing in your own country and how to make it work.
Bringing together thousands of people and sharing the same goals and working forward towards creating this dream of self-reliant entrepreneurs in the country, Al Kitenge knew that this was what Congo needed.
Africans don’t share poverty because that’s what most of us are born with; however, we share so much wealth. The thing with wealth though, is that we have to create it. Mabele was there to help create the wealth of the nation and bring Kinshasa to an economic rise.
Al Kitenge is one of those people trying to change the narrative of his country. In years to come, many other people will follow in his footsteps and maybe, just maybe not only in Congo but Africa at large will be on the winning streak.
To Al Kitenge, Congo has the resources, the manpower, the minds. All it needs is for these minds to come together to use their manpower to utilize the available resources.
Our fathers did not fight for freedom only for us to still import some of the goods that we can make for ourselves.
