By Sonia Rolley
BUKAVU, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – At his bar in Bukavu – a city in eastern Congo overrun by Rwandan-backed rebels last month – Adolphe Amani dipped into his dwindling stock of beer to serve a table of thirsty customers watching a recent Sunday football match on his television.
But with his main supplier – the nearby Heineken-owned Bralima brewery – shuttered, he expects to close his doors within the week.
“We can’t hold out any longer,” said Amani, as match commentary blared through the nearly empty bar. “We can’t pay the rent, electricity, water or our taxes.”
Congo’s Tutsi-led M23 rebels – supported by Rwandan soldiers and weapons, according to U.N. investigators – have carried out their most successful offensive in over a decade this year, seizing eastern Congo’s largest city Goma in January before turning south and taking Bukavu.
The push has triggered a flurry of condemnations and sanctions against Rwanda, which denies supporting the rebels, as well as efforts to broker an end to the fighting. But with peace elusive, businesses and residents in M23-held areas are digging in against the economic fallout.
Prices for food and essential goods are sky-rocketing. Farmers displaced by fighting cannot harvest their crops. Banks are shut and supplies of cash are under strain.
“We can no longer access our fields or our bank accounts. The economy is blocked and paralysed,” said Bukavu resident Merci Kalimbiro.
The economic impact has hit large and small business alike.
Days of looting and a prison break preceded the rebels’ arrival in the city of over a million people after the withdrawal of government troops and their Burundian allies left behind a security vacuum.
Like many businesses, Heineken said its facilities were hit, with looters raiding beverage depots, entering the brewery and severely damaging its control room.
Days later, soldiers and militia fighters looted a Bralima depot in the city of Uvira, around 100 kilometres (62 miles) further south.
“It will take some time to assess the damage,” a Heineken spokesperson told Reuters. “Businesses urgently need to see an end to the conflict and violence and a start to a meaningful peace process.”
TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMIC PAIN
Bralima’s woes illustrate the broader economic knock-on effects of the conflict.
Nearly 14% of Heineken’s total revenues come from its businesses in the Middle East and Africa, where Congo, with its population of over 100 million, is a large market.
The Dutch beverages giant owns four breweries in Congo, producing Heineken beer as well as other popular brands like Primus and Amstel. The Bukavu facilities employ around 1,000 people both directly and indirectly, it said.
Goma, Bukavu and Uvira had together previously accounted for roughly a third of Heineken’s business in Congo.
Heineken told Reuters that operations in the three cities would remain suspended until it was safe to reopen.
In the meantime, Adolphe Amani said the Bralima shutdown and the broader consequences of the conflict have forced him to furlough more than 30 employees at his bar and hotel.
Other trickle-down impacts are both surprising and, in at least one case, potentially deadly.
Bralima’s water consumption accounts for around 40% of state water utility REGIDESO’s revenues in South Kivu province, where Bukavu is located, the utility said.
“Bralima is not functioning. We are really struggling,” said REGIDESO commercial service manager Jean de Dieu Kwibuka Babwine, adding that the revenue shortfall had caused a shortage of chemicals for water purification.
When those chemicals run out, he said the utility would be forced to halt operations.
“That would be a disaster,” he said.
For Amani and his bar business, there is a solution, one that some of his competitors have already opted for: bringing in beer from neighbouring Burundi or Rwanda.
Heineken also operates a subsidiary in Rwanda, called Bralirwa, that produces its own versions of some of Bralima’s most popular brands.
For now at least, Amani’s patriotism is winning out.
“We need to wait for Bralima to re-open and deliver stock,” he said. “I cannot consume products that come from Rwanda. They are our enemy.”
(Reporting by Sonia Rolley and Congo newsroom; Writing by Sofia Christensen; Editing by Robbie Corey-Boulet and Joe Bavier)
