Nicole Sulu is thinking about something most business conversations miss: the gap between having a resource and actually benefiting from it. As the organizer behind Makutano, a platform that brings together entrepreneurs, financiers, and government to untangle what is blocking real projects, she is focused on making Congolese industry work from the inside out.
Her starting point is practical. When a business has a project and a customer but no power connection or bank willing to finance the equipment, the deal dies. Makutano exists to get the right people in the same room so those blockers can be named and solved. Under President Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo, the government has made local mineral processing a national priority, and Sulu sees Makutano as the bridge between that political ambition and the entrepreneurs who need to live it.
The numbers give her something to work with. According to the US Geological Survey, the DRC produced approximately 2.55 million tons of refined copper through leaching and electrowinning in 2024. That is not a country waiting to industrialize. That is an industrial base already in motion, one that Congolese companies can build on if they can get access to contracts, capital, and technical knowledge.
But Sulu is careful not to treat processing as the only entry point. For some businesses, the opportunity is in maintaining equipment. For others, it is supplying chemicals or providing technical services. The path depends on what each company can competitively do, and figuring that out requires honest market analysis before any capital is committed. A buyer matters. Stable electricity matters. Consistent feedstock matters. A project that cannot survive a price drop is not ready.
For Sulu, this is what sovereignty looks like in practice: a Congolese engineer who trained on a local project going on to lead a major one, a supplier that grows into an engineering firm, an economy that shapes its own investment decisions. The minerals have always been here. The question is who builds what comes next.
Originally published by African Business.