Beni (DR Congo) (AFP)

"We are pioneers!"

launches Roger Muhindo in front of the entrance to his surviving chocolate factory in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) group massacred nearly a thousand civilians in twelve months.

Roger Muhindo and the ten employees of the "Virunga Origins chocolates" factory are at the heart of the turmoil.

Barbed wire and armed guards around the grounds of what should have been a prosperous industrial area are a reminder that the front line is very close.

Despite the extreme violence and the lack of infrastructure, the Virunga National Park (PNVi) is fighting to keep this chocolate factory running.

Its objectives: to transform cocoa on the spot to fight against its smuggling to neighboring Uganda and to create jobs to fight against recruitment into armed groups.

"There are others who would like to invest here, but they are afraid, with the war and all that is happening here", explains Mr. Muhindo, production manager of the small factory installed since January 2020 in Mutwanga, in the troubled territory of Beni.

In December, just a few months after the first chocolate bars were marketed, Mutwanga and neighboring communities, until then relatively untouched by violence, became one of the main targets of the deadly attacks attributed to the ADF rebels.

In less than a year, more than 200 civilians have been killed within a 20 kilometer radius of the chocolate factory, mainly in isolated villages near cocoa plantations.

A farmer in his cocoa field in Mutwanga on November 19, 2020 ALEXIS HUGUET AFP / Archives

Since 2019, the Islamic State (IS) organization has claimed part of the attacks by the rebels of the ADF armed group against civilians and Congolese army positions.

ISIS presents the ADF rebellion in its press releases as its branch in Central Africa (Islamic State Central Africa Province, Iscap).

- Solar roaster -

"We deploy small units everywhere to protect those who are in their fields but it still makes the work too hard for us," laments Antony Mwalushayi, spokesperson for Operation Sokola-1 of the Congolese army. operation to fight the ADF in the territory of Beni.

In a report from June 2021, the United Nations group of experts for the Democratic Republic of the Congo states that alongside the attacks and kidnappings committed by the ADF against cocoa farmers, soldiers from the Congolese armed forces harvested the pods in the deserted fields to resell the beans illegally in Uganda.

The head of an agricultural cooperative that supplies Virunga Origins confirms to AFP, on condition of anonymity, that "as soon as the planters leave the fields, there are soldiers who steal the products and resell them to fraudulent smugglers".

Virunga Origins chocolate bars, in Mutwanga on November 18, 2020 ALEXIS HUGUET AFP / Archives

The managers of PNVi are not discouraged.

After idling the chocolate factory, the machines have been running at full speed for a few months.

"We are going to increase production capacity tenfold to meet local and international demand and we will have one of the first chocolates produced 100% on renewable energy, thanks to the solar roaster that we are going to install", announces Bastien Allard, one of the managers. of PNVi.

The expansion of the chocolate factory is underway, says Allard.

After a first small hydroelectric power station launched in 2013, the PNVi started another in 2019, with a capacity of 2.4 megawatts, on the foothills of the Rwenzori mountains to supply the city of Mutwanga and the chocolate factory.

The Mutwanga hydroelectric dam, at the foot of the Rwenzori mountains, November 19, 2020 ALEXIS HUGUET AFP / Archives

The objective is to encourage investors to set up industries, by benefiting from installation credit and stable and cheap electricity.

"Today, with the chocolate factory, the population knows how to directly see the cocoa transformed into chocolate" and, even if this is still timid, "other factories are being established, so that now on the economic level it boosts the economy of the region! ", rejoices Jonathan Kahumba, son of the region and responsible for the hydroelectric plant.

© 2021 AFP