As poverty spreads like a dark cloud over the entire Congolese territory, the average household basket has become a shadow of what it once was, and citizens’ purchasing power has turned into an unsolvable puzzle. Yet, in a move that reveals its disregard for popular suffering, the government has introduced a new airport tax.
Thirty dollars per trip both on departure and arrival will now be charged to all passengers on commercial flights, whether domestic or international.
This decision, signed by Jacquemain Shabani Lukoo under the approval of President Félix Tshisekedi Tshilombo and Prime Minister Suminwa Judith, comes with a twenty-year contract granted to an American company. The deal leaves the Congolese state with only 15% of the proceeds, handing 85% of the profits to the private operator.
In this cold calculation, the Congolese people appear merely as a resource to be exploited a means to fill foreign coffers. The introduction of this tax, amid chronic poverty and unbearable economic pressure, amounts to nothing less than legalized plunder: an institutionalized scam that crushes families, strangles trade, and deepens collective despair.
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Relief and Pragmatism in the Liberated Zones: A Human Alternative
In stark contrast, the territories recently liberated by the AFC/M23 movement demonstrate a model of governance attentive to the population’s essential needs. In these areas, new authorities have adopted a lighter fiscal policy, recognizing that a nation’s prosperity is the foundation of both stability and legitimacy.
The fiscal approach in these liberated zones is marked by social awareness and a citizen-centered perspective. Taxes have been significantly reduced, easing the burden on households already struggling under daily expenses. Market prices have visibly declined, restoring to families a long-lost purchasing power.
Through these policies, citizens are regaining not only economic breathing space but also genuine autonomy in managing their daily lives. Every fiscal measure, every adjustment in contributions, is conceived not as an instrument for external profit but as a lever to restore popular dignity and promote shared prosperity. Authority here acts as the guarantor and servant of collective well-being not merely as a collector of revenue.
This attentive and pragmatic governance stands in sharp opposition to the predatory taxation of the central government. Where the state imposes and suffocates, Goma’s authorities liberate and relieve. Where one exploits, the other empowers.
The divide between these two visions is political, social, and moral. It underscores, with striking clarity, that the legitimacy of any public action can only be measured by the real well-being of its people. In the liberated zones, the economy is not an instrument of dispossession but a vehicle for restored dignity.
