Augustin Dokolo Sanu and his companies (2)

LAGEDIM

Created around 1975, LAGEDIM specialized in frozen food (chicken, meat, fish) and dried food (rice, salted fish, etc.) distribution.

The company ran several cold rooms in Kinshasa either for its own account or for another party’s.

LAGEDIM also owned a small port in Kinshasa, on the River Congo.

DISTRICAR

Districar was a limited company that managed the first Congolese car dealing company for the Japanese constructor Mazda. Its main business was therefore importing, retail and after sales service for Mazda cars and buses.

The Mazda 323, 626, 929 models became very popular in Kinshasa thanks to the company that also sold them to other concessionaires in Kinshasa and throughout the rest of the country.

ELVE ZAIRE

Just like Districar, Elve Zaire was also a car dealing company. It was the first Korean Hyundai concessionaire in the Congo. But this company, apart from importing, selling and dealing with after sales servicing, also built the cars.

FITRACO

Created on the 13th May 1978, The FIshing TRAding COmpany specialized in fishing in Lake Tanganyika, in Kalemie and in Katanga. Thanks to the financing of SOFIDE and in a partnership with the Koreans, the company’s goal was to achieve semi-industrial and industrial fishing.

At the time when the government despoiled the company, success had been achieved in Marocco for preserving and canning the fish.

During the chaotic management by UNITZA and thanks to the lootings in 1991 and 1993 as well as those following the wars of 1996 and 1998, the fishing units, the cold rooms and all the equipment were vandalised.

CODEMINES

The Compagnie D’Exploitation de MINES was first called TRIANGLE (created in 1982) and belonged to an American woman who exploited the mines in Kivu for cassiterite.

In 1985, M. Dokolo had acquired the majority of the shares and while he changed the name, he also broadened its sphere of activities.

CODEMINES started exploiting gold and diamonds. Its exploration fields stretched to Kasaï and to the Oriental Province.

The discovery of gold in the Gangu River (Oriental Province) and its exploitation, in partnership with a South African company, could have been the reason for the illegal expropriation measures taken by the Mobutu regime against M. Dokolo.

According to forecasts, the monthly production should have been close to 100 kg at the start and have reached over 400kg soon after. The installation included a modern ore treatment plant, bought for a million dollars from South Africa, as well as all the necessary materiel for exploitation (tractors and other vehicles and machines) that had also been imported.

Mr. Mobutu’s henchmen probably convinced the former that M. Dokolo was becoming a threat because of his growing financial and strategic power all around the country.

Since 1986, the installations have been vandalised and are rusting under the equatorial forest rains.

T.M.B.

The Transport de Merchandises et des Biens (merchandise and goods transport) company was created on 12th April 1984. It provided road transportation between Matadi and the centre of Kinshasa.

At that time, TRANSMAC had the exclusive coverage of this route. The scheduled closure of the ONATRA (National Transportation Office) that provided the carriage of goods by rail from the Boma and Matadi ports allowed different road transportation companies to emerge.

T.M.B. took position on this route and its profitability was made easy by the fact that a number of the Dokolo companies used its services to convey their imports.

DOMAINE DE MBALI

The Mbali Domain was born in the 80’s. Its goal was cattle breeding and corn, soy, spice and the culture of other foodstuff.

M. Dokolo created a real “American Ranch” on the Bateke plateau. Thanks to agriculture mechanization, the production process was automated right up to the automatic bagging of the corn.

The assets of the company were also vandalised during the UNITZA domination and during the 1991 and 1993 looting as well as during the 1996 and 1998 wars.

AGAR

AGAR, a limited company created in 1982, was one of the last companies to originate from the Dokolo group. It specialized in insurance brokerage, customs clearance and real estate.

IMPRIMERIE MBANDU

Imprimerie Mbandu was a printing house created on February 15th 1984. It was one of the first printing houses to appear in the Congo.