I recently visited Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for the first time and came back with a deeply profound appreciation of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda’s commitment to East African integration. One can pick up their national identity card and download an interstate pass from E-Citizen (save for our unwilling Tanzanian neighbours) and leave the same day to do whatever business takes us there.

I submitted my passport to the DRC Embassy in Nairobi a fortnight before my travel after paying US $50 for a single entry visa. A multiple entry one will set you back US$400. The airline ground staff at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, who are visibly alive to the spirit of the East African Community (EAC)  told me I didn’t need a visa as I boarded. That all I needed was my national identity card. That was nothing but a fantasy as the immigration officials at Kinshasa’s N’Djili International Airport were quick to ask for the visa. Upon being asked (in smattering Swahili) whether Kenyans could use their national IDs to come to DRC, a resounding no followed quickly. So much for DRC’s entry into the EAC which does not require visa travel for its members.

You either speak French or Lingala which is the local language widely spoken in the city. If you don’t, then from the moment of arrival it is animated finger pointing, attempts at trying to “Frenchenize” English words and dumbing down one’s speech in a very useless attempt to communicate. All pointless to be honest.

Driving to the Kinshasa’s central business district from the airport is an extreme sport. Every form of matter assaults your visual, auditory and nasal senses. From the heaving masses of pedestrians, to the uncollected garbage that lines the streets clogging up drains built in Leopoldian times. Weather beaten and battered yellow taxi cabs (equivalent to our matatus), many of them which had doors hanging by a thread and seats made up of wooden benches, crisscrossed the wide boulevards, a number crossing the barriers separating choked arteries to confidently drive on the side of oncoming vehicles, may the rest of you godless drivers be damned. Then just like magic, the madness ends once you enter the leafy suburbs of Gombe, where many offices, embassies and residences for the well-heeled Kinshasa residents are located. Here the cars are newer, the streets cleaner and the pedestrians fewer and less rowdy.

Kinshasa is a city of dissonant disparities. Champagne swigging wealth surrounded by abject poverty that is jarring to behold. But a population that would make any hustler movement proud as every corner is surrounded by a micro retail business selling airtime, plants, fruit and vegetables and other consumables. A visit to the Avenue Du Commerce is a good way to get the pulse of the city’s trade DNA. The area is where Nairobi’s Luthuli Avenue meets Gikomba, Grogan and Tom Mboya Street. Everything from electronics to hardware goods to mitumba to beauty products to vehicle spare parts competes for space in heaving roadside stalls and compacted brick and mortar stores. Staying in a hotel and eating out at restaurants is hideously expensive as everything is imported. Everything. From the milk in the tea to the fruit and vegetables that land on your table. Despite being situated next to the mighty Congo River and enjoying seasonally regular rainfall, agriculture is not a mainstay in a country that enjoys 80 million hectares of arable land.

Although Kenyans have been coming in droves in search of business opportunities, it becomes quickly apparent that one needs to have a local partner to help navigate the language barrier, the socio-political undertones and the unbelievably (and somewhat deliberately) complicated miasma of taxation laws.

Taxation is often used to raise government revenues in an ad hoc manner, depending on the urgency of the government’s need at the time. I met with a chief executive officer of a multinational that had just decided to shut down their operations in DRC. The government had raised the price of excise duty stamps by a multiple of eight, against the company’s projections for a simple doubling of the price of the stamps as a worst case scenario. This would mean that their products would simply become extremely expensive amongst other non-mitigable risks that the operation was facing including alleged tax bills running into the millions of dollars that emerged out of a magician’s hat. The CEO mused that two other multinationals had pulled out of the market recently as well, due to the hostile taxation environment.

DRC provides exciting business opportunities for the hustler native of Kenya. But one should go with their eyes wide open. Oh and polish up your French, you’re going to need it mon amie!

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka