Efficacite de la gouvernance et durabilite des pays rentiers : une aplication du modele star pour la RD Congo

This research aims to analyse the role of governance in economic sustainability in natural resource-dependent countries and applies the framework empirically to the case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is heavily reliant on the mining sector. It employs the STAR (Smooth Threshold Auto-Regressive) model, using the government efficiency function as an indicator of total factor productivity rather than a linear variable over the period from 1994 to 2024. The results identify the sustainability survival threshold at which the rent derived from natural resources defines the government predation function in its pursuit of rent. This threshold stands at -6.027%. Consequently, when the ratio rent derived from natural resources on GDP falls below 6.027%, the Congolese political elite, in order to maintain its standard of living, takes actions that jeopardise the country’s economic sustainability and intergenerational equity by funding budget-draining institutions, primarily in the non-productive sectors of the economy, thereby perpetuating unsustainability. Above this threshold, the government efficiency function allows Hartwick’s rule to be verified, but the country remains under the threat of falling into unsustainability. Under this regime, the moderating effect of governance on adjusted net savings produces positive but less proportional effects (an estimated coefficient of 0.312) in the dynamic accumulation of sustainable capital during the period under study. This situation shows that governance would enable the DRC to align itself even more closely with the sustainability trajectory if the government efficiency function is improved. This research provides a dynamic framework for sustainability and the confident interval for the government efficiency function has been computed using first order condition from the Bellman equation.