
Democratic Republic of the Congo


- Improving educational and vocational training
- Contributing to good financial governance
- Ensuring better access to basic services
- Sustainably managing forests
- Supporting the financial and production sectors
Improving educational and vocational training
Contributing to good financial governance
Ensuring better access to basic services
Sustainably managing forests
Supporting the financial and production sectors
Located in Central Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo occupies a central position in the Congo basin region, bordered by eight countries. With more than 75 million inhabitants, it is the most populous French-speaking country in the world.
Yet it remains one of the poorest of the world’s countries, despite its considerable human and economic potential. Its young people have few job prospects and most of the population live below the poverty line. Several years of armed conflicts, the political instability which fuels bad governance and the lack of all kinds of infrastructure have largely contributed to this situation.
To address these challenges, DRC has undertaken several priority reforms in the fields of education, employment, health, budgetary management, administrative and financial governance, sustainable natural resources management… AFD has been operating in the country since 1976 and is supporting the Congolese Government and national civil society in all these thematic areas. It does so by mobilizing financial tools such as grants, the Debt Reduction-Development Contract (C2D) and its private sector financing arm, PROPARCO.
The result: 700 classrooms have been built, 25,000 teachers are now paid by the State and no longer by parents, almost a million people in Kinshasa have or will soon have permanent access to drinking water, six new vocational training centers have been built in six of the country’s provinces….
AFD's DRC office is directly attached to the Central Africa regional office in Douala.