Democratic Republic of the Congo

Located in the heart of Central Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the second largest country in Africa and the world’s largest French-speaking country. The partnership between the DRC and France via AFD Group is governed by a Memorandum of Understanding, with an objective for 2022-2025 of €500 million in commitments for inclusive and sustainable growth. AFD Group deploys its entire range of tools to support actors in economic and social development (including the State, the private sector and civil society), and thereby help the country achieve this ambition.
  • logo linkedin
  • logo email
baby hospital RDC
AFD AND THE DRC: PROMOTING INCLUSIVE AND SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
baby hospital RDC

Improving access to essential services

baby hospital RDC

Improving access to essential services

The DRC faces major economic and social challenges. To help improve living conditions, AFD works to increase access to essential services, with a focus on:
  • Strengthening health systems to ensure equitable access to quality healthcare and prevent epidemics. This priority is set out in a Franco-Congolese roadmap signed in 2019. It has resulted in 11 projects with a total of €80 million in commitments.
  • Developing public services in urban areas (water and sanitation, transport, electricity), based on a horizontal approach to building sustainable and climate-resilient cities. The city of Kinshasa is a focus of this activity, as well as secondary cities in an effort to decentralize away from the capital city.

Promoting equitable territorial and economic develoment

kids, garden, RDC

Promoting equitable territorial and economic develoment

The DRC’s rapidly growing population is characterized by its youth, with nearly 70% of the population aged under 25. This dynamic is an asset for the country’s development. But it also poses a tremendous challenge in terms of better integrating them into the labor market, and meeting the needs of a growing population increasingly drawn towards cities.

AFD assists the DRC with its demographic transition by working on:

  • Providing access to quality basic education, through its support to the sector reform, including the measures to introduce free education
  • Developing job-creating vocational training and higher education courses, especially through the National Institute for Vocational Development (INPP) 
  • Supporting agri-food supply chains, with the aim of improving food security and creating jobs, as ⦁    agriculture is the largest provider of ⦁    jobs in the DRC
kids garden play RDC

Promoting equitable territorial and economic develoment

The DRC’s rapidly growing population is characterized by its youth, with nearly 70% of the population aged under 25. This dynamic is an asset for the country’s development. But it also poses a tremendous challenge in terms of better integrating them into the labor market, and meeting the needs of a growing population increasingly drawn towards cities.

AFD assists the DRC with its demographic transition by working on:

  • Providing access to quality basic education, through its support to the sector reform, including the measures to introduce free education
  • Developing job-creating vocational training and higher education courses, especially through the National Institute for Vocational Development (INPP) 
  • Supporting agri-food supply chains, with the aim of improving food security and creating jobs, as ⦁    agriculture is the largest provider of ⦁    jobs in the DRC.

Protecting and developing natural capital

trees forest RDC

Protecting and developing natural capital

The DRC is home to the second largest tropical forested area in the world. These resources must be protected.

AFD takes action to address this challenge, the consequences of which are already visible well beyond the country’s borders. It supports the Government’s objectives of:

  • Developing natural resources based on sustainable management models, in close partnership with the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) 
  • Protecting biodiversity and increasing the resilience of territories, by combining support for conservation with the protection of the living world, and involving local communities  
  • Promoting inclusive territorial development, taking into account the vulnerabilities of the living world of humans, animals and plants, as well as the interactions between them.
 

Placing young people and women at the center of the country's development

femmes travail formation RDC

Placing young people and women at the center of the country's development

Gender inequality is very prevalent in the DRC. Girls and women are also highly exposed to gender-based violence.

In addition, the youth of the DRC’s population makes the political, social and economic integration of young people a major driver for the country’s development.

In this context, AFD Group will focus on:

  • Removing the barriers to women’s empowerment, through an approach promoting social cohesion in all AFD’s sectors of operation (such as health, education and financial services). It will specifically focus on sexual and reproductive health and the prevention of gender-based violence
  • Strengthening the social and economic integration of young people, through the ⦁    Choose Africa initiative which supports the development of entrepreneurship
  • Supporting women entrepreneurs through dedicated expertise and financing.

Strengthening the role, capacities and means of institutions

city RDC towers

Strengthening the role, capacities and means of institutions

AFD Group’s activities to strengthen governance and institutions aim to improve the quality and effectiveness of public action. This involves:

  • Supporting the financial governance reforms to improve the mobilization of domestic revenues and the interconnection between financial administrations
  • Supporting two training schools for public officials and judicial officials, the National School of Administration (ENA) and the National Institute of Judicial Training (INAFORJ)
  • Helping to structure the private ecosystem and thereby develop a framework conducive to investments  
  • €360 million committed between 2012 and 2022    
  • 80% of commitments since 2020 have contributed to the promotion of gender equality 
  • €60 million of projects currently implemented by Expertise France in the sectors of health, entrepreneurship and security.  
360 million
euros committed between 2002 and 2016
80%
of commitments since 2020 have contributed to the promotion of gender equality
60 million
euros of projects currently implemented by Expertise France in the sectors of health, entrepreneurship and security

Fraud Alert: AFD’s office in the DRC has been informed about a number of phone calls, messages over the Internet (mainly through social networks) and fraudulent e-mails in the name of AFD, its directors and staff, using the AFD Group logo, to obtain money from individuals by promising a loan or a job in return for the payment of administrative fees. 
AFD calls on both professional partners and individuals to be extremely vigilant, and to abstain from replying to any such requests, in particular concerning the services offered by the fraudulent platform “Crédit Mutuel AFD”.

What to do if you are targeted by attempted fraud? 

The Democratic Republic of the Congo occupies a central position in the Congo Basin region, bordered by eight countries. With more than 95 million inhabitants, it is the most populous French-speaking country in the world. Yet the DRC remains one of the poorest countries in the world, despite its considerable economic and human potential. Following several years marked by armed conflicts and political instability, the DRC is counting on its growing youth population to boost its development and face the challenges of tomorrow.

To address these challenges, the DRC has undertaken several priority reforms in the fields of education, employment, health, budgetary management, administrative and financial governance, and sustainable natural resources management.

AFD has been operating in the country since 1976. It 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 loans. AFD Group mobilizes all its expertise to support the development of the DRC through its subsidiaries Proparco, which finances the private sector, and Expertise France, which designs and implements international technical cooperation projects.

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, and 6 new vocational training centers have been built.

Interactive map
This map is for illustrative purposes only and does not engage the responsibility of the AFD Group
Launch search
See map of all projects

Contact