DRC secures major backing for long-delayed national census

The Democratic Republic of Congo has secured major donor backing for its long-delayed population and housing census, after the World Bank announced planned support of $100 million and the African Development Bank pledged a further $80 million for the operation and related institutional capacity-building.

The commitments were presented during a donor roundtable in Kinshasa focused on financing the country’s second General Population and Housing Census, known as RGPH-2.

According to the World Bank commitment outlined at the roundtable, $75 million of the proposed package would go directly to census operations, while the remaining funding would support the wider statistical system and help leave a longer-term institutional legacy. The bank said the financing still depends on board approval and the fulfilment of required government conditions.

The African Development Bank said its own support would be structured in two parts, with $50 million earmarked for census operations and $30 million intended to strengthen national institutions involved in statistics, planning, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation. The bank’s broader support for census and social data systems in the DRC is also reflected in its existing project framework on population census and social databases.

For Congolese authorities and development partners, the census is being presented as more than a statistical exercise. It is intended to provide reliable demographic and housing data that can improve public policy, budget planning and service delivery in a country that has not carried out a full census since 1984. UNFPA, which has supported census preparation in the DRC, has previously described the exercise as essential for effective long-term development planning and stronger data systems, a position it reiterated in its support for the government’s census preparations.

The overall cost of the census operation has been put at $192 million, leaving the government and its partners still looking to close the remaining financing gap. Officials have proposed a basket fund to pool donor resources into a single mechanism dedicated to RGPH-2 activities.

The renewed push comes with less than five years left to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, at a time when Congolese officials argue that the absence of updated population data has limited development planning and weakened the precision of policy decisions. A successful census would give the country a more reliable basis for measuring needs, targeting investment and tracking inequality across provinces and communities.