The African Development Bank (AfDB) Group has announced a contribution of $80 million to support the second General Population and Housing Census (RGPH2) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
At the roundtable of technical and financial partners held at the end of March in Kinshasa, it was specified that $50 million will be allocated to the RGPH2 operations and $30 million to capacity building for several national institutions, including the National Institute of Statistics and the structures involved in planning, programming, budgeting, and monitoring and evaluation.
The AfDB contribution represents a significant portion of the total commitments estimated at $200 million.
Other partners, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations system, have also announced their support, while Côte d’Ivoire will provide data collection equipment and share its expertise.
The Congolese government has already allocated $30 million from the state budget for the census.
President Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo emphasised the strategic importance of the census: “This event marks a moment of truth for our country where we decide to know ourselves better in order to govern ourselves better and plan our development.”
He noted that the last census was conducted in 1984 and that the current population is estimated at over 112.8 million.
Mohamed Coulibaly, the AfDB’s Country Program Officer for the DRC, stated that the Group wishes to “support the DRC by strengthening the National Institute of Statistics and institutions aligned with the planning chain in order to ensure the effective, transparent and sustainable implementation of this exercise.”
TE/Sf/fss/jn/APA