Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo, RDC) is a Central African state of more than 110 million people, with recent UN-derived estimates placing the population at about 113 million in 2025, making it the most populous francophone country in the world and one of Africa’s most populous countries. The capital and largest city is Kinshasa, a megacity on the Congo River whose population is commonly estimated in the mid-to-high teens of millions; other major urban centres include Lubumbashi, Mbuji-Mayi, Kananga, Kisangani, Goma and Bukavu. The country covers 2.34 million km², the second-largest in Africa, and shares borders with nine states. The official language is French, with four national languages of widespread use: Lingala, Kikongo, Tshiluba and Kiswahili.

The DRC gained independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960 and was known as Zaire between 1971 and 1997 under the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko. The economy is heavily dependent on extractive industries: the DRC is the world’s largest producer of cobalt and a leading source of copper, coltan, gold and diamonds, despite very high poverty levels and decades of conflict in the mineral-rich east. The State Media Monitor dataset for the DRC includes two state-controlled outlets: the national broadcaster Radio Télévision Nationale Congolaise (RTNC), created by Decree No. 09/62 of 3 December 2009 and part of the institutional lineage of the Zaire-era Office Zaïrois de Radiodiffusion et de Télévision (OZRT); and the national news agency Agence Congolaise de Presse (ACP), created by decree of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba on 12 August 1960 from the installations of the Belgian colonial agency Belga.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s political system is dominated by President Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), re-elected in the 20 December 2023 general election, a result confirmed by the Constitutional Court in early January 2024 at 73.47% of the vote, and sworn in for a second term on 20 January 2024 at the Martyrs’ Stadium in Kinshasa, with his Union Sacrée de la Nation coalition holding a large parliamentary majority. After a prolonged government-formation process, Judith Suminwa Tuluka became the country’s first female Prime Minister in 2024; a reshuffled 53-member “government of national unity” was announced on 7 August 2025, in which Patrick Muyaya Katembwe, in post continuously since April 2021, was retained as Minister of Communication and Media and government spokesperson. The dominant question of the cycle is the war in the east, where the Alliance Fleuve Congo / Mouvement du 23 mars (AFC/M23) armed coalition, described as Rwanda-backed by Kinshasa, UN experts and several Western governments, seized Gomain late January 2025 and took control of Bukavu in February 2025, displacing hundreds of thousands and, in RSF’s assessment, making independent reporting in the affected provinces extremely dangerous. On 27 June 2025, the DRC and Rwanda signed a United States–brokered peace agreement in Washington; on 20 July 2025, ACP reported the creation in Kinshasa of the Observatoire des Médias pour le Suivi de l’Accord de paix de Washington (OMSAP), intended to involve media professionals in monitoring and communicating around the accord.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s media-regulatory environment is structured around the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel et de la Communication (CSAC), the constitutional body responsible for audiovisual and communication regulation; Reporters Without Borders has repeatedly called on the executive to strengthen CSAC’s powers and to establish an effective self-regulatory mechanism. The DRC ranks 130th of 180 countries and territories in the Reporters Without Borders 2026 World Press Freedom Index (score 42.16), a three-place improvement from the 133rd position recorded in 2025, though this modest gain masks a sharply deteriorating environment for journalists in the conflict-affected east. RSF’s March 2026 report on Africa’s Great Lakes region documented arrests, attacks, enforced disappearances and killings of media workers caught between the AFC/M23 and the Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC), with newsrooms looted and reporters forced into exile since the capture of Goma; among RTNC personnel, the broadcaster’s Bunia-based cameraman Thierry Banga Lole was killed in an armed attack on 29 December 2025. The September 2023 arrest and six-month detention of Jeune Afrique and Reuters journalist Stanis Bujakera Tshiamala had earlier drawn international attention to the pressures on independent journalism in the country.

The DRC’s media ecosystem is nonetheless among the densest in Central Africa, with numerous registered radio and television outlets and many print titles, though the long-standing practice of coupage, informal cash payments to journalists in exchange for coverage, continues to compromise editorial independence across the sector.

Both RTNC and ACP function under the supervision of the Ministry of Communication and Media, and State Media Monitor review indicates that the editorial output of each is heavily concentrated on official government, presidential and ministerial activity, with no independent governing-board mechanism, no dedicated statutory editorial-independence guarantee, and no effective independent oversight mechanism identified for either institution; both have been classified State-Controlled (SC) continuously since the inception of the State Media Monitor dataset.

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