The Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to chart its course towards modernizing its identification and general population census systems. On Thursday, June 8, 2023, at the Government Building (Place Royal), the Prime Minister, Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde, led the official signing ceremony of a memorandum of understanding between the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) , the National Office for Population Identification (ONIP), and the National Institute of Statistics (INS).
The process of signing the memorandum of understanding was carried out between the President of CENI, Denis Kadima, and Stanislas Kenza, representing ONIP. This signature seals the transfer of enrollment devices, cartographic data, and CENI collection equipment to these two other institutions, which are called upon to continue, within the framework of pooling, identification and census operations. general of the population.
This transfer of data, according to the communication unit of the electoral center, will facilitate the forthcoming issuance of national identity cards to Congolese. This process was eagerly awaited by the Congolese population, as well as by the government and the President of the Republic. In a speech, Sama Lukonde hailed the leadership of Félix Tshisekedi, who had promised to provide every citizen with an identity card and to provide reliable statistics on Congolese demography. On the other hand, the Prime Minister urged all stakeholders to redouble their efforts to achieve the assigned objectives.
Denis Kadima underlined in his speech that “today we will symbolically transmit this material and later the staff. And it will mark a new moment with the available warehouses and ourselves, CENI staff and executives, we will be at the disposal of ONIP and INS”. He also thanked the Prime Minister for his commitment to the success of pooling.
The initiative of the CENI and the ONIP is part of a context where the Democratic Republic of the Congo is encountering challenges in terms of identifying and registering its population. Indeed, since 1984, the country has not carried out a scientific census of its population. The modernization and pooling of these operations is therefore a major challenge for the DRC.
This important step should make it possible to strengthen the identification of all Congolese citizens, and to establish reliable statistics on Congolese demography. The transfer of this equipment and data to ONIP and INS is a significant step forward in the process of modernizing population registration systems in the Democratic Republic of Congo.