The Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Office for Population Identification (ONIP) and the National Institute of Statistics (INS), to the transfer of enrollment devices, cartographic data and collection equipment. This measure allows the issuance of national identity cards to Congolese. The agreement signing ceremony was chaired by Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde. The population identification operation will be launched soon by the city-province of Kinshasa, a pilot province.
The government of the Republic is determined to provide the country with a general file of the population, and this protocol makes it possible to save the financial means that the government would have spent to carry out the operations. CENI also makes available to ONIP its temporary staff who worked during enrollment to carry out this operation.
The Prime Minister welcomed the promise of the President of the Republic, Félix Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo, to offer the national identity card to the population, but recalls that the country has not carried out a scientific census of the population since 1984. The process is therefore a major challenge that the government is taking up to provide the country with reliable statistics of its demography.
In his remarks, he invited all the stakeholders in this process to redouble their ardor with a view to completing it by the end of 2023. He thanked all the actors who made it possible to can reach this stage of signing the memorandum of understanding, starting with the members of the government for their direct involvement, passing through the heads of the CENI, the ONIP and the INS