Why Citizens Should Shape the Future of the Democratic Republic of Congo

With half of Africa’s forests and water resources and trillion-dollar green mineral reserves, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a global player and a “climate solutions country” with a unique role in the world’s future. To reach that potential, the country needs peace and needs to address institutional instability, systemic corruption, and widespread poverty, which impede economic, social, and human development. The DRC is now making headlines as it engages in a complex peace process, following the security crisis in the eastern part of the country in early 2025.

Despite incredible challenges, political processes in Congo over the years reveal a savvy and sophisticated electorate that remains committed to democracy and good governance. Congo’s unique and homegrown citizen engagement mechanisms can help address horizontal and vertical inequities, build legitimacy, and mend the social contract. According to the 2024 BTI report:

. . . there is a vibrant civil society tradition in the DR Congo. . . . During the 1990s, civil society groups, including women’s and student associations, human rights groups, and professionals, as well as church leaders, actively influenced the negotiations and made determined efforts to oust Mobutu from power. Since then, civil society has been more effectively organized compared to other countries in the region.

Inclusive governance and citizen engagement initiatives have long flourished across the African continent. In the DRC, they materialized as informal local governance management and conflict resolution mechanisms, participatory budgeting, or monitoring of key services such as education. Participatory budgeting, for example, allows citizens to be involved in deciding how a defined portion of public resources will be allocated and ensures that public spending follows their priorities. This is especially critical in contexts affected by fragility, conflict, and violence, where citizens distrust the state, such as in the DRC.

The Scaling Up Citizen Engagement report by the World Bank shows how participatory budgeting initiatives evolved in the DRC from isolated and disparate activities to award-winning regional initiatives. The program ICT4Gov, with World Bank support, used mobile technology to enhance participatory budgeting in South Kivu, which increased tax compliance and promoted public investment. Citizens were invited to assemblies through geo-targeted SMS messages and could vote on their community’s priorities. The World Bank supported the Public Financial Management and Accountability Project and the follow-up operation, ENCORE, which advanced participatory budgeting by assisting line ministries and civil society during budget formulation and parliamentary discussions. Civil society can incrementally reduce opacity in public finance, even in a complex, highly centralized context like the DRC. Public input and scrutiny on budget matters increased in the annual budget preparation cycle at the central and local levels. When civil society reviewed the annual Budget Execution Laws, the number of local administrative units with participatory budgeting increased from 1 percent in 2016 to more than half in 2021, 8,000 citizens were directly involved in the process, and projects with millions of beneficiaries received funding.

This shows that inclusive governance can bring communities closer to local government, increasing transparency and accountability, even when extractive institutions prevail at the central level. It also generates virtuous cycles with revenue mobilization. While participatory budgeting can give citizens more confidence that their tax dollars are well spent, broad-based tax collection can also stimulate citizen participation and demand for accountability. A 2020 field experiment randomizing property tax collection in 356 DRC neighborhoods raised property tax compliance from 0.1 percent to 11.6 percent and increased engagement with the local government by 5 percentage points. Citizens in neighborhoods that received in-person tax collectors were more likely to attend town hall meetings or submit anonymous evaluations of the government. Systematic tax collection had in this case a “participation dividend” and strengthened the social contract.

An important question remains: How can these initiatives be scaled up, and how can we ensure their sustainability? Given the nature of the post-colonial Congolese state, this commentary concludes that it is all about customizing solutions to the local context. In the case of the DRC, the state does not resemble a traditional, well-institutionalized liberal democracy, but it is not divorced from society or unaccountable to citizens either. Quite the opposite, the Congolese state penetrates society, and in turn, society penetrates government. The state is not a Hobbesian Leviathan, it is hybrid. Many things do work in the DRC, even if they do not work in the way they are supposed to work elsewhere. Governance in the DRC is flexible, fluid, and fluctuating. The DRC may not have a formal legal framework to facilitate civic participation at the national or local level, but the wealth of local mechanisms does ensure accountability, even if not institutionalized as in Western society, such as participatory budgeting initiatives in the decentralized territories and villages of the Kasai provinces. Local social networks provide channels through which people can influence policy and resource allocation. Consequently, state-society interaction as well as the channels of accountability should not mirror Western constructs; they should always reflect the local reality. Therefore, whether it is participatory budgeting or any other internationally supported initiative, such efforts will always be more effective when tailored to fit the local political culture.

As noted in the DRC Political Economy Analysis by James Robinson, a World Bank report, traditionally in the African political culture, everyone gets a say and a chance to express their opinion about policy, as Isaac Schapera wrote in 1937, K. A. Busia in 1951, Edward Wamala in 2004, and Holly Elisabeth Hanson in 2022. Traditional African political institutions are highly participatory and allow for freedom of expression and deliberation. Kwame Gyekye identified the need for consensus as one of the main features of African culture. George Ayittey said: “Consensus was a cardinal feature of the indigenous African system. Majority opinion did not count in the council of elders; and unanimity was the rule in most tribal systems. This is what led to the African political systems characteristic of debating, sometimes for days to reach unanimity.” And Kwasi Wiredu argued: “A much-commended trait of our traditional culture is its infinite capacity for the pursuit of consensus and reconciliation. An urgent task facing us today is to find ways of translating this virtue into institutional forms.” The palaver tree, l’arbre à palabres in French, indicates a location where people come together, usually convened by a chief or elders, to reconcile differences and make consensual agreements, as Fweley Diangitukwa wrote in 2014 and Lola Muzinga in 2010. Reaching consensus is deeply connected to notions of restorative justice, whereby a dispute or a tort is resolved not by administering punitive sanctions but by the guilty party restoring harmony to the community, or in the Congolese context, seeking “the re-establishment of the ontological order,” as Placide Tempels wrote in 1959.

Bringing a sustainable end to conflict and violence in eastern Congo should be a priority not only for the DRC but also for Africa and for the world. Congolese citizens should shape the future of their country by leveraging African practices such as consensus decision making or sitting under the palaver tree, where people come together to make consensual agreements. To be effective, all donor programs and internationally backed initiatives should be designed to directly support these citizens and should be specifically tailored to respect the local context.

Albert Zeufack is a division director at the World Bank. Ruxandra Burdescu is a lead governance specialist at the World Bank. Mvemba Phezo Dizolele is a senior fellow and director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. James Robinson is a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences Laureate and professor and director of the Pearson Institute at the University of Chicago. Jonathan Weigel is an assistant professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.