Kinshasa, September 6th, 2026 (CPA) – The Congolese Academy of Sciences (ACCOS) has alerted the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to the urgent need to develop a National Policy on the Management and Security of Environmental Data (PNGSDE), in a study published in the Congolese Journal of Science and Technology, which was consulted on Sunday by CPA.
“The Democratic Republic of the Congo exhibits significant disparities in the production, management, security and utilisation of its environmental data,” the authors have warned. The study reminds us that DRC is home to more than 62% of the Congo Basin, the world’s second-largest tropical forest, hydroelectric potential of over 100 GW and nearly 19 billion tonnes of carbon stored in the peatlands of the Central Basin. However, this wealth suffers from a glaring lack of on-the-ground monitoring, the study notes. “This situation contrasts with that of the 1960s, when the country had one of the most developed observation networks in Africa, comprising more than 125 synoptic weather stations […] and 400 hydrometric stations. Today, only a small proportion of these networks remains operational,” it is read. For the authors of the study, this material vulnerability also perpetuates an asymmetry in the production of knowledge.
“In many cases, national researchers are confined to fieldwork, whilst scientific analysis, academic publication and the economic exploitation of knowledge remain concentrated abroad. This dynamic […] bears the hallmarks of scientific neo-colonialism”, has lamented ACCOS. The report cites, in particular, the 10 million zoological specimens and the 3 linear kilometres of historical archives at the Royal Museum of Tervuren in Belgium, as well as the thousands of samples held at the American Museum of Natural History.
To remedy this situation, ACCOS recommends the creation of an Integrated National Environmental Data Management System (SNIGDE), reminding us that ‘environmental data constitute a strategic national infrastructure, on a par with transport, energy or telecommunications networks’. According to this scientific body, the system to be put in place will be modelled on the Congo Basin Catchment Information System (CB-CIS), developed by the Congo Basin Water Resources Research Centre (CRREBaC) at the University of Kinshasa. The implementation of this policy will enable DRC to safeguard investments, gain access to international climate finance and consolidate its scientific sovereignty on the global stage.