Kinshasa, July 10th, 2025 (CPA) – On Thursday in Kinshasa, an economics researcher recommended that the Congolese government reduce the spending of public institutions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in order to lay the foundations for lasting social peace and ensure effective and equitable governance, during an interview with the CPA.
« The Congolese government must adopt a model for reducing the state’s standard of living, which would not only be a budgetary adjustment, but a true institutional revolution. This model, by reducing social frustration, would contribute to lasting economic stability and lay the foundations for solid social peace and effective and equitable governance, » declared Christ Kahambwe, an economics researcher and assistant at Reverend Kim University. According to him, economic policy, particularly fiscal policy, is based on three fundamental functions: resource allocation, macroeconomic stabilization and income redistribution.
« It is clear that these three pillars are seriously weakened, even dysfunctional, in the Congolese context, as in several African countries. However, the dysfunction of the redistributive function is of particular concern to us here, » he added. Christ Kahambwe pointed out that in DRC, national income, which is already structurally low, is distributed unequally: a minority holds a disproportionate share of wealth, while the majority struggles to meet its basic needs, a phenomenon best explained by the ‘Gini index’, which is a measure used to assess inequality in the distribution of income or wealth within a population. He pointed out that this economic injustice fuels social frustration and creates a sense of exclusion so deep that it pushes some of our fellow citizens to adopt anti-republican behavior.
A courageous reform of income redistribution
The economic researcher indicated that the real challenge therefore lies not only in growing national income, but above all in its equitable redistribution. He also recommended that the government significantly reduce the lifestyle of public institutions by eliminating ostentatious and non-essential expenditure; rationalize administrative structures by merging and regrouping entities with similar missions, with a view to budgetary efficiency and public action performance.
This would involve merging certain ministries. Chris Kahambwe also added the revision of the civil service pay scale to ensure fair, motivating and consistent remuneration for all civil servants, and the strengthening of social safety nets and direct redistribution mechanisms through targeted transfer policies for the most vulnerable groups. « Despite the recent signing of the peace agreement with Rwanda, DRC remains plagued by chronic security instability, marked by the proliferation of militias, rebel groups and growing urban crime. However, it is essential to emphasize that the insecurity plaguing DRC is not solely due to exogenous or foreign factors. It is also, and above all, a reflection of a security crisis of social origin, fuelled by a deeply inequitable redistribution of income, » he concluded.