Kinshasa, March 9th, 2025 (CPA) – Support for the Seed Law from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s elected representatives was requested by the Minister in charge of Agriculture during a meeting he had on Tuesday in Kinshasa with the President of the National Assembly, a parliamentary source told CPA on Wednesday. ‘We have large-scale projects. We have asked for the support of the National Assembly to ensure that the Seed Law accompanies the government’s action. Agriculture is a priority sector for the Head of State. It is time for the slogan ‘the revenge of the soil on the subsoil’ to become a tangible reality, and not just a rhetoric’, declared Agriculture Minister Grégoire Mutshail Mutomb. ‘We must not continue to eat from our neighbors. We must produce and feed our neighbors’, he added.
Minister Grégoire Mutshail Mutomb outlined the main challenges facing his mega-ministry to the President of the National Assembly, stressing the need to involve Members of Parliament in understanding the structural obstacles holding back the momentum of the agricultural sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). One of these challenges, he said, is the issue of the seed law, which is currently blocked by certain provisions of the law on the fundamental principles relating to agriculture. Minister Mutshail is calling for these articles to be ‘unlocked’ so that this legislation, which is crucial to agricultural development, can be adopted. The President of the National Assembly, Professor Vital Kamerhe, has always considered agriculture to be an important lever in the fight against poverty, and has promised his personal support for the successful adoption and implementation of the DRC’s Seed Law. The purpose of the Seed Law is to ‘regulate the production and marketing of quality seeds throughout the country’.