The government has increased the budget allocated to education by 9.1% between 2021 and 2022 and by 23.9% between 2022 and 2023" ( Félix Tshisekedi).

President Félix Tshisekedi, quite rightly, praised the success of the flagship program of his first five-year term—free public primary education—during his State of the Nation address on Tuesday, November 14, at the People’s Palace in Kinshasa. This program, he said, reflects his commitment to investing in people in order to improve the labor and human capital resources that his country fully possesses. It is in this spirit, he said, that under his leadership, the government has continuously increased the budget allocated to the education sector, a significant portion of which goes to the primary, secondary, and technical education (EPST) subsector. "With regard to labor, which represents the workforce, the goal is to ensure the quality of this resource that my country fully possesses, hence the special focus on education. It is in this sense that my efforts to promote good governance in the education sector center both on establishing a basic education system that will instill societal values of respect for individuals and the common good, solidarity and sharing, equity and justice; and, on the other hand, on decent school infrastructure and a basic education capable of raising it to universal standards... "The scale of this task is of crucial importance. That is why I made free primary education a flagship policy from the very start of my first five-year term," he said. He continued, "This ambitious investment in national human capital costs well over one billion U.S. dollars per year. To support this public policy, the Government has increased the budget allocated to Education by 9.1% from 2021 to 2022 and by 23.9% from 2022 to 2023." It should be noted that the Senate has received several civil society organizations calling for a further increase in the budget allocated to education during the 2024 fiscal year. Senate President Modeste Bahati Lukwebo, who does not oppose this initiative, has accordingly encouraged experts from these civil society organizations to engage with the Economic and Financial Committee of the upper house of the Congolese Parliament, which is currently conducting a second reading of the 2024 Finance Bill. Moise Dianyishayi