On 8 October 2025, in a ceremony presided over by Augustin Kibassa Maliba, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Minister of Digital Economy, the Congolese government unveiled two landmark documents: the National Digital Plan 2026–2030 (Plan National du Numérique, or PNN2) and the country’s first-ever National Artificial Intelligence Strategy. Taken together, they commit the DRC — Africa’s fourth most populous nation, home to roughly 100 million people — to spending approximately €8.7 billion over five years to transform a national technology base that currently reaches fewer than one in three citizens.

It is, by any measure, a remarkable ambition. The DRC has long been one of the continent’s most overlooked tech markets — not for lack of potential, but for lack of infrastructure. As of late 2025, the country operated just 5,150 telecom towers and had an internet penetration rate of 30.5 per cent. The National Digital Plan targets 30,000 towers by 2030, broadband access for an additional 9.7 million people, and 650 newly connected communities. Getting there will require sustained capital, political will, and an implementation apparatus that has not yet been demonstrated at scale.

A Country That Missed the Infrastructure Build-Out

The DRC’s digital baseline tells a story of structural underinvestment. Despite a land area larger than Western Europe, its telecom tower count at 5,150 is a fraction of what peer economies — even far smaller ones — operate. Nigeria, with roughly 200 million people, manages close to 40,000 towers. Ethiopia, at around half the DRC’s GDP per capita, has been investing heavily in fibre backbone since 2021.

Mobile data penetration tells a similar story. Some 79.6 per cent of DRC mobile connections technically qualify as broadband — operating on 3G, 4G or 5G frequencies — but that figure covers a narrow urban base. Mobile data costs just $0.88 per gigabyte, among the lowest in Africa. Against a median daily income of $2.15, however, even that price represents a meaningful percentage of daily earnings for millions of Congolese.

Two of the country’s largest operators, Vodacom DRC and Orange DRC, are already moving without waiting for the national plan. From January 2025, they began rolling out 2,000 solar-powered towers over six years under a shared infrastructure model, targeting coverage for 19 million people in rural and semi-urban areas. The PNN2 towers target builds on — and dramatically extends — that baseline.

What the Plan Actually Covers

The PNN2 has four operational pillars, each with specific targets and timelines.

The infrastructure pillar commits to increasing tower density from 5,150 to at least 30,000 by 2030, extending broadband access to 650 communities, and connecting 1,000 public institutions. Solar-powered tower deployment is the model for off-grid expansion — crucial given that only 19 per cent of the DRC has reliable grid electricity access.

The e-government and fintech pillar centres on a National Interbank Payments Platform (NIAP), designed to enable seamless transactions between DRC’s commercial banks and its extensive mobile money ecosystem. Mobile money is, in practice, the financial infrastructure for most Congolese — and the lack of interoperability between mobile money providers and the formal banking system has been a systemic drag on financial inclusion. The NIAP was targeted for full deployment by March 2026 — the government indicated it was on track as of late 2025. Whether it has met that deadline will become clear in the weeks ahead. Alongside the payments platform, the plan includes a digital identity system and an e-tax portal, with full government-to-citizen digital service integration by 2028.

The skills and human capital pillar targets 250,000 young people trained in AI, cybersecurity, data science, and programming by 2030. A first cohort is already in progress via partnerships with Cisco and Cybastion, which began training programmes in September 2025. The headline initiative under this pillar — and the one drawing the most regional interest — is the proposed Congolese Academy of Artificial Intelligence.

The fourth pillar covers data centres, cloud regulation, and the legal framework for data sovereignty. The DRC currently lacks a comprehensive data protection law aligned with African Union standards, and the new AI Strategy identifies this gap as a risk to international technology investment.

The AI Academy: An Afro-Centric Vision With a Huawei Connection

Of all the components in the national plan, the Congolese Academy of Artificial Intelligence is generating the most discussion among regional technology observers. Kibassa Maliba has described it as “a pillar of Congolese digital sovereignty” — an institution designed not just to train AI engineers but to develop “Afro-centric” AI applications specific to Congolese contexts and sectors.

In November 2025, the minister travelled to Huawei’s training centre in Hangzhou, China, for working sessions on a potential collaboration. The discussions centred on technical curriculum development, infrastructure provisioning for the academy’s compute resources, and access to Huawei’s established ICT training frameworks. No formal agreement has been signed — but the Hangzhou visit signals that Kinshasa is moving toward Huawei as the primary technical architecture partner for what is, essentially, the DRC’s most ambitious national institution in the technology domain.

The academy’s target sectors — agriculture, mining, healthcare, and education — are not accidental. The DRC holds some of the world’s largest reserves of cobalt, coltan, and other critical minerals. The country’s agricultural sector employs the majority of its workforce but operates at low productivity. AI applications in yield optimisation, supply chain traceability, and artisanal mining safety are the near-term use cases the government is investing in. The academy is the talent pipeline for those applications.

The Funding Reality

Here is where ambition and arithmetic diverge. The government has secured $1 billion in domestic funding over five years, plus $500 million in international partnerships already committed — giving it $1.5 billion in hand against an €8.7 billion plan. The remaining €7-plus billion is expected to come from private sector investment, development finance institutions, and multilateral grants — with no confirmed schedule for that capital.

The DRC is not, historically, an easy investment environment. It has a chequered record on large infrastructure contracts, political risk remains elevated, and its regulatory institutions are still being built. But the economic return case is genuine. Digital reforms under the PNN2 are projected to add $4.1 billion to the DRC’s GDP by 2029, and mobile internet expansion is estimated to create 700,000 jobs.

The African Development Bank and UNDP’s recently launched AI 10 Billion Initiative — a $10 billion continental AI investment drive targeting 40 million jobs by 2035 — is a potential funding alignment. The DRC’s AI Strategy is explicitly structured around the same data, compute, skills, trust, and capital framework the initiative uses. Whether Kinshasa has the institutional capacity to access and absorb those funds at the necessary pace remains to be seen.

What This Means for Central Africa

The DRC’s plan matters beyond its own borders. As the anchor economy of Central Africa, a successfully digitised DRC creates market and infrastructure pathways for neighbours including the Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Zambia, and Angola. The NIAP, if implemented, could serve as a payments bridge for regional cross-border commerce — a function currently served, imperfectly, by informal mobile money transfers.

Kinshasa is also signalling something important about the technology power relationships it intends to cultivate. The Huawei AI Academy partnership, coming months after the MTN–Huawei MoU at MWC Barcelona for AI-driven network infrastructure across Africa, underscores a Chinese technology stack as the foundational layer of the DRC’s digital transformation. For Western development finance institutions evaluating DRC infrastructure deals, that alignment will be a consideration.

For now, the PNN2 is a plan with genuine intent and genuine funding uncertainty. The DRC has, in Kibassa Maliba, a minister who has demonstrated more than the usual appetite for technology diplomacy — the Hangzhou visit, the AI Strategy launch, the October ceremony. What happens next depends on whether that energy translates into the one thing all national digital transformation plans ultimately require: execution.

Key Figures at a Glance

• Total plan value: €8.7 billion (2026–2030)
• Secured funding: $1B government + $500M international partners = ~$1.5B
• Telecom towers: 5,150 today → 30,000 by 2030
• Communities targeted: 650 newly connected communities
• New internet users: +9.7 million by 2029
• Jobs projected: 700,000 new digital economy jobs
• GDP impact: +$4.1 billion by 2029
• Youth training target: 250,000 in AI, cybersecurity, data science by 2030
• AI Academy partner: Huawei (discussions ongoing, no signed agreement)
• NIAP target date: March 2026
• Current internet penetration: 30.5% (34.7M users, end-2025)