The Third Republic of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a unitary state with a five-level hierarchy of types of administrative division. There are nine different types of country subdivision in a new hierarchy with no new types but with two from the previous one abolished.
Under the Third Republic, established in 2006, the number of provinces has gone from ten to twenty-five. By fits and starts the number of towns that have been, or are in the process of being, upgraded to cities has also increased greatly.
Reforms to devolve powers to the provinces were completed in 2006, but devolution to more local levels have again been delayed when elections scheduled for 2019 were not held. Traditional authority continues to play a significant role in governance with traditional leaders leading many of the subdivisions at the lower levels.
Territorial organization The Constitution divides the country into the capital city of Kinshasa and 25 provinces. It also gives the capital the status of a province. The hierarchy of types of administrative division in the province, as set down in other organic law, is as follows:
Province Territory Sector or Chiefdom Grouping Village Commune Quarter ⋯ Embedded Grouping Village City Commune Quarter ⋯ Embedded Grouping Village
A province is divided into cities and territories. Cities are divided into communes, and communes into quartiers. Territories, in turn, are divided into communes, sectors, or chiefdoms. Each sector or chiefdom is divided into groupements, which are then divided into villages. Territories, groupements, and villages are deconcentrated territorial entities and have no legal personality. Cities, communes, sectors, and chiefdoms, however, are decentralized territorial entities with legal personality and the freedom to manage their staff and their economic, financial, and technical resources.
The law defines these decentralized entities in a way that shows their intended role in supporting local development: +EntityDescriptionCityA provincial capital or a settlement of at least 100,000 people with public facilities and economic and social infrastructure. Its status is granted by a decree of the Prime Minister. It is governed by a city council, which discusses and makes decisions, and a city executive council, which carries them out.CommuneA territorial capital, an administrative division of a city, or a settlement of at least 20,000 people granted this status by a decree of the Prime Minister. It has a communal council that makes decisions and a communal executive council that carries them out.Sector and chiefdomBoth are divisions of a territory. A sector brings together different communities, while a chiefdom consists of communities with a shared background. A sector chief is elected and officially installed by the public authorities. A chiefdom chief, by contrast, is chosen according to custom before being officially recognized and installed by those authorities. Each has a sector or chiefdom council and a sector or chiefdom executive board.
Remarks Kinshasa has the status of a province, but the subdivisions of a city. It is often referred to as a city-province and in many contexts is counted as the 26th province. The district and the , previously subdivisions of a province and a territory respectively, have been abolished. The has been replaced by the commune. In the Congo a commune can now be an urban subdivision of a city, a country town, or in some cases a mostly-rural area attached to a city. An older term, "collectivity" (), dating to the Belgian colonial era, sometimes denotes for convenience a sector or a chiefdom. Some do not form a contiguous area of land but are made up instead of more than one unconnected area. The grouping (of villages) and, at a higher level, the chiefdom are subdivisions led by customary leaders of traditional polities. An embedded grouping is a grouping that has been absorbed into a commune. A quarter has divisions, but these are not set down by organic law. There are uninhabited areas that are not part of any subdivision below a territory.
New subdivisions
New provinces The Constitution, as before, divides the country into the city of Kinshasa and the provinces; however, it increased the number of provinces from ten to twenty-five. This was put into effect in 2015, when the six largest provinces were split into twenty-one new provinces. Together with the four unsplit provinces—Bas-Congo (renamed Kongo Central), Maniema, Nord-Kivu, and Sud-Kivu—they make up the twenty-five provinces listed in Article 2 of the Constitution.
Under the old organization the six former provinces were divided into districts and cities. The districts were further divided into territories. Each new province was created from the territories of one or two districts, adding any enclosed cities and—if necessary—making the new capital a city. The following table gives the complete details. So for instance, Lommami province resulted from the split of the former Kasaï-Oriental province; created from the territories of the former Kabinda district, the city of Mwene-Ditu, and by making the town of Kabinda the capital city.
+ Table 1. 2015 Repartioning by district Former province → Subdivisions of former province + New city = New province District(s) City(ies) Bandundu Kwango Kenge Kwango Kwilu Bandundu, Kikwit Kwilu Mai-Ndombe, Plateaux Inongo Mai-Ndombe Équateur Équateur Mbandaka Équateur Mongala Lisala Mongala Nord-Ubangi Gbadolite Nord-Ubangi Sud-Ubangi Zongo Gemena Sud-Ubangi Tshuapa Boende Tshuapa Kasaï-Occidental Kasaï Tshikapa Kasaï Lulua Kananga Kasaï-Central Kasaï-Oriental Tshilenge Mbuji-Mayi Kasaï-Oriental Kabinda Mwene-Ditu Kabinda Lomami Sankuru Lusambo Sankuru Katanga Haut-Katanga Likasi, Lubumbashi Haut-Katanga Haut-Lomami Kamina Haut-Lomami Lualaba,Kolwezi Lualaba Tanganyika Kalemie Tanganyika Orientale Bas-Uélé Buta Bas-Uélé Haut-Uélé Isiro Haut-Uélé Ituri Bunia Ituri Tshopo Kisangani Tshopo† Kolwezi was a hybrid city/district made up of two communes and two territories. The territories were split off and the rest became the provincial capital.
New cities and communes In June 2013 a batch of prime ministerial decrees was issued giving city and commune status to, and setting the boundaries for, a large number of former cités and other populated places. According to the government's 2014 statistical yearbook the Congo would go from 21 cities and 227 cités in 2008 to 99 cities and 289 territorial communes in the reorganization. However, in July 2015 the implementation of many of the decrees' articles were suspended following the failure in the National Assembly of an electoral bill based on the boundaries in the decrees.
In order to pass a modified bill allocating seats for upcoming local elections, it was decided to suspend those articles that were contentious and to revert the affected communities to their 2006 administrative configurations. The articles granting city status to new provincial capitals—Boende, Bunia, Buta, Gemena, Inongo, Isiro, Kabinda, Kalemie, Kamina, Kenge, Lisala, and Lusambo—were not suspended and neither were those granting commune status to the administrative centers of the territories.
Ultimately the planned for local elections never occurred, but the suspensions were not lifted until mid-2018 just months before the general election. The National Alliance of Traditional Authorities of the Congo protested this reinstatement as diminishing traditional authority and as a threat to national security. In addition to reinstating the articles the government decided that disputes over boundaries would be resolved by an ad hoc committee and that the setting up of cities and communes would be prioritized with 18 cities in the initial phase.
In 2019 mayors for the new cities of Uvira, Baraka, Kamituga, and Kasumbalesa were appointed. The setting up of a city administration and those of its subdivisions can take years given the lack of local resources. For instance the town of Buta gained city status when it became a provincial capital in 2015, had its first mayor appointed in 2018, and by June 2019 its four communes were still not operational.
Number of subdivisions + Table 2. 2018 Subdivision count by administrative levelLevel 1–4 tabulated from data found at CENI maps; level 5 from CENI 2017, p. 55, Tableau 10 Level Total Breakdown 1st 26 25 provinces + Kinshasa 2nd 177 145 territories + 33 cities − Kinshasa 3rd 1,045 470 sectors + 264 chiefdoms + 311 communes 4th 8,471 6,070 groupings + 2,401 quarters 5th > 86,270 ~86,270 villages + ? quarter divisions Table 2 is based on data compiled by the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) as part of organizing the election cycle of 2018. The count of cities only includes those currently represented in the national and provincial assemblies and not those that became cities after the organization of the elections. Thus, for example, the new city of Uvira is not counted as a city but as a commune in the table. This of course also effects the counts of city subdivisions such as communes and quarters.
Governance
The Constitution of 2006 and ensuing organic laws brought reforms to the governance of the subdivisions which are not yet complete. Table 3 sketches the envisioned governance by subdivision type and its current status.
+ Table 3. Governance of subdivisions after reforms in brief Level Type Leader Deliberative body To do Title Selection 1st Province Governor elected by assembly Assembly of elected and co-opted members 2nd Territory Territory Administrator appointed n/a City Mayor elected by council Council elected by commune councils council and leader elections 3rd Commune Burgomaster Council elected by voters Sector Sector Chief Chiefdom Chiefdom Chief by tradition council elections 4th Grouping Grouping Chief n/a Quarter Quarter Chief appointed 5th Village Village Chief by tradition or other local practiceNotes: a) In French top to bottom: gouverneur, administrateur de territoire (AT), maire, bourgmestre, chef de secteur, chefferie, groupment, quartier, and village. b) Includes Kinshasa. c) Co-opted members are traditional leaders selected by their peers following strict rules including term limits. d) Each Commune Council elects four members of the City Council.
Uncompleted devolution These reforms devolved powers to the provinces and, more modestly, to the cities and the subdivisions at the third administrative level. They all were to have both an executive body with a leader and a deliberative body which was to elect the leader. The other subdivisions remained purely administrative in nature.
The Congolese voter would have a direct say in the affairs of the province by voting in a deputy to the provincial assembly which would then go on to elect the governor. The voter was also to have a say in more local affairs by voting in a councilperson to the local council which was then, except in a chiefdom, to go on to elect the local leader. If the voter lived in a provincial city they were also to have a more indirect say, again through the local council, in the composition of the city government.
Devolution to the provinces was launched with the which elected the provincial assemblies of the eleven provinces. Similar elections for local councils have yet to occur. Thus, the effected subdivisions have no deliberative body and their leaders, as provided by law, are unelected and appointed from above. In this way a city mayor is much like a territory administrator. For now the Congolese voter does not have a say in local affairs.