National Urbanisation Programme

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is urbanising faster than almost any country in the world: Kinshasa alone grows by several hundred thousand people a year, and the regional cities grow at much the same pace. The National Urbanisation Programme is the Government's answer, one coordinated effort to plan, finance and build the housing, infrastructure and economic districts those cities will need.

It rests on three pillars: a planned extension of Kinshasa, resilient and ecologically sound; new economic districts for Lubumbashi and the other strategic cities; and the modernisation of the existing cities, their transport, water, energy and public spaces. Beneath all three lies a national urban digital twin of nine cities, Kinshasa, Lubumbashi, Mbuji-Mayi, Kananga, Kisangani, Tshikapa, Kolwezi, Likasi and Matadi: one reliable picture of each, on which land is allocated, infrastructure sequenced and investment decided.

Carousel Finance Africa advises the Ministry of Urban Planning and Housing under a five-year mandate. It designs an integrated consortium for each zone, with partners from the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom, France, Benelux, Japan and the Gulf, and structures the project companies, export credit and public private partnerships that finance the programme, without recourse to the sovereign guarantee wherever a project allows. A dedicated fund for the programme is being established in collaboration with the APCSC, the Congolese State agency that steers, coordinates and monitors the Republic's collaboration agreements with private partners.

Launched in Kinshasa in December 2025 in the presence of the Head of State, the programme has passed from planning to structuring and the first stages of delivery.