| Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo | |
|---|---|
 Map showing the distribution of the four national languages in the Congo | |
| Official | French |
| National | Kituba, Lingala, Swahili and Tshiluba |
| Indigenous | More than 200 |
| Signed | American Sign Language (Francophone African Sign Language) |
| Keyboard layout | |
| Lingua franca | French, Kikongo ya leta, Lingala, Swahili and Tshiluba |
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The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a multilingual country where an estimated total of 242 languages are spoken. Ethnologue lists 215 living languages.[1] The official language, since the colonial period, is French, one of the languages of Belgium. Four other languages, all of them Bantu based, have the status of national language: Kikongo-Kituba, Lingala, Swahili and Tshiluba.
Democratic Republic of the Congo is a Francophone country, where, as of 2024, 55.393 million (50.69%) out of 109.276 million people speak French[2] and 74% report using French as a lingua franca.[3]
In 2024 there were over 12 million native French speakers, or around 12% of the population. [4]
When the country was a Belgian colony, it had already instituted teaching and use of the four national languages in primary schools, making it one of the few African nations to have had literacy in local languages during the European colonial period.
- ^ Languages of Democratic Republic of the Congo, ethnologue.com
- ^ "Accueil-Francoscope". ODSEF (Observatoire démographique et statistique de l'espace francophone de l'Université Laval) (in French). Laval, Québec. Organisation internationale de la Francophonie.
- ^ Target study: French the most spoken language in DRC, far ahead of Lingala
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
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