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Languages
Democratic Republic of the Congo
There is an estimated total of 242 languages spoken in the Democratic Republic
of the Congo. Out of these, only four have the status of national languages:
Kongo, Lingala, Tshiluba and Swahili.
Lingala was made the official language of the colonial army, the "Force Publique"
under Belgian colonial rule. But since the recent rebellions, a good part of the
army also uses Swahili in the East.
French is the official language of the country. It is meant to be an ethnically
neutral language, to ease communication between all the different ethnic groups
of the Congo.
When the country was a Belgian colony, the four national languages were already
used in primary schools, which makes the country one of the few to have had
literacy in local languages during the occupation by Europeans. However, Belgium
was notorious for its lack of investment in the colony while extracting huge
riches, thus leaving the vast majority of the population with little or no
access to educational opportunity.
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