The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a multilingual country where an estimated total of 242 languages are spoken. Ethnologue lists 215 living languages. The official language, since the colonial period, is French, one of the languages of Belgium. Four other languages, three of them Bantu based, have the status of national language: Kikongo, Lingala, Swahili and Tshiluba.
51% of the total population speaks French and 74% are using French as a lingua franca.
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. French remains the official language in the Congolese government and is spoken by half of the population.
French
French is the official language of the country since its colonial period under Belgian rule. Therefore, the variety of French used in the DRC has many similarities with Belgian French. French has been maintained as the official language since the time of independence because it is widely spoken in the capital of the country-Kinshasa, it belongs to none of the indigenous ethnic groups and eases communication between them as well as with the rest of the Francophonie, which includes many African countries. According to a 2018 OIF report, 42.5 million Congolese people (50.6% of the population) can read and write in French. In the capital city Kinshasa, 67% of the population can read and write French, and 68.5% can speak and understand it. The Democratic Republic of the Congo currently has the largest population of any country with French as its official language.
According to a 2021 survey, French was the most spoken language in the country: a total of 74% of Congolese (79% of men, and 68% of women) reported using French as a language of communication.
Additionally, French is becoming a native language in large cities.
Per research:
"and only recently some children from the urban elite have become Francophone first language speakers."
Dutch
Dutch, one of the languages of Belgium, was the historical second language of the Congo State from 1885 to 1908 and of the Belgian Congo from 1908 to 1960, and during this period its archives were bilingual French/Dutch. However, French was largely favored by the Belgian administration. A good knowledge of the French language was necessary to obtain a promotion in the colony and the Dutch-speakers were therefore more dispersed in the provinces while the French-speakers were grouped together in the cities. At the Colonial college of Antwerp, the first promotion to follow a cycle of studies in Dutch did not graduate until 1937. Dutch was used as a code language during times of trouble to convey messages that even educated Congolese cannot understand, which has accentuated the mistrust of the Congolese towards this language.
Yet the vast majority of Catholic missionaries, priests and nuns sent to the Congo were Flemish. Speaking different Dutch dialects, the Flemings however preferred to teach in the indigenous languages of the Congo, unlike the French speakers who did not hesitate to teach their language. In 1954, in response to the demands of the Congolese themselves, the Belgian Minister of Education Auguste Buisseret adopted the principle of providing education in French in the Congo from the following year, a concession intended above all to calm the ardor independentists. The measure is however strongly opposed by the Flemish and Catholic right which advocates the continuation of education in local languages, and supported by the French-speaking and anticlerical left.
Dutch was not retained as one of the official languages in 1961, and its teaching was completely stopped in 1970. It was nevertheless still spoken by approximately 200,000 people in 1980. In February 2014, the embassy of the Kingdom of The Netherlands indicated that there were approximately 420,000 Dutch speakers of all ages in the DRC, spread throughout the territory, with very isolated groups. Dutch speakers are very scattered over the vastness of the Congolese territory. It is spoken by older people, but also by younger people, and the number of native speakers is unknown. Dutch speakers are most often perfectly bilingual French/Dutch, Dutch/Lingala, or Dutch/English. Due to its isolation from the Dutch spoken in Europe, it tends to have incorporated many French, English, or Lingala words.