
Telecommunication in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Compared to the European Union, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is massively lagging behind in the development of telecommunications. Under the country code +242, there were a total of 40.80 million connections in 2020. Among them were 40.80 million mobile phones, which corresponds to an average of 0.46 per person. In the EU, this figure is 1.2 mobile phones per person.With about 2,515 webhosts, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is below the world's average by population. At the end of 2020, 345 million of these, or about 14 percent, were secured with SSL or comparable encryption.
Back to overview: Congo (Dem. Republic)
Development of telephone and internet connections
With an average download speed of 8.7 Mbit/second for fixed-network broadband internet, the Democratic Republic of the Congo ranked 155th in an international comparison. The upload rate was only 5 Mbit/second (148th place). The quality of the Internet, consisting of signal fluctuations (jitter) and latency, is very far ahead at 5th place.In mobile internet, i.e. on tablets and smartphones, the Congo (Dem. Republic) comes 128th with a download speed of 11.43 Mbit/second. The upload speed of around 7 Mbit was enough for 118th place.
The Speedtest Global Index published regularly by Ookla is based on several million individual measurements in April 2022 from 181 countries.
The following diagrams show the development of the various telephone and Internet connections as a percentage of the country's population. Values above 100% mean that, on average, every inhabitant has more than one connection.
Access to the Internet in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1990 - 2020
Broadband internet in the Democratic Republic of the Congo 2010 - 2020

Landlines 1990 - 2020
Mobile phones 1990 - 2020
Distribution in 2020 | Congo (Dem. Republic) Total | Congo (Dem. Republic) percent | EU Total | EU percent |
---|---|---|---|---|
Internet users | 12.18 m | 13.60 % | 379.48 m | 84.74 % |
Broadband users | 31,000.00 | 0.03 % | 163.72 m | 36.56 % |
Mobile cellulars | 40.80 m | 45.55 % | 540.56 m | 120.71 % |