About 12 million Congolese have registered to participate in the December 20, 2023 presidential in the first stages of the enrollment exercise.
Officials at the CENI, the country’s electoral commission, have disclosed that the first round of registration has captured at least 64.35% of the total voters expected to register in those areas. The actual number stand at 12,300,470.
Congo has a population of over 80 million people with about 50 million eligible to vote.
The voters registration exercise kicked off in late December 2022 with the provinces of Kongo-Central, Kinshasa, Kwango, Kwilu, Mai-Ndombe, Ecuador, Mongala, North Ubangi, South Ubangi and Tshuapa selected in the first round.
For one month, those areas recorded very low figures prompting CENI to extend the registration exercise by another one month which mean the process would end later this month.
On January 26, 2023 the process extended to Kasaï-Oriental,, Central Kasaï, Eastern Kasaï, Lomami, Sankuru, Haut-Lomami, Haut-Katanga, Lualaba and Tanganyika. Congolese nationals in South Africa, Belgium and France were also factored into this round of registration.
The process in the second phase of registration will run from January 25 to February 23, 2023. Congolese residents in South Africa will register from Pretoria at the country’s embassy and have 40 days in which to complete the process.
CENI requires that voters in South Africa produce temporary residence visa, work visa, permanent resident dependent visa, spouse visa on a working visa, business visa, retirement visa or permanent residence visa.
