Artificial Intelligence Regulation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Designing a Rights-Based Governance Framework for the DRC and Central Africa

Artificial intelligence is moving from a predominantly private-sector technology to an infrastructure of public administration, commerce, security, education, health, media, and social decision-making. For the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), this transition creates opportunities for public-service improvement and scientific development, but it also creates risks involving privacy, discrimination, opaque automated decisions, surveillance, cybersecurity, exclusion, linguistic inequality, labour disruption, and the transfer of sensitive data beyond Congolese control. The DRC already possesses a significant legal foundation through its Constitution and Ordinance-Law No. 23/010 of 13 March 2023 establishing the Digital Code. It also operates within a developing African and international governance environment shaped by the African Union Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy, the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection, UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, the OECD AI Principles, and comparative instruments such as the European Union AI Act. Yet a dedicated AI law should not be created by mechanically copying foreign legislation. This paper asks how the DRC can design a rights-based, risk-proportionate, institutionally feasible framework for artificial intelligence that is compatible with Congolese constitutional values, African priorities, and regional cooperation. Using doctrinal legal research, comparative analysis, and normative institutional design, the paper argues for a phased framework built around constitutional rights, lifecycle risk assessment, human responsibility, data governance, public-sector safeguards, algorithmic transparency, independent oversight, accessible remedies, public procurement controls, and regional interoperability. The paper proposes a Congolese Artificial Intelligence Governance Framework composed of ten pillars and recommends immediate rules for high-impact public and private uses, followed by institutional strengthening and sector-specific regulation. It concludes that the DRC should pursue rights-based regulation before scale-based deployment: the state should neither prohibit beneficial innovation nor permit unaccountable experimentation on the population. The appropriate model is a sovereign, African, multilingual, development-conscious, and legally enforceable system of trustworthy AI.