DUBLIN, Ireland — The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a country in the center of Africa’s interior, bordering countries such as Rwanda, Congo, Angola and Uganda. It has one of Africa’s largest populations while remaining one of its poorest countries, with extreme poverty affecting a significant share of its 109 million people.
To provide some historical context, Belgium colonized the DRC under King Leopold II, during which it suffered much exploitation, especially of its resources. King Leopold II remained the “Sovereign of the Congo Free State” from July 1, 1885, to Nov. 15, 1908. A dictatorship and years of war, conflict, instability, and displacement followed this period.
The country has what some experts have called the “resource curse.” This is when a country has not experienced economic growth or poverty reduction proportional to its resources. According to the CJID, “In 2022, the DRC accounted for nearly 68 percent of the world’s cobalt production with 130,000 tons,” making it a major player in the global energy transition. It is also the world’s fourth-largest diamond producer, and the country’s reserves of copper rank among the highest-grade copper in the world.
The country was engulfed in a civil war between 1997 and 2003. Today, rebel groups such as M23 contest the fight for access to resources, especially in the east, where they have occupied regions like North and South Kivu. According to United Nations (UN) reports, roughly six million displaced people largely hail from these parts of the country.
While the DRC remains one of the most resource-rich countries on the planet, the poverty and reality on the ground present a grave contrast. Here is some information on poverty within the DRC.
Extreme Poverty in the DRC
Currently, about one out of six people living in extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa reside in the DRC, making extreme poverty in the DRC one of the defining humanitarian challenges in the region. It is one of the poorest countries in the world, with a GDP per capita of only $753. More than half of the population lives below the poverty line. With a population of more than 109 million, 85% of its inhabitants live on less than $3 per day, with more than 27 million acutely food insecure, meaning they lack reliable access to enough food to meet their basic nutritional needs.
Aid organizations have been operating across the DRC for years, with governmental support backing many of them. The 2026 UN humanitarian response plan for the DRC calls for $1.4 billion, though due to funding constraints, it will target only 7.3 million of the 14.9 million people who need assistance across the country. Due to ongoing conflicts in the east, which have forced many people to flee their homes, vulnerable people repeatedly seek shelter in overcrowded family homes, makeshift camps, schools or churches. A year after Goma fell to rebel factions, issues such as a lack of access to cash funds, caused by prolonged bank closures, have deepened extreme poverty in the DRC’s conflict-hit east.
Cash Transfers in the DRC
GiveDirectly is one organization working to address extreme poverty in the DRC by solving the issue of a lack of cash funds. GiveDirectly sends money directly to those affected by conflicts in the DRC and other countries worldwide. Globally, GiveDirectly has sent $191,174,235 in cash transfers in the past 12 months to 433,683 recipients. The organization’s aim is to “accelerate the end of extreme poverty globally.” Since 2018, GiveDirectly has delivered unconditional cash transfers of $21.4 million to more than 75,000 people in the DRC. The core idea is to send cash directly to people in poverty and let them decide how to spend it. Donations made via its website fund the organization.
A randomized evaluation of a GiveDirectly unconditional cash transfer program in Rarieda, Kenya, conducted by researchers affiliated with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab and Innovations for Poverty Action, found that recipient households increased their monthly consumption by roughly $36, a 23% rise, spread across food, medical costs, education, and social expenses, alongside improvements in psychological well-being.
The Borgen Project spoke with Isabelle Pelly, GiveDirectly’s Director of Partnerships, and Adrien, a member of GiveDirectly’s team in the DRC, about how the organization’s model is evolving to reach people in active conflict zones like eastern DRC, and what its strategy looks like as poverty becomes more concentrated in fragile states. According to Pelly, the reasoning is both principled and practical. Giving people the choice to make their own decisions respects their judgment, she said, but it is also grounded in evidence.
Mobile Money
While discussing the evidence behind this intervention, Pelly notes, “it’s one of the most studied interventions in the world, partly because there’s a lot of scrutiny on it and much more than there is in other forms of assistance. So the bar in terms of evidence is higher, which is a real challenge on all fronts.” One way GiveDirectly transfers cash is via mobile money sending. According to Adrien, the mobile money infrastructure behind GiveDirectly’s transfers is well-suited to displacement, since payments can follow people as they move rather than requiring them to remain in one location.
GiveDirectly is also notably transparent about how it spends donations. According to the organization’s financials page, just 12% of its budget goes toward overhead, one of the lowest rates among major international charities, while more than 87% of every donation reaches recipients directly as cash. That efficiency compares favorably to other major aid channels; the UN World Food Programme, for instance, delivers cash aid at 76% efficiency and food aid at 45%. GiveDirectly argues this kind of efficiency, not just a low overhead figure, determines how much value reaches families in poverty. People facing poverty have different needs at different times, and a program built around one type of assistance is unlikely to address that full range. Restricting how people can use the money, Pelly added, is also difficult to administer in the kind of high-pressure environments where GiveDirectly increasingly operates.
Looking Forward
GiveDirectly’s regional strategy is one of consolidation rather than expansion. The organization currently operates in six Sub-Saharan African countries: DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Mozambique and Malawi, after deliberately narrowing its footprint in recent years to build deeper coverage and legitimacy within existing programs rather than spreading thinly across more countries.
Pelly said GiveDirectly is operating at significant scale in several of these countries and planning to grow further, particularly by investing in emergency response capacities where extreme poverty and vulnerability overlap most heavily. Nigeria and Ethiopia, both large countries with high rates of extreme poverty where GiveDirectly is not currently active, are being considered for future work.
– Jamie Noone
Jamie is based in Dublin, Ireland and focuses on Technology and Global Health for The Borgen Project.
Photo: Flickr