With hands folded in gratitude, she walks past members of the Parliament, who welcome their newly-elected speaker with cheer and applaud. On April 24, 2019, lawmakers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo elected Jeanine Mabunda as the head of the Legislative Assembly.
Mabunda becomes the first woman and the sixth substantive speaker to occupy the top legislative seat in the largest country of sub-Saharan Africa. She takes over from Aubin Minaku, who held the position from 2012 to 2019.
Despite the main opposition boycotting the process citing political maneuvering, Mabunda, who belongs to former President Joseph Kabila’s Common Front for Congo (the FCC), received the support of President Tshisekedi’s CACH Coalition. Her main opponent, Henri Thomas Lokondo, was disqualified.
Soon after her election, Mabunda expressed her elation through a tweet, “It’s done.”
Notably, she has served as the Minister of Industry and formerly chaired the Industry Promotion Fund (FPI). She is also leader of the women’s league in Kabila’s party, the PPRD.
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The Democratic Republic of the Congo is extremely rich in natural resources but has had political instability, a lack of infrastructure, issues with corruption and centuries of both commercial and colonial extraction and exploitation with little holistic development. Besides the capital Kinshasa, the two next largest cities Lubumbashi and Mbuji-Mayi are both mining communities. DR Congo’s largest export is raw minerals, with China accepting over 50% of DRC’s exports in 2012. In 2016, DR Congo’s level of human development was ranked 176th out of 187 countries by the Human Development Index (Wikipedia). As of 2018, around 600,000 Congolese have fled to neighbouring countries from conflicts in the centre and east of the DRC. Two million children risk starvation, and the fighting has displaced 4.5 million people. The sovereign state is a member of the United Nations, Non-Aligned Movement, African Union, and COMESA.