Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Map showing the distribution of the four national languages in the Congo
Official	French
National	Kituba, Lingala, Swahili and Tshiluba
Indigenous	More than 200
Signed	American Sign Language (Francophone African Sign Language)
Keyboard layout	French AZERTY
Lingua franca	French, Kikongo ya leta, Lingala, Swahili and Tshiluba

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The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a multilingual country where an estimated total of 242 languages are spoken. Ethnologue lists 215 living languages.^[1] The official language, since the colonial period, is French, one of the languages of Belgium. Four other languages, three of them Bantu based, have the status of national language: Kikongo-Kituba, Lingala, Swahili and Tshiluba.

51% of the total population is francophone^[2] and 74% report using French as a lingua franca.^[3]

When the country was a Belgian colony, it had already instituted teaching and use of the four national languages in primary schools, making it one of the few African nations to have had literacy in local languages during the European colonial period. French remains the official language in the Congolese government and is spoken by half of the population.