In the DRC, the President of the Republic Félix Antoine Tshisekedi inaugurated the Kinshasa War School (EGK) in Kinshasa on Tuesday, January 5, 2021. With one stone two strokes, he took the opportunity to open the 2021 academic year for its first class. The ceremony was attended by general and senior officers of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) and the Congolese National Police (PNC).

Security sources in the DRC report that Kinshasa War School is a top-level school ranked third in the category of military higher education schools by international standards.

Kinshasa War School, the fruit of military cooperation between the DRC and France

The main mission of Kinshasa War School is to train senior army and police officers to work in senior positions in the army staffs and wherever strategy, security and defence issues are dealt with. The Kinshasa War School remains in this logic.

It was thanks to the involvement of President Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron during their meeting at the Élysée Palace in November 2019 that Kinshasa War School was born. In short, it is the result of military cooperation between the Democratic Republic of Congo and France.

It is from this same perspective that in the « joint declaration » adopted in May 2019, its creation occupied a good place. This, during the visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo, by Jean-Yves Ledrian, Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs of the French Republic

French expertise in the project

The accompaniment of this ambitious project, required the French presence at this ceremony. This was through the Directorate of Security and Defence Cooperation of France, which sent its Director, Lieutenant General Thierry Marchand, to Kinshasa to attend the ceremony. Another patented colonel was seconded to serve as Head of the Studies Department.

In his address, the French Ambassador to the DRC, Francois Pujolas, said that his country is happy to participate in this ceremony for a double reason. First, because the Kinshasa War School provides a concrete high-level response to the need to adapt the training of the senior management of the armed forces and more broadly of the security forces. Then, today’s ceremony illustrates, in an exemplary way, the relaunch of the DRC-France bilateral partnership.

« The prospect of a gradual and organised withdrawal from Monusco will have to be accompanied, as we know, by a stronger movement to reform the security sector, » the French diplomat said.

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