A Congolese research centre on public finance and local development, working so that the revenues of the State, and of the extractive sector, are managed transparently and answer to the people they belong to.
Founded by a group of public-finance experts and based in Kinshasa, the Centre de Recherche en Finances Publiques et Développement Local (CREFDL) works for the rigorous, transparent management of public resources, to support sustainable development, reduce poverty and tackle unemployment. Its guiding principles are transparency, equity, inclusion and accountability.
From budget monitoring and the fight against corruption to financial decentralisation, CREFDL turns public data into something citizens can act on. It built Mokengeli, a citizen-oversight platform for extractive revenues, and now leads, with The Carter Center and CENADEP, the EU-funded project to democratise governance of the DRC's extractive sector.
CREFDL began as the initiative of a group of public-finance specialists who had spent years analysing how the Congolese State raises and spends money. Constituted as a non-profit association (ASBL) and led by national coordinator Valéry Madianga, it pairs technical research with citizen mobilisation.
Its work is concrete: tracking the central government's investment projects meant for local entities, analysing budget execution, and publishing investigations that have put figures on weaknesses in the public-spending chain, from contested public contracts to the management of compensation funds. It trains local elected officials and communities to read and monitor budgets, and supports participatory budgeting in rural communes.
That practice, public finance followed all the way to the citizen, now anchors CREFDL's work on the extractive sector: making the revenues of mining and oil visible, and giving people a safe way to act on what they see.
CREFDL works the full chain of public money, research, monitoring and citizen mobilisation, so that resources reach the services they are meant to fund.
CREFDL tracks the central government's investment projects destined for provinces and decentralised territorial entities, and analyses how budgets are executed, so that promised spending can be followed on the ground rather than taken on trust.
A practical guide to citizen monitoring of public-investment projects, taken on tour for civil-society restitution workshops across the provinces
Budget-execution analysis turning opaque public accounts into figures communities can question
Headquartered in Kinshasa, CREFDL carries public-finance monitoring out to the provinces where resources are spent.
Headquarters: research, national advocacy and engagement with parliament and institutions.
