115 million people today, and nearly twice that by 2050

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) is home to about 114.6 million people in 2026, the fourth-largest population in Africa and 15th in the world, and it is growing fast. The UN’s medium projection has the population reaching a massive 216 million by 2050, nearly doubling in 24 years and overtaking Brazil to become the eighth most populous country on Earth¹.

That is an estimate, and an uncertain one. The UN gives an 80% chance that the 2050 figure lands somewhere between 182 million and 262 million¹. The government’s own planning scenarios run higher still, at 196.5, 278.1 or 293.8 million, without saying which is most likely².

The last census was in 1984

Part of the reason the range is so wide is that nobody has counted the DR Congo’s people in more than 40 years. The last census, in 1984, found 30.7 million². Every figure since, the UN’s included, is a model built from surveys and estimates of births and deaths.

A new census is now under way. Mapping began in Kinshasa in September 2026, and the count itself is planned for July 2027⁸. The minister in charge has been candid about the first hurdle.

Nearly six children per woman

The growth comes from large families. Women in the DR Congo have 5.8 children on average, almost three times the 2.1 that holds a population steady over time¹. Half the population is younger than 16¹. In 2026 alone the UN expects about 4.6 million births against fewer than a million deaths¹, adding more than 3.6 million people in a single year.

This is not a short-lived bulge. The UN’s own review of world fertility has the DR Congo staying above replacement level until at least 2054, and still above it in 2100³. Because so many of today’s citizens are children, the generation about to become parents is larger than any before it, which is why the population keeps climbing even as families slowly get smaller.

A hidden carbon store beneath the swamp forest

At the heart of the Congo Basin lies something scientists only mapped properly in 2017. The Cuvette Centrale, a vast swamp forest straddling the DR Congo and its neighbour, sits on about 145,500 square kilometres of waterlogged peat holding some 30.6 billion tonnes of carbon. Around 19.1 billion tonnes of that lies inside the DR Congo⁴.

In other words, the peat under one swamp holds about as much carbon as all the trees across the whole basin. It stays locked away only as long as the peat stays wet. If it dries out, that carbon starts escaping into the air.

Forest cleared for food and fuel

Above the peat is the second-largest area of tropical primary forest in the world, and it is shrinking. In 2025 the DR Congo lost the third-largest amount of tropical primary forest of any country⁶.

The cause is mostly people meeting everyday needs. About 86% of the country’s primary forest loss from 2002 to 2025 came from small-scale farming that moves from plot to plot, and from cutting wood for fuel and charcoal⁶. That ties the forest directly to the population: a country that doubles in 24 years will need a great deal more farmland and cooking fuel, which suggests the pressure will grow unless farming and energy change.

Loss in 2025 was about 5% below the 2024 record, but forest loss not caused by fire set a record of its own⁶. That is not a turnaround. It is part of the same global rate of deforestation that is eating into the world’s rainforests.

Three-quarters of the world’s cobalt

The DR Congo also sits on a mineral the rest of the world badly wants. In 2025 it produced about 73% of all the cobalt mined on Earth⁵, a metal used in the lithium-ion batteries that power phones and electric cars. So the same country whose forests and peat matter so much to the climate is also supplying a key ingredient for the shift away from fossil fuels.

A tiny footprint, for now

If everyone in the world lived like the average person in the DR Congo, humanity would need just 0.46 Earths⁷. That is less than half of what the planet can renew each year, so if everyone lived this way, Earth Overshoot Day would never arrive.

Most of that small footprint is forest land, 0.24 Earths, the wood and charcoal people burn and the timber they use, and cropland, 0.13, the fields that feed them. Carbon from fossil fuels is only 0.06⁷. Each person uses about 0.69 global hectares a year, while the country’s land renews 1.69, so the DR Congo is still an ecological creditor⁷. That surplus is the forest and peat described above.

Where the DR Congo is heading

On the UN’s projection, by 2050 the DR Congo will be the eighth-largest country in the world, with around 216 million people, and the 2027 census should finally show how close the models have been. The footprint per person is tiny, but multiplied across a population that may double, and drawn mostly from forest land, it is likely to bite into the forest that gives the country its surplus. How much it bites will probably depend as much on cleaner cooking fuel and more productive farms as on the number of people.