News & Events Details

MINISTRY OF FOREIGN TRADE: MINISTER JULIEN PALUKU KAHONGYA ADDRESSES STUDENTS AT THE NATIONAL PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY (UPN) DURING A LECTURE AND DEBATE ON THE AfCFTA AND MULTILATERAL TRADE

Speaking on the theme “AfCFTA: an opportunity for the youth of the DRC to accelerate trade and industrialisation” on Wednesday 14 October 2026 before students, lecturers and researchers at the Faculty of Economics of the National Pedagogical University (UPN), the Minister for Foreign Trade, Julien Paluku Kahongya, stated that the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) aims to increase intra-African trade by removing tariff and non-tariff barriers, in accordance with the negotiations.

With 1.3 billion consumers, the AfCFTA market represents an opportunity for Congolese youth; hence, universities – including the UPN – and higher education institutions must now act as incubators to participate in the effective implementation of this market and derive full benefit from it, whilst learning business languages, notably English, Spanish, Portuguese and Mandarin, as stated by the Minister for Foreign Trade, with the collaboration of the three pillars – the State, universities and the private sector – to succeed in this endeavour, which also requires compliance with sanitary and phytosanitary standards for products made in the DRC.

The introduction of the PAPSS system, which enables a business operator in an African country to pay in local currency and the beneficiary to receive the money in their own currency without having to use the US dollar or the euro, is one of the benefits offered by the AfCFTA, he added.

Speaking about the reforms underway at the Ministry of Foreign Trade, Minister Julien Paluku referred to the digitisation of procedures for the import, export and transit of goods, the launch of the Trade Information Portal (PIC), the modernisation of the OCC’s laboratories, the launch of the Simplified Trade Regime (RECOS), which offers a number of benefits to small cross-border traders, and the launch, before the end of December 2026, of software using QR codes to monitor pharmaceutical and cosmetic products prior to any purchase.

At the conclusion of this conference, the Academic Secretary-General, Professor Théodore Ngoy, and the heterodox economists stated that they felt well-equipped to deal with multilateral trade.

MP.