Lingala was made the official language of the colonial army, the “Force Publique” under Belgian colonial rule. But since the recent rebellions, a good part of the army in the East also uses Swahili where it is prevalent.

French is the official language of the country. It is meant to be an ethnically neutral language, to ease communication among the many different ethnic groups of the Congo.

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. During the colonial period both Dutch and French were the official languages but French was by far the most important.

10% of the population were fluent French speakers in 2005 whereas another 18,240,000 or 30,0% were partially French speaking.