Judith Suminwa

Judith Suminwa (born October 19, 1967, Kongo-Central, Democratic Republic of the Congo) is a Congolese economist and politician who has served as prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since 2024. She is the first woman to hold the position. Prior to her appointment as prime minister, she served as the minister of planning (2023–24) and worked in the ministry of budget (2012–15). She also held several positions with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) from the late 1990s to 2020.

Family and education

Suminwa is one of nine children born to Eliane and Michel Suminwa Kisamba Onkandiangazi. Her father held diplomatic positions in the government, including the role of representative to the European Economic Community (see European Community) in Belgium. Growing up, she considered careers in medicine and the military but ultimately chose to study economics in hopes of working for a bank. She graduated with a master’s degree in applied economics from the Catholic University of Mons in Belgium in 1996 and a master’s degree in labor sciences, with a specialization in developing countries, from the prestigious Free University of Brussels in 1997.

Suminwa is married to Roger Tuluka, the son of a Congolese businessman. The pair have two children together.

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Early career

Suminwa returned to the DRC in December 1997 during a period of instability in that country: Earlier that year the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre; AFDL) had overthrown the government, and the AFDL leader, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, installed himself as the new president. Suminwa was hired by the Citibank office in the DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, and began her career.

In 1998 Suminwa took a position as an administrative and financial assistant at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights field office in Kinshasa. The next year she began working with the UNDP as a program specialist; it was the first of several positions she would hold with the UNDP over the next two decades. While at the UNDP, some of Suminwa’s efforts were centered on the war-torn eastern provinces of the DRC, such as managing post-conflict initiatives and working with nonprofit organizations, and later in Comoros, where she oversaw reforms of the army and the police.

Suminwa left the UNDP in 2012 to work in the DRC’s Ministry of Budget, where she worked until 2015 as an adviser on public finance reform with a focus on budgetary reform. Thereafter she returned to the UNDP, briefly serving as a program specialist in the organization’s Democratic Governance and Peacebuilding Unit before ascending to serve as the program’s coordinator for more than four years. The focus of her work during this time included programs concerning peace-building and the empowerment of women and girls, as well as fiscal management of these programs and others.

Return to government

In 2020 Suminwa joined the DRC’s Presidential Strategic Watch Council (Le Conseil Présidentiel de Veille Stratégique; CPVS), a UNDP-supported initiative, as its deputy coordinator, monitoring progress on the government’s commitments. Her experience led to her appointment in 2023 as minister of planning in the second government of Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde Kyenge. Among her responsibilities were the finalization of an economic development plan for the next four years and to implement the Local Development Program for the 145 Territories, an initiative to reduce regional inequalities in the country.

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Prime minister

On April 1, 2024, Pres. Félix Tshisekedi appointed Suminwa as the country’s next prime minister; she is the first woman to hold that position. Her appointment came on the heels of Tshisekedi’s December 2023 reelection and his efforts to get the many parties of his coalition to agree on the composition of the next government. The new government, which was unveiled the next month, included women in about one-third of the positions.

Suminwa was sworn into office on June 12, 2024. She unveiled a proposal for an ambitious government program that would cost $93 billion over the next five years, which was swiftly accepted by the National Assembly. Later that month she traveled to the country’s conflict-ridden eastern provinces, an area that had once been one focus of her work with the UNDP. More than 100 armed groups, including the March 23 Movement (M23) rebels, were active in the area. Suminwa committed herself and the government to working toward improving security and meeting the other needs of residents and local officials impacted by the ongoing hostilities, which she blamed in part on the neighboring country of Rwanda. Since then, she has continued to be vocal in her criticism of Rwanda for its support of M23 and the presence of Rwandan troops on DRC soil. (Rwanda has repeatedly denied these claims despite evidence to the contrary.)