In Kinshasa, the question of restricting TikTok in the Democratic Republic of Congo has resurfaced with renewed urgency. Christian Bosembe, president of the Higher Council for Broadcasting and Communication (CSAC), has again raised the pressure on the platform, no longer ruling out the possibility of shutting the social network down entirely on Congolese territory.
The statement came as the regulator received a memorandum denouncing the rise of insults, disparagement, harassment and online abuse on social media, particularly on TikTok. The document highlighted, among other things, hateful messages targeting certain public figures, as well as gender-based digital violence.
Receiving the memorandum, Christian Bosembe announced that the CSAC would compile a list of all individuals using the platform to insult others. According to him, a list of roughly 2,000 accounts has already been sent to TikTok with a request to block them, but has so far gone unanswered in any meaningful way. Faced with this lack of results, the regulator’s chief argued that the most decisive solution remained the outright shutdown of TikTok in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The CSAC president also broadened his remarks beyond TikTok alone, targeting more generally any platform he believes contributes to spreading harmful content rather than knowledge and understanding. He drew a pointed comparison with the Chinese version of the app, arguing that it offers far better-quality content than what is seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
This is not an isolated statement. For several weeks, Christian Bosembe has repeatedly warned TikTok, which he also accuses of serving as a megaphone for propaganda from armed groups active in the east of the country, notably content linked to figures such as Corneille Nangaa and the AFC-M23 rebellion. The regulator had previously pressed the platform’s representatives on this issue, comparing the Congolese situation to other countries where such accounts, he argues, would never be tolerated.
The CSAC’s stance, however, is not entirely shared across the Congolese government. Communication and Media Minister Patrick Muyaya Katembwe offered a notably different take at a press briefing, arguing that an outright ban is not necessarily the first appropriate response to the abuses observed on social media. He instead emphasized the need to hold digital platforms and their users more accountable, an approach that contrasts with the regulator’s tougher stance.
For its part, the Ministry of Justice reaffirmed the government’s commitment to cleaning up Congo’s digital space, in a statement citing the outrage expressed by civil society organizations and citizens attached to justice, peace, human dignity and republican values.
It remains to be seen whether this latest threat of a shutdown, the most explicit yet from the CSAC, will translate into concrete action, or whether it will remain, like previous warnings, a pressure tactic meant to push TikTok to act more quickly on content moderation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
