Her appointment by the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Félix Tshisekedi, was announced on Monday April 1. Since March 2023, Judith Suminwa has been Minister of State in charge of Planning and Chairman of the DRC Executive Committee of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).
Judith Suminwa has over 20 years’ national and international experience in public finance, democratic governance, security governance and peacebuilding.
She holds a Master’s degree in labor sciences – administration and personnel management; with a focus on work in developing countries, from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium; a degree in financial management, applied economic sciences, from the Facultés Universitaires Catholiques de Mons (Belgium); and a diploma in accounting from the Ecole de Promotion et de Formation Continue (EPFC) in Brussels.
An expert in development formulation and programs, coordination, strategy management, budget monitoring and program monitoring-evaluation, the new Prime Minister has long worked within the United Nations system, mainly with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). She began her career there in 2002 as a program specialist for the Comoros and the DRC. Subsequently, from August 2012 to January 2015, Judith Suminwa was Senior Advisor to the DRC Ministry of Budget, where she held the position of Coordinator of the Change Management Unit, specifically overseeing the implementation of budget and public administration reform.
In September 2015, she returned to UNDP in the DRC as Program Specialist and Coordinator of the Peacebuilding and Democracy Pillar, a position she held until April 2020, before being appointed Deputy Coordinator of the Conseil présidentiel de veille stratégique, a specialized service and technical structure of the Presidency of the Republic of the DRC whose “mission is to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the commitments of the President of the DRC included in the joint government program, in order to facilitate strategic decision-making for the nation through an analysis of trends and their environment”.
Judith Suminwa was appointed Minister of State and Minister of Planning of the DRC in March 2023, position she held before becoming Prime Minister.
