Congo Republic relieved of 90 percent of its debt

This week, the Democratic Republic of Congo is celebrating it's fiftieth anniversary of independence. The DRC has also just received some good news from the big lending institutions. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have agreed to relieve the DRC of 90% of it's debt amounting to 12.3 billion dollars.

From the BBC, we learn more about this new reason to celebrate in the Congo.

DR Congo currently pays around $300m (£198m) every year in debt repayments.

The African country has been hard hit by violence and bad governance.

An estimated 5m people died in what was dubbed "Africa's world war" between 1998 and 2003, and areas of the country remain in conflict.

Despite having a multitude of valuable minerals, most of its citizens are poor.
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The country itself is among the group known by the IMF and World Bank as the Highly Indebted Poor Countries.
Continue reading the main story map DR Congo: Celebrating 50 years of chaos

The debt relief plan comes under their initiative to help these countries escape their debts in return for economic and government reforms.

The new debt relief could see as much as 90% of DR Congo's external debt erased, the BBC's Thomas Fessy reports from Kinshasa.