DRC’s former minister of industry Jeanine Mabunda was elected as the first female president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s national assembly on 24 April 2019
Mabunda is the deputy (MP) for Bumba, a women’s leader in Kabila’s People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), and was a presidential adviser to former president Joseph Kabila.
Her main challenger for the position of president of the national assembly, Henry Thomas Lokondo was disqualified.
Mabunda received 373 of the 385 votes with support from the former ruling party PPRD and President Felix Tshisekedi’s Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS).
Jeanine Mabunda Lioko Mudiayi a short biography
- She was born on 10 April 1964 in Kinshasa, DRC
- Mabunda is the second oldest of four children born to Gaspard Mabunda a plantation manager and Leonie Mabunda a school teacher
- She met Odon Mudiayi Miteuy at university in 1984 and they married in 2001
- Mabunda completed her primary school at Lycee Virgo Sapiens in Leuven, Belgium
- She did her secondary school at Lycee Mater Dei in Brussels, Belgium
- Mabunda graduated with a degree in law from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium
- She studied for a post-graduate diploma in business studies at ICHEC Brussels Management School
- Mabunda started her career as an Account Officer at Citibank Congo in 198 8 before being promoted to head of account relations and credit analyst
- She joined the Central Bank of Congo as an advisor to the Governor in 1997
- Mabunda was the CEO of the Fonds de Promotion de l’Industrie (FPI) from 2002 to 2007
- She was the Minister of Public Enterprises from 2007 to 2011
- Mabunda has been a member of parliament for the Bumba constituency from 2011
- She was former president Joseph Kabila’s adviser on combating sexual violence and child soldier recruitment from 2014
- Mabunda is a former minister of industry and adviser to former president Joseph Kabila
- She was elected as Speaker of the National Assembly on 24 April 2019
