Kesho Congo is a Congolese NGO (Democratic Republic of the Congo) founded in November 2015. Its vision is peace and the well-being of vulnerable Congolese people, and its mission is to build healthy and resilient communities. Its areas of focus include health and nutrition, education and vocational training, agriculture, livestock farming, and environmental protection.
Its headquarters are in Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu in eastern DRC. This region, rich in minerals such as gold, coltan, cassiterite, and lithium, has been suffering from an economic war for 30 years. Unfortunately, it is the local population that pays the price for the global demand for these rare and valuable minerals.
Kesho Congo operates four nutritional centers: two in South Kivu, one in North Kivu, and one in Kasaï Central. Each center receives and feeds between 90 and 120 children per day, with children attending the centers three times a week.
South Kivu and North Kivu are currently experiencing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. According to the United Nations, one million people have fled conflicts since the beginning of this year (2025), and 11 million people in eastern DRC are in urgent need of aid, including nutrition, basic medical care, and shelter.
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From April 2023 to October 2024, Kesho Congo received a grant from USAID to implement a nutrition and food security project in South Kivu and Kasaï Central. The activities from the first quarter of this project are summarized in this short video:
In recognition of Kesho Congo’s outstanding work, U.S. Ambassador to the DRC, Lucy Tamlyn, visited the organization’s activities on April 9, 2024 : VIEW POST
Lucy Tamlyn’s predecessor, Ambassador Mike Hammer, also visited Kesho Congo’s activities in August 2021.
Kesho Congo’s founder, Dr. Adolphe Nyakasane, specialized in pediatrics at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium before returning permanently to his home country to serve his people. In 2016, he was selected for the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders, a U.S. government program launched by President Obama. Through this program, he trained at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Following his training, he participated in a presidential summit in Washington and met President Obama before completing an internship at the Vitalyst Health Foundation in Phoenix, Arizona. He returns to Syracuse every year to present updates on Kesho Congo’s work in the field and to gain inspiration from the American model.
Currently, Kesho Congo urgently needs support to care for the many malnourished children, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers in its nutritional centers. Additionally, they are working to complete the construction of a hospital in Mudaka, a large village of 73,000 inhabitants that currently has no hospital.
The Central New York Philanthropy Center is involved in Kesho Congo’s projects to provide assistance to thousands of children, youth, and women in need, as well as to contribute to the development of the DRC, Africa’s second-largest country, with a population of 120 million.
You can follow Kesho Congo’s activities every week through its social media and website:
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