Yesterday, the Church announced that an official missionary training center (MTC) will open in August 2024 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) to train missionaries in French destined to serve in this region of Africa. Although the Church has previously operated an unofficial MTC in Kinshasa for a couple of years, the new MTC will be housed in a new building with capacity of up to 200 missionaries at a time. This MTC marks the third MTC in Africa following MTCs in Accra, Ghana and Johannesburg, South Africa.
The announcement of the new MTC comes at a time when the Church has experienced a significant consolidation of MTCs worldwide from many smaller MTCs into larger regional ones. There will be 11 MTCs worldwide once the new center opens in Kinshasa. Other MTCs currently in operation are located in Brazil, England, Ghana, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand (opened in 2023), and Utah. At one point, there were 19 MTCs throughout the world in the late 1990s, although centers closed in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Japan, Samoa, South Korea, Spain, and Tonga to help conserve resources and provide higher quality training experiences for new missionaries. The Church has also operated an unofficial MTC in India for some time. The new MTC being located in the DR Congo instead of the Africa Central Area Headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya is also unusual, as MTCs are usually located in the same city as the area offices.
The new MTC in Kinshasa has been greatly needed for many years. The DR Congo has supplied large numbers of young adults serving full-time missionaries for many years, and the training of these missionaries has been a challenge due to difficulties with securing visas and transportation to other countries. The Church in the DR Congo experiences some of the most rapid growth in the world, and many of these growth developments have been highlighted in this blog. In a couple weeks, the Church will organize two new missions in the DR Congo, bringing the total number of missions in the country to seven. The Church may have as many as half a million Latter-day Saints in the DR Congo by 2040 given historical growth trends. Growth in the DR Congo has come after decades of careful planning and high standards for convert baptism which has resulted in some of the highest member activity rates in the world (usually over 80%).
