The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has become the latest country to join the GBIF network.
The central African country’s entry into the GBIF community as an Associate Participant brings the total number of national members to 54, including 14 countries from Africa.
DRC is Africa’s second largest country by area, and is among 17 so-called ‘megadiverse’ countries that collectively harbour the majority of the world’s species. The two other African countries in this group, Madagascar and South Africa, are already GBIF Participants.
As of November 2015, users of GBIF.org already have access to more than half a million occurrence records relating to some 16,000 species located in DRC, published by institutions from 33 countries. More than half of these records are shared by institutions in Belgium, including several collections from the Royal Museum of Central Africa.
The University of Kinshasa will host the GBIF node for DRC.