Professor Raphael Tshimanga’s career combines both professional and academic skills with a large range of applications to water resources. He first started his career as an employee at the Department of Water Resources of the Ministry of Environment before being appointed as an Assistant Lecturer 1st term in 2004 at the University of Kinshasa. He obtained his PhD in Hydrology at Rhodes University in 2012. His research experience encompasses application of a broad range of innovative approaches for water resources assessment and management in ungauged basins, with a focus in the Congo Basin. During the last decade, he led a number of research and capacity building initiatives in collaboration with a wide range of regional and international universities, research organizations, government agencies, United Nations agencies and private sector. 

Through these initiatives, a number of innovative approaches and tools have been developed, with the aim of advancing knowledge, improving access to water resources services and building societal resilience for the second world largest river basin, the Congo Basin.  

He is a Research Fellow under the UK Royal Society & African Academy of Sciences FLAIR programme where his research focuses on developing a framework of catchment classification for hydrological predictions and water resources management in the Congo Basin. 

Following all these initiatives, he led the creation of the first Congo basin wide research center “the Congo Basin Water Resources Research Center-CRREBaC”, whose mission is to contribute to sustainable management and development of water resources of the Congo Basin.