The provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo were divided into 26 districts.
The 2006 constitution planned to convert many of the districts into provinces under a decentralization program.
The subsequent debate turned up a variety of issues that first had to be addressed with changes to related laws.
[2] In an October 2010 conclave of the ruling AMP coalition, it was proposed to revise Article 226, which calls for the creation of 26 provinces out of the current 11, in order to allow more time for the transition.
Most provinces also included cities, which were independent of the districts; in turn those were divided into communes.