He then moved to Kananga (Kasai-Occidental Province) and finally, after one year, to Mbuji-Mayi where he obtained his State degree in 1980 (Institut Mulemba).

Under Laurent Kabila, Kamerhe became the deputy chief of staff of Etienne-Richard Mbaya, the minister of reconstruction[citation needed].

A founding member of the PPRD party in 2002, Vital Kamerhe was one of the leading figures in the peace process in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he was even nicknamed "the Peacemaker" (French: "le Pacificateur").

[15] In 2009, as President of the National Assembly, he questioned Kabila and his own party over the Umoja Wetu operations that allowed several thousand Rwandan troops to deploy into the Congo without informing the parliament.

[17] On January 21, 2009, he released a statement to Radio Okapi expressing his disappointment[18] for the joint military operations between the Congolese and Rwandan army in the Kivu, conducted without informing the National Assembly and the Senate and thus violating the article 213 of the constitution.

[20][21] On 14 December 2010, Kamerhe officially quit the PPRD, announcing his candidacy for the 2011 presidential election and the creation of his new party,[22] the UNC.

The UDPS allied with the UNC to form the Heading for Change coalition, and Tshisekedi agreed that if he won, he would make Kamerhe his prime minister.

[1][25] On 8 April 2020, Kamerhe was arrested and detained in Makala Central Prison, facing charges of having embezzled up to $57 million from an infrastructure project.

[2][25][3] One of his co-defendants, the Lebanese businessman Samih Jammal, was sentenced to twenty years of forced labour, to be followed by expulsion from the DRC.

[10][11][30] In its 2022 country report on the DRC, the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor took Kamerhe's acquittal as evidence that "officials frequently engaged in corrupt practices with impunity," presenting it as an example of how "[l]ack of enforcement of court decisions in corruption cases contributed to impunity, as rulings were often overturned in appellate proceedings or dismissed due to procedural errors.

"[30] On 25 March 2023, Félix Tshisekedi reappointed Kamerhe to his government, this time as vice prime minister in charge of the economy.