Military schools traditionally played an important role in Zaire's military, both as a means to provide assistance to other African countries and to train its own officers. The FAZ has the usual complement of military schools, such as the Officers Basic Training Course at Kananga (formerly Luluabourg), the Naval Officers Basic Course at Banana, the Armor Training School at Mbanza-Ngungu, and a variety of other basic and specialty schools. Two schools in particular stand out. The Command and Staff School is a course taught at the Senior Military Schools Group in Kinshasa. In the past, Belgian instructors, with limited Zairian assistance, conducted the course, which was designed to prepare senior company-grade officers to perform duties as battalion commanders and to function as staff officers at battalion level and higher. Although austere by Western standards, the training conducted in this course was professional, thorough, and accomplished its stated objectives.
The Commando Training Center at Kotakoli, in northern KasaiOccidental , also did an excellent job of training personnel to conduct basic commando operations. Again, Belgian personnel supervised the majority of the training, which was divided into two programs. The first prepared personnel to serve as instructors at the school. This course was intensive, thoroughly trained personnel in individual survival and special operations skills, and at this level was equal to most Western schools of this sort. A second, abbreviated program trained units in commando operations. This instruction was shorter and less intense than the longer course. A significant shortcoming of the short course was that although it more than adequately trained personnel in individual skills, it offered no instruction in small-unit tactics.
Data as of December 1993