This paper presents a comprehensive assessment of the national information architecture in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) between 1970 and 2010. In general, “the numbers” can be qualified as poorly reliable, though an important distinction should be made between aggregate country statistics and microlevel survey data. Whereas the latter inherently contain the purer and less manipulated pieces of information, the former have proven to be the result of an obscure blend of aggregation, estimation, permutation and negotiation – often with a weak informational basis. By contrast, survey data in the DRC are intrinsically of good quality and collected increasingly, although too many concerns remain about the poor accessibility of primary datasets, the fragmented metadata and the problematic sampling base to claim representativeness.