Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are real sources of job creation, diversification of production and use of local productive resources. They face serious liquidity shortages, and great difficulty in accessing formal finance, which hampers their development. In addition, there is a marked disparity in the distribution of credit institutions in the DRC between provinces. These institutions are almost non-existent in rural areas, limiting access to formal finance for the vast majority of small-scale livelihoods that live and work there. Very few SMEs have access to credit. They are not sufficiently informed about the products offered by credit institutions and the conditions for accessing credit, which leads them to hoard their scarce funds. In addition, SMEs face reluctance from financial institutions and high institutional requirements to access credit. In order to do so, they resort to certain informal modes of financing their activities, notably pre-financing of activities by clients or final consumers, financing of activities by certain NGOs, or the use of tontines. Changes are needed within SMEs to enable them to meet certain requirements for access to formal finance, notably the formalisation and legalisation of their businesses, and optimal financial and administrative management. SMEs' mistrust of the formal finance sector will require mechanisms to be put in place to facilitate the rapprochement between the two parties