Washington: Facebook Inc's chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg will testify next week before a congressional committee over a political consulting firm's misuse of customer data to interfere in the US presidential election, legislators said on Thursday.

After initially rebuffing efforts to appear before investigatory committes in the UK and US, Zuckerberg will appear before the US House Energy and Commerce Committee on April 11.

"This hearing will be an important opportunity to shed light on critical consumer data privacy issues and help all Americans better understand what happens to their personal information online," the panel's Republican chairman Greg Walden and top Democrat Frank Pallone said in a statement.

Facebook has come under fire in recent weeks after it was revealed that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked for Donald Trump's presidential campaign, gained access to the personal data of 50 million Facebook users.

Facebook said in March it had suspended the accounts of Cambridge Analytica and its parent company and hired forensic auditors to probe whether Cambridge Analytica still had the data.