Portal:Democratic Republic of the Congo

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The Democratic Republic of the Congo Portal

Flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo	Coat of Arms of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, also known as Congo-Kinshasa, Congo-Zaire, Congo DR, DR Congo, DRC, or simply either Congo or the Congo, is a country in Central Africa. By land area, the DRC is the second-largest country in Africa and the 11th-largest in the world. With a population of around 105 million, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most populous Francophone country in the world, and the fourth-largest in Africa. The national capital and largest city is Kinshasa, which is also the economic center. The country is bordered by the Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania (across Lake Tanganyika), Zambia, Angola, the Cabinda exclave of Angola, and the South Atlantic Ocean.

Centered on the Congo Basin, the territory of the DRC was first inhabited by Central African foragers around 90,000 years ago and was reached by the Bantu expansion about 3,000 years ago. In the west, the Kingdom of Kongo ruled around the mouth of the Congo River from the 14th to 19th centuries. In the northeast, center, and east, the kingdoms of Azande, Luba, and Lunda ruled from the 16th and 17th centuries to the 19th century. King Leopold II of Belgium formally acquired rights to the Congo territory from the colonial nations of Europe in 1885 and declared the land his private property, naming it the Congo Free State. From 1885 to 1908, his colonial military forced the local population to produce rubber and committed widespread atrocities. In 1908, Leopold ceded the territory, which thus became a Belgian colony.

Congo achieved independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960 and was immediately confronted by a series of secessionist movements, the assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, and the seizure of power by Mobutu Sese Seko in a 1965 coup d'état. Mobutu renamed the country Zaire in 1971 and imposed a harsh personalist dictatorship until his overthrow in 1997 by the First Congo War. The country then had its name changed back and was confronted by the Second Congo War from 1998 to 2003, which resulted in the deaths of 5.4 million people. The war ended under President Joseph Kabila, who governed the country from 2001 to 2019 and under whom human rights in the country remained poor and included frequent abuses such as forced disappearances, torture, arbitrary imprisonment and restrictions on civil liberties. Following the 2018 general election, in the country's first peaceful transition of power since independence, Kabila was succeeded as president by Félix Tshisekedi, who has served as president since. Since 2015, the Eastern DR Congo has been the site of an ongoing military conflict in Kivu.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is extremely rich in natural resources but has suffered from political instability, a lack of infrastructure, corruption, and centuries of both commercial and colonial extraction and exploitation, followed by more than 60 years of independence, with little widespread development. Besides the capital Kinshasa, the two next largest cities, Lubumbashi and Mbuji-Mayi, are both mining communities. The DRC's largest export is raw minerals, with China accepting over 50% of its exports in 2019. In 2021, DR Congo's level of human development was ranked 179th out of 191 countries by the Human Development Index and is classed as a least developed country by the UN. , following two decades of various civil wars and continued internal conflicts, around 600,000 Congolese refugees were still living in neighbouring countries. Two million children risk starvation, and the fighting has displaced 4.5 million people. The country is a member of the United Nations, Non-Aligned Movement, African Union, COMESA, Southern African Development Community, Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, and Economic Community of Central African States. (Full article...)

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The Congo Free State, also known as the Independent State of the Congo (French: État indépendant du Congo), was a large state and absolute monarchy in Central Africa from 1885 to 1908. It was privately owned by King Leopold II, the constitutional monarch of the Kingdom of Belgium. In legal terms, the two separate nations were in a personal union. The Congo Free State was not a part of, nor did it belong to Belgium. Leopold was able to seize the region by convincing other European states at the Berlin Conference on Africa that he was involved in humanitarian and philanthropic work and would not tax trade. Via the International Association of the Congo, he was able to lay claim to most of the Congo Basin. On 29 May 1885, after the closure of the Berlin Conference, the king announced that he planned to name his possessions "the Congo Free State", an appellation which was not yet used at the Berlin Conference and which officially replaced "International Association of the Congo" on 1 August 1885. The Free State was privately controlled by Leopold from Brussels; he never visited it.

The state included the entire area of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo and existed from 1885 to 1908, when the Belgian Federal Parliament reluctantly annexed the state as a colony belonging to Belgium after international pressure. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various Democratic Republic of the Congo-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Collecting firewood in Basankusu. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 2The Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral, Lubumbashi (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 3A classroom in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 4Children mutilated during King Leopold II's rule (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 5Refugees in the Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 6The four Bantu languages with elevated "national" status. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 7A map of the major Bantu languages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 8A Congolese Christian. (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 9Congolese soldiers being trained by UN personnel. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 10Franco Luambo and his OK Jazz orchestra performing live at Zaire 74 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 11Ndeemba Mask (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 12Map of rail network (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 13Abeti Masikini in 1978 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 14Patrice Lumumba, first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Congo-Léopoldville, was murdered by Belgian-supported Katangan separatists in 1961. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 15Belligerents of the Second Congo War (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 16Population fleeing their villages due to fighting between FARDC and rebels groups, Sake North Kivu 30 April 2012 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 17Force Publique soldiers in the Belgian Congo in 1918. At its peak, the Force Publique had around 19,000 Congolese soldiers, led by 420 Belgian officers. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 18Kasaï-Central province, where the Kamwina Nsapu militia clashes with security forces began. (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 19Rough diamonds ≈1 to 1.5 mm in size from DR Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 20Mobutu Sese Seko (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 21Mobutu with the Dutch Prince Bernhard in Kinshasa in 1973 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 22Masque féminin Ngaady a mwaash, XIX-XXe siècles (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 23Breakdown of the largest ethnic groups in DRC (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 24A woman carrying bananas. (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 25Roman Catholic Church in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 26Ugandan President Idi Amin Visits Zaire and Meets Mobutu during The Shaba I Conflict (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 27Congo Free State official Camille Coquilhat with the Bangala chief Mata-Buiké in c. 1888 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 28Democratic Republic of the Congo map of Köppen climate classification (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 29President Joseph Kabila with U.S. President Barack Obama in August 2014 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 30Found in the Congolian rainforests, the okapi was unknown to science until 1901 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 31The endangered mountain gorilla; half of its population live in the DRC's Virunga National Park, making the park a critical habitat for these animals. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 32A Hemba male statue (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 33Arab slave raid on Nyangwe, circa 1870 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 34President Félix Tshisekedi with the president of neighbouring Republic of the Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso in 2020; both wear face masks due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 35Train from Lubumbashi arriving in Kindu on a newly refurbished line. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 36Memory Board (lukasa) - Luba Kingdom (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 37People fleeing their villages due to fighting between FARDC and rebel groups, North Kivu, 2012 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 38Map of the Kingdom of Kongo (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 39Democratic Republic of the Congo's population between 1960 and 2017. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 40The leader of ABAKO, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, first democratically elected President of Congo-Léopoldville (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 41Ituri Rainforest (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 42Government troops near Goma during the M23 rebellion in May 2013 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 43A group of demobilized child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 441908 photograph of a married Christian couple. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 45Mobutu Sese Seko and Richard Nixon in Washington, D.C., 1973. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 46Patrice Lumumba, founding member and leader of the MNC (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 47Development of life expectancy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 48The map of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 49View of Leopoldville Station and Port in 1884 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 50DR Congo's Human Development Index scores, 1970–2010. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 51Joseph Kabila was President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from January 2001 to January 2019. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 52Our Lady of Peace Cathedral in Bukavu (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 53Flag of CNDP (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 54Branhamist worshippers in Kinshasa (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 55Change in per capita GDP of Congo, 1950–2018. Figures are inflation-adjusted to 2011 International dollars. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)

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Male okapi at Beauval Zoo

The okapi (/oʊˈkɑːpiː/; Okapia johnstoni), also known as the forest giraffe, Congolese giraffe and zebra giraffe, is an artiodactyl mammal that is endemic to the northeast Democratic Republic of the Congo in central Africa. However, non-invasive genetic identification has suggested that a population has occurred south-west of the Congo River as well. It is the only species in the genus Okapia. Although the okapi has striped markings reminiscent of zebras, it is most closely related to the giraffe. The okapi and the giraffe are the only living members of the family Giraffidae.

The okapi stands about 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) tall at the shoulder and has a typical body length around 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in). Its weight ranges from 200 to 350 kg (440 to 770 lb). It has a long neck, and large, flexible ears. Its coat is a chocolate to reddish brown, much in contrast with the white horizontal stripes and rings on the legs, and white ankles. Male okapis have short, distinct horn-like protuberances on their heads called ossicones, less than 15 cm (5.9 in) in length. Females possess hair whorls, and ossicones are absent. (Full article...)

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Jason Sendwe (1917 – 19 June 1964) was a Congolese politician and a leader of the Association Générale des Baluba du Katanga (BALUBAKAT) party. He served as Second Deputy Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Republic of the Congo) from August 1961 until January 1963, and as President of the Province of North Katanga from September 1963 until his death, with a brief interruption.

Sendwe was born in 1917 in Mwanya, Kabongo Territory, Belgian Congo, to a Baluba family. He was educated in Methodist schools and nursing institutions. Unable to become a doctor due to a lack of medical schools in the Congo, he found work as a minister, teacher, and nurse. He became involved in several cultural organisations, and in 1957 founded BALUBAKAT to fight for the interests of the Baluba. He espoused nationalism and believed that the Congo should remain a united country after Belgian rule. In May 1960, shortly before the country's independence, he was elected to the newly constituted Chamber of Deputies. Sendwe sought to obtain control over the government of Katanga Province, but lost a power struggle against his rival, Moïse Tshombe, and the Confédération des associations tribales du Katanga (CONAKAT) party. Regardless, Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba nominated him for the office of State Commissioner for Katanga. (Full article...)