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. 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 Kivu conflict is an umbrella term for a series of protracted armed conflicts in the North Kivu and South Kivu provinces in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo which have occurred since the end of the Second Congo War. Including neighboring Ituri province, there are more than 120 different armed groups active in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Currently, some of the most active rebel groups include the Allied Democratic Forces, the Cooperative for the Development of the Congo, the March 23 Movement, and many local Mai Mai militias. In addition to rebel groups and the governmental FARDC troops, a number of national and international organizations have intervened militarily in the conflict, including the United Nations force known as MONUSCO, and an East African Community regional force.

Conflict began in 2004 in the eastern Congo as an armed conflict between the military of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) and the Hutu Power group Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It has broadly consisted of three phases, the third of which is an ongoing conflict. Prior to March 2009, the main combatant group against the FARDC was the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP). Following the cessation of hostilities between these two forces, rebel Tutsi forces, formerly under the command of Laurent Nkunda, became the dominant opposition to the government forces. (Full article...)

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

Image 1The four Bantu languages with elevated "national" status. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 2Belligerents of the Second Congo War (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 3Collecting firewood in Basankusu. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 4Joseph Kabila was President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from January 2001 to January 2019. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 5A woman carrying bananas. (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 6Found in the Congolian rainforests, the okapi was unknown to science until 1901 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 7Congolese soldiers being trained by UN personnel. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 8View of Leopoldville Station and Port in 1884 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 9Patrice 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 10Force 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 11Ugandan President Idi Amin Visits Zaire and Meets Mobutu during The Shaba I Conflict (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 12Government troops near Goma during the M23 rebellion in May 2013 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 13Development of life expectancy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 14Our Lady of Peace Cathedral in Bukavu (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 15Democratic Republic of the Congo's population between 1960 and 2017. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 161908 photograph of a married Christian couple. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 17Flag of CNDP (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 18President Joseph Kabila with U.S. President Barack Obama in August 2014 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 19The leader of ABAKO, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, first democratically elected President of Congo-Léopoldville (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 20Abeti Masikini in 1978 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 21Democratic Republic of the Congo map of Köppen climate classification (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 22Mobutu Sese Seko and Richard Nixon in Washington, D.C., 1973. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 23Franco Luambo and his OK Jazz orchestra performing live at Zaire 74 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 24Mobutu Sese Seko (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 25Ituri Rainforest (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 26The Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral, Lubumbashi (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 27Breakdown of the largest ethnic groups in DRC (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 28Population fleeing their villages due to fighting between FARDC and rebels groups, Sake North Kivu 30 April 2012 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 29Train from Lubumbashi arriving in Kindu on a newly refurbished line. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 30Patrice Lumumba, founding member and leader of the MNC (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 31Children mutilated during King Leopold II's rule (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 32Change in per capita GDP of Congo, 1950–2018. Figures are inflation-adjusted to 2011 International dollars. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 33The map of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 34Rough diamonds ≈1 to 1.5 mm in size from DR Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 35Roman Catholic Church in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 36People fleeing their villages due to fighting between FARDC and rebel groups, North Kivu, 2012 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 37Map of rail network (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 38A Congolese Christian. (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 39DR Congo's Human Development Index scores, 1970–2010. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 40Memory Board (lukasa) - Luba Kingdom (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 41Map of the Kingdom of Kongo (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 42Kasaï-Central province, where the Kamwina Nsapu militia clashes with security forces began. (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 43Congo Free State official Camille Coquilhat with the Bangala chief Mata-Buiké in c. 1888 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 44A map of the major Bantu languages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 45President 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 46Branhamist worshippers in Kinshasa (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 47Ndeemba Mask (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 48A Hemba male statue (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 49Masque féminin Ngaady a mwaash, XIX-XXe siècles (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 50The 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 51A group of demobilized child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 52Mobutu with the Dutch Prince Bernhard in Kinshasa in 1973 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 53Refugees in the Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 54A classroom in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 55Arab slave raid on Nyangwe, circa 1870 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)

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The Yellala Falls from the left bank, c. 1880

The Yellala Falls (Rapides de Yelala or Chutes Yelala; also spelled as Ielala) are a series of waterfalls and rapids on the Congo River just upstream from Matadi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The falls are the lowest of a long series of rapids that render the river unnavigable, forcing colonial explorers to travel by foot as far as the Stanley Pool 350 kilometres (220 mi) upstream.

The Congo is the second largest river in the world by volume of water discharged, and the deepest in the world. The section of river that ends with the Yellala falls has over 300 species of fish, many found nowhere else. (Full article...)

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Lihau c. 1990

Marcel Antoine Lihau or Ebua Libana la Molengo Lihau (29 September 1931 – 9 April 1999) was a Congolese jurist, law professor and politician who served as the inaugural First President of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Congo from 1968 until 1975, and was involved in the creation of two constitutions for the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Lihau attended the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium with the help of sympathetic Jesuit educators, becoming one of the first Congolese to study law. While there he encouraged Congolese politicians to form an alliance that allowed them to secure the independence of the Congo from Belgium. He served briefly as a justice official and negotiator for the Congolese central government before being appointed to lead a commission to draft a permanent national constitution. He was made dean of law faculty at Lovanium University in 1963. The following year he helped deliver the Luluabourg Constitution to the Congolese, which was adopted by referendum. (Full article...)