Africa’s second-largest country is still nicknamed the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo—Congo-Kinshasa, once Zaire—covers Central Africa as the continent’s second-largest country and the world’s eleventh, with roughly 124 million people. Foragers arrived about 90,000 years ago; Bantu expansions followed two to three millennia ago, and western kingdoms such as Kongo later met colonial extraction.
Around 124 million people make it Africa's fourth most populous country and the largest French-speaking nation on Earth. French is official, but more than 200 local languages are spoken, Lingala most widely. Kinshasa is the capital and economic centre. To the west lie the Republic of the Congo, Angola's Cabinda exclave and a stretch of Atlantic coast; the Central African Republic and South Sudan are to the north, and eastern neighbours include Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and, over the waters of Lake Tanganyika, Tanzania.
The Kingdom of Kongo ruled the Congo River's mouth from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century, while Mwene Muji, Luba and Lunda held the centre and east. Leopold II of Belgium took the land as his Congo Free State in 1885, and atrocities forced him to hand it to Belgium in 1908. Independence in 1960 brought immediate secession attempts and the murder of prime minister Patrice Lumumba.
Refugees fleeing Rwanda's civil war sparked the First Congo War of 1996–97, which toppled Mobutu. The Second Congo War from 1998 to 2003 killed several million people, including President Laurent-Désiré Kabila; his son Joseph ended it. When Félix Tshisekedi won the disputed 2018 vote, Joseph Kabila stepped aside in 2019, the country's first peaceful handover. More than 120 armed groups still operate, mostly in the east, where M23 rebels seized Goma.
Mineral wealth has not translated into prosperity, and the country is a textbook case of the resource curse. Raw minerals and metals made up 80 percent of exports in 2023, with China the main buyer, and Lubumbashi and Mbuji-Mayi, the next biggest cities after Kinshasa, are mining towns. The DRC ranked 171st of 193 on the 2023 Human Development Index. Its name comes from the Congo River, the deepest river in the world and third by discharge.
Source: Democratic Republic of the Congo
