Congo-Brazzaville watches the river from the opposite bank
The Republic of the Congo—Congo-Brazzaville—sits on Central Africa’s Atlantic approach west of the Congo River, bordered by Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Angolan exclave of Cabinda, and the ocean. Brazzaville faces Kinshasa across the water.
The country, like the river, takes its name from the Kongo kingdom that held the river mouth when the Portuguese arrived in 1483 or 1484, a name drawn from the Bakongo people and said to mean “hunters.” Brazzaville honours Pierre Savorgnan de Brazzà, an Italian-born noble whose title came from Brazzacco in Friuli. Bantu-speaking groups spread through the region around 1500 BC, displacing or absorbing the earlier Pygmy inhabitants.
By the thirteenth century a confederation led by Vungu, with Kakongo and Ngoyo, dominated the coast, while the Tio kingdom rose in the fourteenth century and Loango in the sixteenth. After Diogo Cão reached the river mouth in 1484, the region became a hub of the Atlantic slave trade for centuries. Brazzà’s 1880 treaty with the Tio king Iloo I put the north bank under France, and his widow Queen Ngalifourou kept faith with the deal.
Middle Congo joined French Equatorial Africa in 1908 with Brazzaville as federal capital, and building the Congo–Ocean Railway after World War I cost at least 14,000 lives. From 1940 to 1943 Brazzaville served as the symbolic capital of Free France. Riots between supporters of Jacques Opangault and Fulbert Youlou shook the city in 1959, and Youlou became the first president at independence in August 1960.
A Marxist–Leninist People’s Republic ruled from 1969 to 1992. Oil now dominates the economy, ranking the country fourth among Gulf of Guinea producers, and growth slowed when prices fell after 2015.
Source: Republic of the Congo
