Congo Kinshasa

Formerly Zaire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is located in central Africa and has a small coastline. In Africa, it is the third largest country and the world’s 12th largest. It has Africa’s fourth highest population and the 18th highest in the world with 85,906,342 million people.

The country is often referred to as DR Congo, DROC, DRC, or RDC. It is also called Congo-Kinshasa after the capital. The country borders the Central African Republic and Sudan to the north. To the east, it borders Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi, Zambia and Angola to the south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. In the east, Lake Tanganyika separates it from Tanzania. At Muanda, DR Congo has a 40 km coastline. There, the Congo River empties in the Gulf of Guinea.

The country was formerly known as the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Congo-Leopoldville, Congo-Knshasa, and Zaire. As a member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), it is affiliated with southern Africa despite being in the central African region.

The country was devastated by the Second Congo War, which began in 1998. It involved seven different armies and is often referred to as “African World War.” Fighting continues in the country’s east despite a peace agreement signed in 2003. In that region, the amount of sexual violence is described as the world’s worst. The deadliest conflict since World War II, the Second Congo War has killed 5.4 million people.

DRC’s citizens are among the world’s poorest, with the second lowest per capita GDP.

History

Early history

During the second millennium BC, early peoples came to the central African area. They maintained livestock, produced food, and developed the oil palm. Starting in the area of South Cameroon on the Sanaga River, the Neolithic’s first people can be followed southwards and southeastwards. The first villages in the DRC were in the vicinity of Mbandaka and Lake Tumba and the people were known as the “Imbonga Tradition: around 650 BC. North of the Angolan border in the lower Congo, the Neolithic advance was the “Ngovo Tradition” around 350 BC.

In Kivu in the east, the “Urewe Tradition” settlements appeared around 650 BC. Congo’s few archeological sites are the Urewe;s western extension. This culture has been found in Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania, and western Kenya. These people understood smelting iron as shown by excavations.

Further west, the earliest evidence is in Cameroon and near Bouar in Central Africa. North of the Equatorial Forest, data places iron smelting between 650 BC and 550 BC. This technology developed independently from other in the Neolithic expansion some 900 years later. Food-producing villagers settled the Congo River network slowly. Evidence suggests villages reached the area around 1,150 BC.

These Bantu-speaking villagers displaced Pygmy populations into other parts of the country. Later migrations from the Kordofan and Darfur regions and East Africans moving into the eastern Congo, added to the ethnic groups present. The Bantu brought agriculture, fishing, fruit collecting, hunting, small livestock, and arboriculture before 3,500 BC.

The Upemba transitioned to the Kingdom of Luba gradually. There were several societies that developed out of the Upemba before the Luba originated. The region’s mineral wealth gave these kingdoms riches. The Luba established a demand for their metal-working. A strong central government based on chieftains was established by the 16th century. The Congo’s eastern regions were constantly raided for slaves by invaders from Arab/Zanzibari groups like the Tippu Tip.

The African Congo Free State (1877–1908)

From the 1870s to the 1920s, Europeans explored the area. Sir Henry Morton Stanley was one of the first and his explorations were under the sponsorship of Belgian King Leopold II. The Belgian king wanted the Congo as a colony and to accomplish this he played powers against each other.

At the Conference of Berlin in 1885, Leopold acquired right to the Congo, naming it the Congo Free State. His reign in the Congo began with infrastructure projects, including railway construction from the capital to the coast. All projects were designed to extract wealth from the colony, which led to African’s exploitation.