Portal:Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo Portal
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo, is a country in Central Africa. By land area, the country is the second-largest country in Africa and the 11th-largest in the world. With a population of around 111 million, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most populous nominally 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 Congo was first inhabited by Central African foragers around 90,000 years ago and was settled in the Bantu expansion about 2,000 to 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 center and east, the empires of Mwene Muji, Luba, and Lunda ruled from the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 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 and the assassination of President Laurent-Désiré Kabila. 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 in a highly contentious election won by Félix Tshisekedi, who has served as president since. Eastern Congo has remained unstable since the Congo Wars of the 1990s and has been the site of an ongoing military conflict involving over 100 armed groups. The region's largest city, Goma, was occupied by the March 23 Movement (M23) rebels in 2012 and again in 2025. Since 2022, there have also been tensions between the DRC and Rwanda, which has been providing military support to M23 and sending troops into Congolese territory. 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; the nation is a potential example of the "resource curse". 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 having accepted over 50% of its exports in 2019. In 2025, DR Congo's level of human development was ranked 180th out of 193 countries by the Human Development Index and is classified as being one of the least developed countries by the United Nations (UN).[citation needed] As of 2018[update], 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...) Selected article -The bonobo (/bəˈnoʊboʊ, ˈbɒnəboʊ/; Pan paniscus), also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee (less often the dwarf chimpanzee or gracile chimpanzee), is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus Pan (the other being the common chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes). While bonobos are, today, recognized as a distinct species in their own right, they were initially thought to be a subspecies of Pan troglodytes, because of the physical similarities between the two species. Taxonomically, members of the chimpanzee/bonobo subtribe Panina—composed entirely by the genus Pan—are collectively termed panins. Bonobos are distinguished from common chimpanzees by relatively long limbs, pinker lips, a darker face, a tail-tuft through adulthood, and parted, longer hair on their heads. Some individuals have sparser, thin hair over parts of their bodies. The bonobo is found in a 500,000 km2 (190,000 sq mi) area within the Congo Basin of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Central Africa. It is predominantly frugivorous, compared to the often highly omnivorous diets and hunting of small monkeys, duiker and other antelope exhibited by common chimpanzees. Bonobos inhabit primary and secondary forest, including seasonally inundated swamp forest. Because of political instability in the region, and the general timidity of bonobos, there has been relatively little field work done observing the species in its natural habitat. (Full article...) General images -The following are images from various Democratic Republic of the Congo-related articles on Wikipedia.
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Antoine-Roger Bolamba, later Bolamba Lokolé J'ongungu (27 July 1913 – 9 July 2002), was a Congolese journalist, writer, and politician. He edited the monthly journal La Voix du Congolais from 1945 until 1959. He also served as Secretary of State for Information and Cultural Affairs of the Republic of the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1960 and then as Minister of Information and Tourism from 1963 until 1964. Bolamba was born to a Mongo family in 1913 in the Belgian Congo. During his education he took interest in French literature and soon thereafter began to write, publishing various works and contributing to Congolese periodicals. He gained public attention in 1939 after winning awards for his writing. In 1944 he was hired by the colonial government to manage its press division, and the following year he was made editor-in-chief of a new publication, La Voix du Congolais. Bolamba held much influence in the city of Léopoldville and frequently discussed the social implications of colonialism. He also began writing poetry, and in 1956 he released a collection entitled Esanzo: Chants pour mon pays, which articulated his Mongo and Congolese identity. (Full article...)
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Tintin in the Congo (French: Tintin au Congo; French pronunciation: [tɛ̃tɛ̃ o kɔ̃go]) is the second volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian comic strip artist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from May 1930 to June 1931 before being published in a collected volume by Éditions de Petit Vingtième in 1931. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who are sent to the Belgian Congo to report on events in the country. Amid various encounters with the native Congolese people and wild animals, Tintin unearths a criminal diamond smuggling operation run by the American gangster Al Capone. Following on from Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and bolstered by publicity stunts, Tintin in the Congo was a commercial success within Belgium and was also serialised in France. Hergé continued The Adventures of Tintin with Tintin in America in 1932, and the series subsequently became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition. In 1946, Hergé re-drew and coloured Tintin in the Congo in his distinctive ligne-claire style for republication by Casterman, with further alterations made at the request of his Scandinavian publisher for a 1975 edition. (Full article...)
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