The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a vast country in Central Africa, the second largest on the continent by area, straddling the equator and dominated by the immense Congo River and the world's second largest rainforest. A land of extraordinary natural and mineral wealth, holding much of the metals that power modern technology, it has nonetheless been one of the world's most troubled nations, scarred by a brutal colonial past and by some of the deadliest conflicts since the Second World War.
Before colonisation, the region was home to organised African kingdoms, including the powerful Kingdom of Kongo. In the late nineteenth century it became the personal property of the king of Belgium as the Congo Free State, a regime of forced labour and atrocity that caused enormous loss of life in the pursuit of rubber and ivory, before becoming a Belgian colony. Independence in 1960 was followed by the assassination of its first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, and decades of dictatorship under Mobutu Sese Seko, who renamed the country Zaire.
The country is built around the Congo River, the second longest in Africa and one of the most powerful rivers in the world, which sweeps in a great arc through dense equatorial rainforest, the second largest on Earth after the Amazon. This vast jungle, home to gorillas, bonobos, and okapi, gives way to savanna in the south and to volcanic mountains and great lakes along the eastern border. The river and its tributaries are the country's lifelines through an immense and often roadless interior.
The flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is sky blue, crossed diagonally by a red stripe bordered in yellow, with a single yellow star in the upper hoist. The blue is said to represent peace, the red the blood of the country's martyrs, the yellow its wealth, and the star a bright future and the unity of the nation. The design revives an earlier flag from around the time of independence.
The great majority of Congolese are Christians, the legacy of European missionary activity, divided mainly between Roman Catholics and a variety of Protestant churches, including large independent African churches that blend Christian worship with local tradition. Traditional African religions, honouring ancestors and spirits, remain widely practised, often alongside Christianity, and there is a small Muslim minority. Faith and church institutions play a major role in community life across the country.
Congolese cuisine is based on starchy staples and rich sauces. A national staple is fufu, a dough made from cassava, eaten with stews and sauces, and cassava leaves, known as pondu or saka-saka, are cooked into a popular dish. Plantains, rice, beans, and freshwater fish from the great rivers feature widely, along with grilled and stewed meat where it can be had. The cooking makes the most of the produce of the forests, rivers, and farms of a vast and fertile land.
Despite immense agricultural potential in its fertile land and abundant water, the Democratic Republic of the Congo struggles to feed itself after decades of conflict and poor infrastructure. Cassava is the most important food crop, alongside maize, plantains, rice, and beans grown largely by smallholder farmers, and coffee, palm oil, and cocoa are produced for export. The country's true riches, however, lie underground: it holds vast reserves of copper, cobalt, diamonds, gold, and the coltan vital to electronics.
The horrors of the Congo Free State under Belgian King Leopold, the independence struggle and the killing of Lumumba, and the long, kleptocratic rule of Mobutu mark the country's history. From 1996 a series of devastating wars, sometimes called Africa's world war for the many nations drawn in, killed millions of people, mostly through disease and starvation, in one of the deadliest conflicts since 1945. Instability and armed groups have continued to trouble the mineral-rich east.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has a population of well over 100 million people, one of the largest in Africa, made up of hundreds of ethnic groups speaking many languages, with French serving as the official tongue alongside several widely spoken African languages. The population is young and fast-growing. Most people live by farming across the vast interior, while the sprawling capital, Kinshasa, on the Congo River, has become one of the largest cities in Africa.
