The Democratic Republic of the Congo (French: République démocratique du Congo (RDC)), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly Zaire, is a country in sub-Saharan central Africa. The DRC is bordered to the northwest by the Republic of the Congo, to the north by the Central African Republic, to the northeast by South Sudan, to the east by Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, and by Tanzania (across Lake Tanganyika), to the south and southeast by Zambia, to the southwest by Angola, and to the west by the South Atlantic Ocean.

​

As a result of its location along the equator, the DRC experiences high precipitation and has the highest frequency of thunderstorms in the world. The annual rainfall can total upwards of 200 centimetres (80 inches) in some places, and the area sustains the Congo rainforest, the second-largest rain forest in the world after the Amazon rainforest. This massive expanse of lush jungle covers most of the vast, low-lying central basin of the Congo River, which slopes toward the Atlantic Ocean in the west. This area is surrounded by plateaus merging into savannas in the south and southwest, by mountainous terraces in the west, and dense grasslands extending beyond the Congo River in the north. The glaciated Rwenzori Mountains are found in the extreme eastern region.

​

By area, it is the second-largest country in Africa and the 11th-largest in the world. The 2022 population estimate is 108,407,721 people making it the 14th most populated nation in the world. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most populous officially French speaking country in the world. The capital and largest city is Kinshasa, which is the third largest African city in metropolitan area after Lagos and Cairo.

 

Economy

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is extremely rich in natural resources with China accepting over 50% of its exports in 2019. Despite such vast mineral wealth, Congolese citizens are among the poorest people on earth. The nation 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. In 2019, DR Congo's level of human development was ranked 175th out of 189 countries by the Human Development Index. As of 2018, 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. DR Congo consistently has the lowest, or nearly the lowest, nominal GDP per capita in the world. The DRC is also one of the twenty worst-ranked countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index.

 

Ethnic groups

While the people of the DRC are called ‘Congolese’, as many as 250 ethnic groups have been identified and named, of which the majority are Bantu peoples. Together, Mongo, Luba, Kongo peoples, Mangbetu and the Azande peoples constitute around 45% of the population. The Kongo people are the largest ethnic group in the country. About 600,000 Pygmies are the aboriginal people of the DR Congo.

 

History

Bantu peoples reached Central Africa at some point during the first millennium BC, then gradually started to expand southward. This led to the displacement of the pre-existing hunter-gatherer groups in the east and southeast. The final wave of the Bantu expansion was complete by the 10th century, followed by the establishment of the Bantu kingdoms, whose rising populations soon made possible intricate local, regional and foreign commercial networks that traded mostly in slaves, salt, iron and copper. In the west, the Kingdom of Kongo ruled around the mouth of the Congo River from the 14th to 19th centuries. In the northeast, centre and east, the kingdoms of Azande, Luba and Lunda ruled from the 16th and 17th centuries to the 19th century. King Leopold II of Belgium formally acquired rights to the Congo territory in 1885 and declared the land his private property, naming it the Congo Free State. From 1885 to 1908, his colonial military 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, which culminated in the seizure of power of Mobutu in a 1965 coup d'état. Mobutu renamed the country Zaire in 1971 and imposed a harsh 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. The war ended under President Joseph Kabila who governed the country from 2001 to 2019, 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 by Félix Tshisekedi, who has served as president since. Since 2015, the Eastern DR Congo has been the site of an ongoing military conflict in Kivu.

 

Languages

French is the official language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is culturally accepted as the common language, facilitating communication among the many different ethnic groups of the Congo. Approximately 242 languages are spoken in the country, of which four have the status of national languages: Kituba (Kikongo), Lingala, Tshiluba, and Swahili. Although some limited number of people speak these as first languages, most of the population speak them as a second language, after the native language of their own ethnic group.

 

Religion

Christianity is the predominant religion of the DRC various polls and data sources put the Christian population from between 93% to 96% of the population (with Catholics making up about 30%, Protestants 27%, and other Christians 38%). A religious movement called Kimbanguism, officially "the church of Christ on Earth by the prophet Simon Kimbangu", has about 3% adherence, while the proportion of followers of Islam is disputed and estimated anywhere from 1% to 12%. Islam has been present in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since the 18th century, when Arab traders from East Africa pushed into the interior for ivory- and slave-trading purposes. The majority are Sunni Muslims. Traditional religions embody such concepts as monotheism, animism, vitalism, spirit and ancestor worship, witchcraft, and sorcery and vary widely among ethnic groups. The syncretic sects often merge elements of Christianity with traditional beliefs and rituals.