Portal:Democratic Republic of the Congo

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The Democratic Republic of the Congo Portal

Flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo	Coat of Arms of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

DR Congo, officially the Democratic Republic of the Congo, also known as the DRC, Congo-Kinshasa or simply Congo, is a country in Central Africa. By land area the Congo is the second-largest country in Africa and the 11th-largest in the world. With a population of around 109 million, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most populous 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 3000 to 2000 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. Since 2015, eastern Congo has been the site of an ongoing military conflict.

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. 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 accepting over 50% of its exports in 2019. In 2021, DR Congo's level of human development was ranked 179th out of 191 countries by the Human Development Index and is classed as a least developed country by the UN. 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...)

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King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa (1998) is a best-selling popular history book by Adam Hochschild that explores the exploitation of the Congo Free State by King Leopold II of Belgium between 1885 and 1908, as well as the large-scale atrocities committed during that period. The book, also a general biography of the private life of Leopold, succeeded in increasing public awareness of these crimes in recent decades.

The book was refused by nine of the ten U.S. publishing houses to which an outline was submitted, but became an unexpected bestseller and won the prestigious Mark Lynton History Prize for literary style. It also won the 1999 Duff Cooper Prize. By 2013 more than 600,000 copies were in print in a dozen languages. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various Democratic Republic of the Congo-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1The endangered mountain gorilla; half of its population live in the DRC's Virunga National Park, making the park a critical habitat for these animals. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 2The four Bantu languages with elevated "national" status. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 3Map of rail network (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 4A woman carrying bananas. (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 5A Hemba male statue (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 6Development of life expectancy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 7A classroom in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 8Force Publique soldiers in the Belgian Congo in 1918. At its peak, the Force Publique had around 19,000 Congolese soldiers, led by 420 Belgian officers. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 9President Joseph Kabila with U.S. President Barack Obama in August 2014 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 10Abeti Masikini in 1978 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 11View of Leopoldville Station and Port in 1884 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 12Breakdown of the largest ethnic groups in DRC (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 13Lake Kivu in North Kivu province (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 14Arab slave raid on Nyangwe, circa 1870 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 15Children mutilated during King Leopold II's rule (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 16Ituri Rainforest (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 17Government troops near Goma during the M23 rebellion in May 2013 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 18Joseph Kabila was President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from January 2001 to January 2019. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 19A group of demobilized child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 20Kasaï-Central province, where the Kamwina Nsapu militia clashes with security forces began. (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 21Found in the Congolian rainforests, the okapi was unknown to science until 1901 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 22Patrice Lumumba, founding member and leader of the MNC (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 23People fleeing their villages due to fighting between FARDC and rebel groups, North Kivu, 2012 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 24Masque féminin Ngaady a mwaash, XIX-XXe siècles (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 25Map of the Kingdom of Kongo (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 26Mobutu with the Dutch Prince Bernhard in Kinshasa in 1973 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 27Patrice Lumumba, first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Congo-Léopoldville, was murdered by Belgian-supported Katangan separatists in 1961. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 28A map of the major Bantu languages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 29DR Congo's Human Development Index scores, 1970–2010. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 30Franco Luambo and his OK Jazz orchestra performing live at Zaire 74 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 31Roman Catholic Church in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 32The map of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 33Rough diamonds ≈1 to 1.5 mm in size from DR Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 34The Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral, Lubumbashi (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 35Democratic Republic of the Congo map of Köppen climate classification (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 36Congo Free State official Camille Coquilhat with the Bangala chief Mata-Buiké in c. 1888 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 37Ugandan President Idi Amin Visits Zaire and Meets Mobutu during The Shaba I Conflict (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 38Democratic Republic of the Congo's population between 1960 and 2017. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 391908 photograph of a married Christian couple. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 40Mobutu Sese Seko and Richard Nixon in Washington, D.C., 1973. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 41A Congolese Christian. (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 42Belligerents of the Second Congo War (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 43Congolese soldiers being trained by UN personnel. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 44Population fleeing their villages due to fighting between FARDC and rebels groups, Sake North Kivu 30 April 2012 (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 45The leader of ABAKO, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, first democratically elected President of Congo-Léopoldville (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 46Memory Board (lukasa) - Luba Kingdom (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 47Refugees in the Congo (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 48Collecting firewood in Basankusu. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 49Ndeemba Mask (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 50President Félix Tshisekedi with the president of neighbouring Republic of the Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso in 2020; both wear face masks due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 51Change in per capita GDP of Congo, 1950–2018. Figures are inflation-adjusted to 2011 International dollars. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 52Flag of CNDP (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 53Our Lady of Peace Cathedral in Bukavu (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 54Mobutu Sese Seko (from History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 55Train from Lubumbashi arriving in Kindu on a newly refurbished line. (from Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Image 56Branhamist worshippers in Kinshasa (from Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)

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The common eland (Taurotragus oryx), also known as the southern eland or eland antelope, is a large-sized savannah and plains antelope found in East and Southern Africa. An adult male is around 1.6 m (5.2 ft) tall at the shoulder and can weigh up to 942 kg (2,077 lb) with a typical range of 500–600 kg (1,100–1,300 lb). Females are around 1.4 m (4.6 ft) tall and weigh 340–445 kg (750–981 lb). It is the second-largest antelope in the world, being slightly smaller on average than the giant eland. It was scientifically described by Peter Simon Pallas in 1766.

Mainly a herbivore, its diet is primarily grasses and leaves. Common elands form herds of up to 500 animals, but are not territorial. The common eland prefers habitats with a wide variety of flowering plants such as savannah, woodlands, and open and montane grasslands; it avoids dense forests. It uses loud barks, visual and postural movements, and the flehmen response to communicate and warn others of danger. The common eland is used by humans for leather, and meat and has been domesticated in southern Africa. Eland milk contains more butterfat than cow's milk, and can keep longer without pasteurising. (Full article...)

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T. d. derbianus
Senegal

The giant eland (Taurotragus derbianus), also known as the Lord Derby's eland and greater eland, is an open-forest and savanna antelope. A species of the family Bovidae and genus Taurotragus, it was described in 1847 by John Edward Gray. The giant eland is the largest species of antelope, with a body length ranging from 220–290 cm (7.2–9.5 ft). There are two subspecies: T. d. derbianus and T. d. gigas.

The giant eland is a herbivore, eating grasses, foliage and branches. They usually form small herds consisting of 15–25 members, both males and females. Giant elands are not territorial, and have large home ranges. They are naturally alert and wary, which makes them difficult to approach and observe. They can run at up to 70 km/h (43 mph) and use this speed as a defence against predators. Mating occurs throughout the year but peaks in the wet season. They mostly inhabit broad-leafed savannas, woodlands and glades. (Full article...)