Africa-Press – Seychelles. The Democratic Republic of Congo, also called more simply RDC, Congo, DR Congo or informally Congo-Kinshasa (to distinguish it from Congo-Brazzaville), is a country in Central Africa. It is the third most populous country in Africa (behind Nigeria and Ethiopia), as well as the most populous French-speaking country.
According to Larousse, in 2019, the country had at least 86,790,567 inhabitants with Kinshasa as its capital. The country has an area of 2,345,000km2 and they use the Congolese franc (1 dollar = 2500 francs)
Known as the second largest country in Africa after Algeria, the DRC stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Eastern Plateau and corresponds to most of the Congo River Basin. The north of the country is one of the largest areas of equatorial forest in the world, the east of the country borders the great East African rift, an area of mountains, hills, the Great Lakes but also volcanoes. The south and the center, a domain of wooded savannahs, form a high plateau rich in minerals. In the far west, about thirty kilometers north of the mouth of the Congo River, stretches a coast on the Atlantic Ocean. The country shares its borders with the enclave of Cabinda (Angola) to the west-southwest, the Republic of Congo to the west, the Central African Republic to the north, South Sudan to the northeast, Uganda to the east-northeast, Rwanda and Burundi to the east, Tanzania to the east-southeast, Zambia to the south-southeast and Angola to the southwest. The DRC has been a member of the International Organization of La Francophonie since 1977.The territory became the private property of Belgian King Leopold II in 1885. Over the next 23 years, the territory was the site of widespread atrocities committed by Leopold’s colonial forces who forced the indigenous population to produce wild rubber. The territory subsequently became a Belgian colony in 1908. The country obtained its independence in 1960 and was immediately confronted with a series of secession movements which culminated in the seizure of power by Mobutu in a coup d’etat in 1965. Mobutu renamed the country Zaire in 1971 and presided over a fierce dictatorship until its overthrow in 1997 by the First Congo War. Subsequently, the old name of the country was restored and the country faced the Second Congo War in 1998, the deadliest since World War II. It ends in 2003 under the presidency of Joseph Kabila who governs the country until 2019.
The country’s current president is Felix Tshisekedi, who succeeded Kabila following the 2018 presidential election, the first peaceful transition of power since independence. Several hundred ethnic groups make up the country’s population; French is the official language and four Bantu languages (Lingala, Kikongo Yaleta (also called “Kikongo” outside Kongo-Central), Swahili and Tshiluba) have the status of national language. The economy is mainly based on the primary sector (agriculture and mining).
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