D.R. Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is also known as Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, DRC, DROC or simply Congo or Congo, and Zaire was previously a country in Central Africa. By area, it is the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa, the second largest in all of Africa (after Algeria) and the 11th largest in the world. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, with a population of about 105 million, is the most populous French-speaking country in the world, as well as the fourth most populous country in Africa (after Nigeria, Ethiopia and Egypt) and the 15th most populous country in Africa. country in the world. He is a member of the United Nations, Non-Aligned Movement, African Union and COMESA. Since 2015, Eastern DR Congo has been the site of an ongoing military conflict in the Kivu. The capital and largest city is Kinshasa. The territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, concentrated in the Congo Basin, was first inhabited by gatherers from Central Africa about 90,000 years ago and was achieved by the Bantu expansion about 3,000 years ago. In the west, the Kingdom of the Congo ruled around the mouth of the Congo River from the 14th to the 19th centuries. In the northeast, center and east of the Azande kingdoms, Lyuba and Lunda ruled from the 16th and 17th centuries to the 19th century. In the 1870s, shortly before the start of the battle for Africa, Europeans conducted an exploration of the Congo Basin under the direction of Henry Morton Stanley, sponsored by Leopold II of Belgium. Leopold officially acquired the rights to the territory of the Congo at the Berlin Conference of 1885 and declared the land his private property, calling it the Congo Free State. During the Free State, its colonial military unit Force Publique forced the local population to produce rubber. From 1885 to 1908, millions of Congolese died as a result of disease and exploitation. In 1908, Leopold, despite his initial resistance, ceded the so-called Free State to Belgium, which became known as the Belgian Congo. Congo achieved independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960 under the name Republic of the Congo. Congolese nationalist Patrice Lumumba was elected as the first prime minister, and Joseph Casa-Wubu became the first president. During the Congo crisis, Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, who later renamed himself Mobutu Sese Seko, officially came to power in a coup d'état and renamed the country Zaire in 1971. People's movement of the revolution as the only legal party. By the early 1990s, Mobutu's government began to weaken. The destabilization in the east following the 1994 Rwandan genocide led to the 1996 Rwandan-led invasion that led to the expulsion of Mobutu in the First Congo War the following year.