Democratic Republic of the Congo

Where the name comes from

Congo takes its name from the Congo River and the Kingdom of Kongo, a Bakongo state near the river’s mouth.

First people

Hunter-gatherers lived in the rainforest for tens of thousands of years, and from the late 1300s the Bantu-speaking Kongo kingdom covered parts of today’s Angola and both Congos.¹

Known for

The country is known for the Congo River, the world’s deepest river, and for rumba, the music that spread across Africa from Kinshasa.²

Outside contact

From 1885 to 1908, the Congo Free State was the personal possession of Belgium’s King Leopold II, and rubber was extracted through forced labour and violence.^3,4,5

The modern country

Belgium then took over the colony, which became today’s Democratic Republic of the Congo at independence in 1960.³