DR Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo spans most of the Congo Basin, the second-largest rainforest on earth. The Congo River curves through it in a vast arc, crossing the equator twice, before squeezing through rapids to a short Atlantic coast. In the east the land rises to the Albertine Rift, with Lake Kivu, the active volcano Nyiragongo and the Rwenzori, the Mountains of the Moon of legend. The south, in Katanga, is savannah over enormous deposits of copper and cobalt.

Kingdoms such as Kongo, Luba, Lunda and Kuba flourished long before Europeans came, and the Kongo kings traded with Portugal from the 1480s. In 1885 the territory became the private colony of King Leopold II of Belgium, whose agents forced villagers to gather wild rubber under brutal conditions; an international outcry made it a Belgian colony in 1908. Independence came in 1960, and the first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered the next year. Mobutu ruled from 1965 to 1997 and renamed the country Zaire.

Congolese rumba, born in Kinshasa and Brazzaville in the mid-twentieth century and later quickened into soukous, filled dance floors across Africa and is on UNESCO’s intangible heritage list. The sapeurs of Kinshasa turned elegant dressing into an art. Mines in Katanga and Lualaba produce copper and cobalt for the world’s rechargeable batteries, the east yields gold, tin and coltan, and most rural families grow cassava, maize and plantains.